The League of Frightened Men Page 8

  "You are ready?" Wolfe had opened his eyes on him. "You mean you are prepared?" ^ "Not specially." Burton looked irritated. "It is of no importance whatever. I always seem to talk too much when Paul Chapin is concerned; I wish to the Lord I'd never heard of him. As far as that goes, of course we all do. I only meant… well, for years I've kept an automatic pistol in the drawer of my study-table. One evening last week Paul came to see me. For years, of course, he was welcome at my house, though he seldomttlcame. On this occasion, on account of recent events, I told the butler to keep him in the reception hall; and before I went to the reception hall I took the pistol from the drawer and stuck it in my pocket. – That was all I meant; I would be perfectly willing to use personal violence if the circumstances required it."

  Wolfe sighed. ‹I regret your soft spot,

  Dr. Burton. But for that you might, for instance, tell us which evening Mr. Chapin went to see you and what it was he wanted."

  "That wouldn't help you." Burton was brusque. "It was personal – that is, it was only neurotic nonsense."

  "So, they say, was Napoleon's dream of empire. Very well, sir. By all means cling to the tattered shreds of humanity that are left you; there are enough of us in that respect quite unclothed. I must somehow manage my enterprise without stripping you. I would like as ask, gentlemen: which of you were most intimate with Mr. Hibbard?"

  They looked at each other. George Pratt said, "We all saw Andy off and on."

  Julius Adier put in, "I would say that among us Roland Erskine was his closest friend. I would boast that I was next."

  "Erskine the actor?" Wolfe glanced at the clock. ‹I was thinking he might join us after the theater, but scarcely at this hour. He is working, I believe."

  Drummond said, "He's in The Iron

  Heel, he has the lead."

  "Then he couldn't dine. Not at a civilized hour." Wolfe looked at Julius Adier. "Could you come here at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon and bring Mr. Erskine with you?"

  "Perhaps." The lawyer looked annoyed. "I suppose I could manage it.

  Couldn't you come to my office?"

  "I'm sorry, sir. Believe me, I am; but knowing my habits as I do, it seems extravagantly improbable. If you could arrange to bring Mr. Erskine -";

  "All right. I'll see what I can do.".

  "Thank you. – You had better run, |

  Mr. Kommers, or you'll miss your train.

  Another reason, and one of the best, for staying at home. – Gentlemen, so far as our business is concerned I need not further detain you. But in connection with my remark to Mr. Kommers it occurs to me that no publication either before or since the invention of printing, no L theological treatise and no political or scientific creed, has ever been as narrowly dogmatic or as offensively arbitrary in its prejudices as a railway timetable. If any of you should care to remain half an hour or so to help me enlarge upon that…"

  Byron the magazine editor, who had stuck in his shell all evening, suddenly woke up. He got up from his chair and slipped his head in between a couple of shoulders to see Wolfe. "You know, that idea could be developed into a first-rate little article. Six hundred to seven hundred words, about. The Tyranny of the Wheel, you could call it, with a colored margin of trains and airplanes and ocean liners at ‹ top speed – of course liners don't have wheels, but you could do something about that – if I could persuade you, Mr.

  Wolfe -" gt | "I'm afraid you could only bewilder me, Mr. Byron."

  Cabot the lawyer smiled. "I never saw a man less likely to be bewildered, even by Eddie Byron. Good night, Mr. Wolfe."

  He picked up the memorandum and folded it and put it in his pocket. "I'll send you these in the morning.") They got moving. Pratt and Farrell went and got Mike Ayers to his feet and slapped him around a little. Byron started trying to persuade Wolfe again and was pulled off by Adier. Kommers had gone.

  The others drifted to the hall, and I went out and stood around while they got their hats and coats on. Bowen and Burton went off together, as they had come. I held the door for Pratt and Farrell to get Mike Ayers through; they were the last out.

  After I had shut the door and bolted it I went to the kitchen for a pitcher of milk.

