Curtains For Three (10 page)

Like millions of my fellow citizens, I had done some sizing up of Victor Talbott from pictures of him in the papers, and within ten seconds after he had joined us in the office I had decided the label I had tied on him could stay. He was the guy who, at a cocktail party or before dinner, grabs the tray of appetizers and passes it around, looking into eyes and making cracks. Not counting me, he was easily the best-looking male in the room.

Entering, he shot a glance and a smile at Dorothy Keyes, ignored the others,

came to a stop in front of Wolfe’s desk, and said pleasantly, “You’re Nero Wolfe, of course. I’m Vic Talbott. I suppose you’d rather not shake hands with me under the circumstances - that is, if you’re accepting the job these people came to offer you. Are you?”

“How do you do, sir,” Wolfe rumbled. “Good heavens, I’ve shaken hands with - how many murderers, Archie?”

“Oh - forty,” I estimated.

“At least that. That’s Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Talbott.”

Evidently Vic figured I might be squeamish too, for he gave me a nod but extended no hand. Then he turned to face the guests. “What about it, folks'Have you hired the great detective?”

“Nuts,” Wayne Safford squeaked at him. “You come prancing in, huh?”

Ferdinand Pohl had left his chair and was advancing on the gate-crasher. I was on my feet, ready to move. There was plenty of feeling loose in the room, and I didn’t want any of our clients hurt. But all Pohl did was to tap Talbott on the chest with a thick forefinger and growl at him, “Listen, my boy. You’re not going to sell anything here. You’ve made one sale too many as it is.” Pohl whirled to Wolfe. “What did you let him in for?”

“Permit me to say,” Broadyke put in, “that it does seem an excess of hospitality.”

“By the way, Vic” - it was Dorothy’s soft voice - “Ferdy says I was your accomplice.”

The remarks from the others had made no visible impression on him, but it was different with Dorothy. He turned to her, and the look on his face was good for a whole chapter in his biography. He was absolutely all hers unless I needed an oculist. She could lift her lovely brows a thousand times a day without feeding him up. He let his eyes speak to her and then wheeled to use his tongue for Pohl. “Do you know what I think of you, Ferdy'I guess you do!”

“If you please,” Wolfe said sharply. “You don’t need my office for exchanging your opinions of one another; you can do that anywhere. We have work to do. Mr.

Talbott, you asked if I’ve accepted a job that has been offered me. I have. I have engaged to investigate the murder of Sigmund Keyes. But I have received no confidences and can still decline it. Have you a better offer'What did you come here for?”

Talbott smiled at him. “That’s the way to talk,” he said admiringly. “No, I have nothing to offer in the way of a job, but I felt I ought to be in on this. I figured it this way: they were going to hire you to get me arrested for murder,

so naturally you would like to have a look at me and ask me some questions - and here I am.”

“Pleading not guilty, of course. Archie. A chair for Mr. Talbott.”

“Of course,” he agreed, thanking me with a smile for the chair I brought, and sitting down. “Otherwise you’d have no job. Shoot.” Suddenly he flushed. “Under the circumstances, I guess I shouldn’t have said shoot.’”

“You could have said ‘Fire away,’ ” Wayne Safford piped up from the rear.

“Be quiet, Wayne,” Audrey Rooney scolded him.

“Permit me - ” Broadyke began, but Wolfe cut him off.

“No. Mr. Talbott has invited questions.” He focused on the inviter. “These other people think the police are handling this matter stupidly and ineffectively. Do you agree, Mr. Talbott?”

Vic considered a moment, then nodded. “On the whole, yes,” he assented.

“Why?”

“Well - you see, they’re up against it. They’re used to working with clues, and while they found plenty of clues to show what happened, like the marks on the bridle path and leading to the thicket, there aren’t any that help to identify the murderer. Absolutely none whatever. So they had to fall back on motive, and right away they found a man with the best motive in the world.”

Talbott tapped himself on the necktie. “Me. But then they found that his man -

me - that I couldn’t possibly have done it because I was somewhere else. They found I had an alibi that was - “

“Phony!” From Wayne Safford.

“Made to order.” From Broadyke.

“The dumbheads!” From Pohl. “If they had brains enough to give that switchboard girl - “

“Please!” Wolfe shut them up. “Go ahead, Mr. Talbott. Your alibi - but first the motive. What is the best motive in the world?”

Vic looked surprised. “It’s been printed over and over again.”

“I know. But I don’t want journalistic conjectures when I’ve got you - unless you’re sensitive about it.”

Talbott’s smile had some bitterness in it. “If I was,” he declared, “I’ve sure been cured this past week. I guess ten million people have read that I’m deeply in love with Dorothy Keyes or some variation of that. All right, I am! Want a shot - want a picture of me saying it?” He turned to face his fiancee. “I love you, Dorothy, better than all the world, deeply, madly, with all my heart.” He returned to Wolfe. “There’s your motive.”

“Vic, darling,” Dorothy told his profile, “you’re a perfect fool, and you’re perfectly fascinating. I really am glad you’ve got a good alibi.”

“You demonstrate love,” Wolfe said dryly, “by killing your beloved’s surviving parent. Is that it?”

“Yes,” Talbott asserted. “Under certain conditions. Here was the situation.

Sigmund Keyes was the most celebrated and successful industrial designer in America, and - “

“Nonsense!” Broadyke exploded, without asking permission to say.

Talbott smiled. “Sometimes,” he said, as if offering it for consideration, “a jealous man is worse than any jealous woman. You know, of course, that Mr.

Broadyke is himself an industrial designer - in fact, he practically invented the profession. Not many manufacturers would dream of tooling for a new model -

steamship, railroad train, airplane, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, alarm clock,

no matter what - without consulting Broadyke, until I came along and took over the selling end for Sigmund Keyes. Incidentally, that’s why I doubt if Broadyke killed Keyes. If he had got that desperate about it he wouldn’t have killed Keyes, he would have killed me.”

“You were speaking,” Wolfe reminded him, “of love as a motive for murder under certain conditions.”

“Yes, and Broadyke threw me off.” Talbott cocked his head. “Let’s see - oh, yes,

and I was doing the selling for Keyes, and he couldn’t stand the talk going around that I was mostly responsible for the big success we were having, but he was afraid to get rid of me. And I loved his daughter and wanted her to marry me, and will always love her. But he had great influence with her, which I did not and do not understand - anyway, if she loved me as I do her that wouldn’t have mattered, but she doesn’t - “

“My God, Vic,” Dorothy protested, “haven’t I said a dozen times I’d marry you like that” - she snapped her fingers - “if it weren’t for Dad'Really, I’m crazy about you!”

“All right,” Talbott told Wolfe, “there’s your motive. It’s certainly old-fashioned, no modern industrial design to it, but it’s absolutely dependable. Naturally that’s what the police thought until they ran up against the fact that I was somewhere else. That got them bewildered and made them sore,

and they haven’t recovered their wits, so I guess my good friends here are right that they’re being stupid and ineffective. Not that they’ve crossed me off entirely. I understand they’ve got an army of detectives and stool pigeons hunting for the gunman I hired to do the job. They’ll have to hunt hard. You heard Miss Keyes call me a fool, but I’m not quite fool enough to hire someone to I commit a murder for me.”

“I should hope not.” Wolfe sighed. “There’s nothing better than a good motive.

What about the alibi'Have the police given up on that?”

“Yes, the damn idiots!” Pohl blurted. “That switchboard girl - “

“I asked Mr. Talbott,” Wolfe snapped.

“I don’t know,” Talbott admitted, “but I suppose they had to. I’m still trembling at how lucky I was that I got to bed late that Monday night - I mean a week ago, the night before Keyes was killed. If I had been riding with him I’d be in jail now, and done for. It’s a question of timing.”

Talbott compressed his lips and loosened them. “Oh, boy! The mounted cop saw Keyes riding in the park near Sixty-sixth Street at ten minutes past seven.

Keyes was killed near Ninety-sixth Street. Even if he had galloped all the way he couldn’t have got there, the way that bridle path winds, before seven-twenty.

And he didn’t gallop, because if he had the horse would have shown it, and he didn’t.” Talbott twisted around. “You’re the authority on that, Wayne. Casanova hadn’t been in a sweat, had he?”

“You’re telling it,” was all he got from Wayne Safford.

“Well, he hadn’t,” Talbott told Wolfe. “Wayne is on record on that. So Keyes couldn’t have reached the spot where he was killed before seven-twenty-five.

There’s the time for that, twenty-five minutes past seven.”

“And you?” Wolfe inquired.