  Fritz was sitting there reading that newspaper printed in French, with his butler shoes still on, in spite of how he loved to put on his slippers after dinner on account of things left on his toes and feet by the war to remember it by. We said what we always said under those circumstances. He said, "I could bring your milk, Archie, if you would just tell me," and I said, "If I can drink it I can carry it."

  In the office, Wolfe sat back with his eyes closed. I took the milk to my desk and poured a glass and sat down and sipped at it. The room was full of smoke and the smell of different drinks, and chairs were scattered around and cigar and cigarette ashes were all over the rugs. It annoyed me, and I got up and opened a window. Wolfe said, "Close it," and I got up and closed it again. I poured another glass of milk.

  I said, "This bird Chapin is a lunatic, and it's long past midnight. I'm damn good and sleepy."

  Wolfe kept his eyes shut, and also ignored me in other ways. I said, "Do you realize we could earn all that jack and save a lot of trouble just by having a simple little accident happen to Paul Chapin? Depression prices on accidents like that run from fifty bucks up. It's smart to be thrifty."

  Wolfe murmured, "Thank you, Archie.

  When I exhaust my own expedients I shall know where to turn. – A page in your notebook."

  I opened a drawer and took out a book and pencil.

  "Phone Mr. Cabot's office at nine o'clock and make sure that the memorandums will be here by eleven, ready for Mr. Farrell. Ask where the reports from the Bascom Agency are and arrange to get them. The men will be here I at eight?", "Yes, sir.". I "Send one of them to get the reports.

  Put three of them on Paul Chapin, first | thing. We want a complete record of his movements, and phone anything of significance." n "Durkin and Keems and Gore?"

  "That is your affair. But Saul Panzer is I to get his nose onto Andrew Hibbard's last discoverable footstep. Tell him to phone me at eleven-thirty." _ "Yes, sir." | "Put Gather onto Chapin's past, outside the circle of our clients, especially the past two years. As complete as possible. He might succeed in striking an harmonious chord with Dora Chapin."

  "Maybe I could do that myself. She's g probably a lulu." 'k r "I suspect that of being a vulgarization of the word allure. If she is alluring, resist the temptation for the moment. Your special province will be the deaths of Harrison and Dreyer. First read the Bascom reports, then proceed. Wherever original investigation is indicated and seems still feasible after the lapse of time, undertake it. Use men as necessary, but avoid extravagance. Do not call upon any of our clients until Mr. Farrell has seen them. – That's all. It's late."

  Wolfe opened his eyes, blinked, and closed them again. But I noticed that the tip of his finger was doing a little circle on the arm of the chair. I grinned:

  "Maybe we've got this and that for tomorrow and next day, but maybe right now you're troubled by the same thing I am. Why is this Mr. Chapin giving hip room to a Civil War gat with the hammer nose filed off so that it's about as murderous as a beanshooter?"

  "I'm not troubled, Archie." But his finger didn't stop. "I'm wondering whether another bottle of beer before going to bed would be judicious."

  "You've had six since dinner."

  "Seven. One upstairs."

  "Then for God's sake call it a day.

  Speaking of Chapin's cannon, do you remember the lady dope-fiend who carried a box of pellets made out of flour in her sock, the usual cache, and when they took that and thought she was frisked, she still had the real thing in the hem of her skirt?

  Of course I don't mean that Chapin had another gun necessarily, I just mean, psychologically…"

  "Good heavens." Wolfe pushed back his chair, not of course with violence, but with determination. "Archie. Understand this. As a man of action you are tolerabl
e, you are even competent. But I will not for one moment put up with you as a psychologist. I am going to bed."

  A

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  8

  .-r I had heard Wolfe, at various times, make quite a few cracks about murder. He had said once that no man could commit so complicated a deed as a premeditated murder and leave no opening. He had also said that the only way to commit a murder and remain safe from detection, despite any ingenuity in pursuit and trusting to no luck, was to do it impromptu; await your opportunity, keep your wits about you, and strike when the instant offered; and he added that the luxury of the impromptu murder could be afforded only by those who happened to be in no great hurry about it.