“Me, I was lucky. I often rode in the park with Keyes at that ungodly hour - two or three times a week. He wanted me to make it every day, but I got out of it about half the time. There was nothing social or sociable about it. We would walk our horses side by side, talking business, except when he felt like trotting. I live at the Hotel Churchill. I got in late Monday night, but I left a call for six o’clock anyway, because I hadn’t ridden with Keyes for several days and didn’t want to get him sore. But when the girl rang my phone in the morning I was just too damn sleepy, and I told her to call the riding academy and say I wouldn’t be there, and to call me again at seven-thirty. She did so,

and I still didn’t feel like turning out but I had to because I had a breakfast date with an out-of-town customer, so I told her to send up a double orange juice. A few minutes later a waiter brought it up. So was I lucky'Keyes was killed uptown at twenty-five past seven at the earliest, and probably a little later. I was in my room at the Churchill, nearly three miles away, at half-past seven. You can have three guesses how glad I was I left that seven-thirty call!”

Wolfe nodded. “You should give the out-of-town customer a discount. In that armor, why did you take the trouble to join this gathering?”

“A switchboard girl and a waiter, for God’s sake!”

Pohl snorted sarcastically.

“Nice honest people, Ferdy,” Talbott told him, and answered Wolfe, “I didn’t.”

“No'You’re not here?”

“Sure I’m here, but not to join any gathering. I came to join Miss Keyes. I don’t regard it as trouble to join Miss Keyes. As for the rest of them, except maybe Broadyke - “

The doorbell rang again, and since additional gatecrashers might or might not be desirable, I upped myself in a hurry, stepped across and into the hall,

intercepted Fritz just in time, and went to the front door to take a look through the panel of one-way glass. Seeing who it was out on the stoop, I fastened the chain bolt, pulled the door open the two inches the Chain would permit, and spoke through the crack. “I don’t want to catch cold.”

“Neither do I,” a gruff voice told me. “Take that damn bolt off.”

“Mr. Wolfe is engaged,” I said politely. “Will I do?”

“You will not. You never have and you never will.”

“Then hold it a minute. I’ll see.”

I shut the door, went to the office, and told Wolfe, “The man about the chair,”

which was my favorite alias for Inspector Cramer of Homicide.

Wolfe grunted and shook his head. “I’ll be busy for hours and can’t be interrupted.”

I returned to the front, opened to the crack again, and said regretfully,

“Sorry, but he’s doing his homework.”

“Yeah,” Cramer said sarcastically, “he certainly is. Now that Talbott’s here too you’ve got a full house. All six of ‘em. Open the door.”

“Bah. Who are you trying to impress'You have tails on one or more, possibly all, and I do hope you haven’t abandoned Talbott because we like him. By the way, the phone girl and the waiter at the Churchill - what’re their names?”

“I’m coming in, Goodwin.”

“Come ahead. This chain has never had a real test, and I’ve wondered about it.”

“In the name of the law, open this door!” I was so astonished that I nearly did open it in order to get a good look at him. Through the crack I could use only one eye. “Well, listen to you,” I said incredulously. “On me you try that'As you know, it’s the law that keeps you out. If you’re ready to make an arrest,

tell me who, and I’ll see that he or she doesn’t pull a scoot. After all, you’re not a monopoly. You’ve had them for a full week, day or night, and Wolfe has had them only an hour or so, and you can’t bear it! Incidentally, they’re not refusing to see you, they don’t know you’re here, so don’t chalk that against them. It’s Mr. Wolfe who can’t be disturbed. I’ll give you this much satisfaction: he hasn’t solved it yet, and it may take till midnight. It will save time if you’ll give me the names - “

“Shut up,” Cramer rasped. “I came here perfectly friendly. There’s no law against Wolfe having people in his office. And there’s no law against my being there with them, either.”

“There sure isn’t,” I agreed heartily, “once you’re in, but what about this door'Here’s a legal door, with a man on one side who can’t open it, and a man on the other side who won’t, and according to the statutes - “

“Archie!” It was a bellow from the office, Wolfe’s loudest bellow, seldom heard,

and there were other sounds. It came again. “Archie!”

I said hastily, “Excuse me,” slammed the door shut, ran down the hall and turned the knob, and popped in.

It was nothing seriously alarming. Wolfe was still in his chair behind his desk.

The chair Talbott had occupied was overturned. Dorothy was on her feet, her back to Wolfe’s desk, with her brows elevated to a record high. Audrey Rooney was standing in the corner by the big globe, with her clenched fists pressed against her cheeks, staring. Pohl and Broadyke were also out of their chairs, also gazing at the center of the room. From the spectators’ frozen attitudes you might have expected to see something really startling, but it was only a couple of guys slinging punches. As I entered Talbott landed a right hook on the side of Safford’s neck, and as I closed the door to the hall behind me Safford countered with a solid stiff left to Talbott’s kidney sector. The only noise besides their fists and feet was a tense mutter from Audrey Rooney in her corner. “Hit him, Wayne; hit him, Wayne.”