  By Tuesday evening I was convinced of one thing about the death of Wm. R.

  Harrison, Federal judge from Indianapolis: that if it had been murder at all it had been impromptu. I would like to say another thing right here, that I know when I'm out of my class. I've got my limitations, and I never yet have tried to give them the ritz. Paul Chapin hadn't been in Nero Wolfe's office more than three minutes Monday night when I saw he was all Greek to me; if it was left to me to take him apart he was sitting pretty.

  When • people begin to get deep and complicated they mix me up. But pictures never do. With pictures, no matter how many pieces they've got that don't seem to fit at first, I'm there forty ways from Sunday. I spent six hours Tuesday with the picture of Judge Harrison's death – reading the Bascom reports, talking with six people including thirty minutes on long distance with Fillmore Collard, and chewing it along with two meals – and I decided three things about it: first, that if it was murder it was impromptu; second, that if anybody killed him it was Paul Chapin; and third, that there was as much chance of proving it as there was of proving that honesty was the best policy.

  It had happened nearly five months back, but the things that had happened since, starting with the typewritten poems they had got in the mail, had kept their memories active. Paul Chapin had driven up to Harvard with Leopold Elkus, the surgeon, who had gone because he had a son graduating. Judge Harrison had come on from Indianapolis for the same reason.

  Drummond had been there, Elkus told me, because each year the doubt whether he had really graduated from a big university became overwhelming and he went back every June to make sure. Elkus was very fond of Drummond, the way a taxi-driver is of a cop. Cabot and Sidney Lang had been in Boston on business, and Bowen had been a houseguest at the home of Theodore Gaines; presumably they were hatching some sort of a financial deal.

  Anyway, Fillmore Collard had got in touch with his old classmates and invited them for the week-end to his place near Marblehead. There had been quite a party, more than a dozen altogether.

  Saturday evening after dinner they had strolled through the grounds, as darkness fell, to the edge of a hundred-foot cliff at the base of which the surf roared among jagged rocks. Four, among them Cabot and Elkus, had stayed in the house playing bridge. Paul Chapin had hobbled along with the strollers. They had separated, some going to the stables with Collard to I see a sick horse, some back to the house, one or two staying behind. It was an hour or so later that they missed Harrison, and not until midnight did they become really concerned. Daylight came before the tide was out enough for them to find his cut and bruised body at the foot of the cliff, wedged among the rocks.

  A tragic accident and a ruined party. It had had no significance beyond that until the Wednesday following, when the typewritten poem came to each of them. It said a good deal for Paul Chapin's character and quality, the fact that none of them for a moment doubted the poem's implications. Cabot said that what closed their minds to any doubt was the similarity in the manner of Harrison's death to the accident Chapin had suffered from many years before. He had fallen ~ | from a height. They got together, andconsidered, and tried to remember. After the interval of four days there was a good deal of disagreement. A man named Meyer, who lived in Boston, had stated Saturday night that he had gone off leaving Harrison seated on the edge of the cliff and had jokingly warned him to be ready to pull his parachute cord, and that no one else had been around. Now they tried to remember about Chapin. Two were positive that he had limped along after the group strolling to the house, that he had come up to them on the veranda, and had entered with them. Bowen thought he remembered seeing him at the stables. Sidney Lang had seen him reading a book soon after the group returned, and was of the opinion that he had not stirred from his seat for an hour or more.

  All the league was in on it now, for they had all got warnings. They got nowhere.

  Two or three were inclined to laugh it off.

  Leopold Elkus thought Chapin guiltless, even of the warnings, and advised looking elsewhere for the culprit. Some, quite a few at first, were in favor of turning it over to the police, but they were talked down, chiefly by Hibbard and Burton and Elkus. Collard and Gaines came down from Boston, and they tried to reconstruct the evening and definitely outline Chapin's movements, but failed through disagreements. In the end they delegated Burton, Cabot and Lang to call on Chapin. 4 Chapin had smiled at them. At their insistence he described his Saturday evening movements, recollecting them clearly and in detail; he had caught up with them at the cliff and sat there on a bench, and had left with the group that returned to the house; he had not noticed Harrison sitting on the cliffs edge. At the house, not being a card-player, he had got into a chair with a book and had stayed there with it until aroused by the hubbub over Harrison's absence – approaching midnight. That was his smiling story. He had been not angry, but delicately hurt, that his best friends could think him capable of wishing injury to one of them, knowing as they did that the only struggle in his breast was between affection and gratitude, for the lead. Smiling, but hurt.

  As for the warnings they had received, that was another matter. Regarding that, he said, his sorrow that they should suspect him not only of violence but threats of additional violence, was lost in his indignation that he should be accused of so miserable a piece of versifying. He criticized it in detail and with force. As a threat it might be thought effective, he couldn't say as to that, but as poetry it was rotten, and he had certainly never supposed that his best friends could accuse. him of such an offense. But then, he had ended, he realized that he would have to forgive them and he did so, fully and without reservation, since it was obvious that they were having quite a scare and so should not be held to account.

  Who had sent the warnings, if he hadn't? He had no idea. Of course it could have been done by anyone knowing of that ancient accident who had also learned of this recent one. One guess was as good as another, unless they could uncover something to point their suspicion. The postmark might furnish a hint, or the envelopes and paper, or the typewriting itself. Maybe they had better see if they couldn't find the typewriter.

  The committee of three had called on him at his apartment in Perry Street, and were sitting with him in the little room that he used for a study. As he had offered his helpful suggestion he had got up and limped over to his typewriter, I patted it, and smiled at them:

  "I'm sure that discreditable stuff wasn't written on this, unless one of you fellows sneaked in here and used it when I wasn't looking."

  Nicholas Cabot had been tough enough to go over and stick in a sheet of paper and type a few lines on it, and put the sheet in his pocket and take it away with him, but a later examination had shown • that Chapin was quite correct. The | committee had made its report, and subsequent discussions had taken place, but weeks had gone by and the thing petered out. Most of them, becoming a little ashamed of themselves and convinced that someone had tried a practical joke, • made a point of continuing their friendly relations with Chapin. So far as was known by the six men I talked to, it hadn't been mentioned to him again.

  I reported all this, in brief outline, to Wolfe Tuesday evening. His comment was, "Then the death of this Judge Harrison, this man who in his conceit permitted himself the awful pretensions of a reader o
f chaos – whether designed by Providence or by Paul Chapin, his death was extempore. Let us forget it; it might clutter up our minds, but it cannot crowd oblivion. If Mr. Chapin had been content with that man's death and had restrained his impulse to rodomontade, he might have considered himself safely avenged – in that instance. But his vanity undid him; he wrote that threat and sent it broadcast.

  That was dangerous."

  "How sure are you?"

  "Sure -" • "That he sent the threat."

  "Did I not say he did?"

  "Yeah. Excuse me for living."

  "I would not take that responsibility; I have all I can do to excuse myself. – But so much for Judge Harrison; whatever chaos he inhabits now, let us hope he contemplates it with a wiser modesty. I would tell you about Mr. Hibbard. That is, I would tell you nothing, for there is nothing to tell. His niece, Miss Evelyn Hibbard, called on me this morning."

  "Oh, she did. I thought she was coming

  Wednesday."* ^

  "She anticipated it, having received a report of last evening's gathering."

  "Did she spill anything new?"

  "She could add nothing to what she told you Saturday evening. She has made another thorough search of the apartment, helped by her sister, and can find nothing whatever missing. Either Mr. Hibbard's 1 absence was unforeseen by him, or he was a remarkably intelligent and strong-willed man. He was devoted to two pipes, which i he smoked alternately. One of them is I there in its usual place. He made no uncommon withdrawal from his bank, but he always carried a good deal of cash."

  "Didn't I tell you about the pipe?" ill "You may have. Saul Panzer, after a full day, had to offer one little morsel. A news vendor at One Hundred Sixteenth Street and Broadway, who has known Mr.