Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02 (16 page)

I took off the paper, several thicknesses. It wasn’t a suitcase, but it was leather, and not imitation. It was an oblong box made of light tan calfskin, a special job, beautifully made, with fine lines of tooling around the edges. It was a swell number. Orrie grunted:

“Jesus, I may be in for grand larceny.”

Wolfe said, “Go on,” but he didn’t get up so he could see.

“I can’t. It’s locked.”

“Well.”

I went to the safe and got a couple of my bunches of keys, and went back and started trying. The lock was nothing remarkable; in a few minutes I had it. I laid the keys down and lifted the lid. Orrie stood up and looked in with me. We didn’t say anything for a second, then we looked at each other. I never saw him look so disgusted.

Wolfe said, “Empty?”

“No, sir. We’ll have to give Orrie a drink. It’s not his, it’s hers. I mean Dora Chapin’s. It’s her hand-and-foot box. Gloves and stockings and maybe other dainties.”

“Indeed.” To my surprise Wolfe showed interest. His lips pushed out and in. He was even going to get up. He did so, and I shoved the box across.

“Indeed. I suspect—yes, it must be. Archie. Kindly remove them and spread them on the desk.
Here, I’ll help. No, Orrie, not unless you wash your hands first.—Ha, more intimate still! But mostly stockings and gloves.—Less roughly, Archie, out of respect for the dignity the race aspires to; what we are displaying on this desk-top is the soul of a man. Qualities may be deduced—for instance, do you notice that the gloves, varying as they do in color and material, are all of a size? Among twenty pairs or more, not one exception? Could you ask more of loyalty and fidelity?
O, that I were a glove upon that hand
… But with Romeo it was only rhetoric; for Paul Chapin the glove is the true treasure, with no hope beyond either of sweet or of bitter.—Again, let us not be carried away; it is a distortion to regard this or that aspect of a phenomenon to the exclusion of others. In the present case, for example, we cannot afford to forget that these articles are of expensive materials and workmanship, that they must have cost Dr. Burton something around three hundred dollars and that he therefore had a right to expect that they should get more wear. Some of them, indeed, are practically new. To strike a balance—”

Orrie was sitting down again staring at him. It was I who cut him off: “Where does Burton come in? I’m asking that in English.”

Wolfe fingered the gloves some more, and held up a stocking to look through it at the light. To see him handling female hosiery as if he understood it gave me a new insight into the extent of his pretensions. He held up another one, dropped it back gently to the table, and took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands, carefully, fingers and palms. Then he sat down.

“Read your Anglo-Saxon poets, Archie. Romeo himself was English, in spite of geography. I am not trying to befuddle you, I am adhering to a tradition.”

“All right. Where does Burton come in?”

“I have said, he paid the bills. He paid for these articles, his wife wore them, Dora Ritter, later Chapin, appropriated them, and Paul Chapin treasured them.”

“How do you know all that?”

“How could I help but know it? Here are these worn things, kept by Paul Chapin in an elegant and locked receptacle, and in a time of crisis removed by him to a place of safety against unfriendly curiosity. You saw the size of Dora Chapin’s hands, you see these gloves; they are not hers. You heard Monday evening the story of Chapin’s infatuation with the woman who is now Dr. Burton’s wife. You know that for years Dora Chapin, then Ritter, was Mrs. Burton’s personal maid, and that she still attends her, to do something to her hair, at least once a week. Knowing these things, it would seem to me that only the most desperate stupidity—”

“Yes, sir. Okay on the stupidity. But why does it have to be that Dora took them? Maybe Chapin took them himself.”

“He might. But most unlikely. Surely he did not strip the stockings from her legs, and I doubt if he was familiar with her dressing-room. The faithful Dora—”

“Faithful to who? Mrs. Burton, swiping her duds?”

“But, Archie. Having seen Dora, can you not grant her rarity? Anyone can be faithful to an employer; millions are, daily, constantly; it is one of the dullest and most vulgar of loyalties. We need not, even if we could, conjecture as to the first stirring of sympathy in Dora’s breast on her perceiving the bitter torment in the romantic cripple’s heart. I would like to believe it was a decent and honorable bargain, that Paul Chapin offered to pay her money, and did pay her, to get him a pair of gloves his unattainable beloved had worn, but I fear not. Having seen Dora, I suspect that it was the service of romance to which she dedicated herself; and
that has been her faithfulness. It may even account for her continuing to visit Mrs. Burton when her marriage freed her from the practical necessity; doubtless, fresh specimens are added from time to time. What a stroke of luck for Chapin! The beloved odor, the intimate textile from the skin of his adored, is delivered to him as it may be required; more, the fingers which an hour ago played in his lady’s hair are now passing him his dinner coffee. He enjoys, daily, all the more delicate associations with the person of his passion, and escapes entirely the enforced and common-place contacts which usually render the delights of dubious profit. So much for the advantage, the peculiar thirst called emotional, of the individual; it is true that the race of man cannot be continued without it. But the biological problem is another matter.”

Orrie Cather said, “I knew a guy in the army that used to take out a girl’s handkerchief and kiss it before he went to sleep. One day a couple of us sneaked it out of his shirt and put something on it, and you should have heard him when he stuck his snout against it that night. He burned it up. Later he laid and cried, he was like that.”

I said, “It took brains to think up one as good as that.” Wolfe looked at Orrie, shut his eyes for a few seconds, and opened them again. He said:

“There are no ubiquitous handkerchiefs in this collection. Mr. Chapin is an epicure.—Archie. Repack the box, with feeling, lock it, wrap it up, and find a place for it in the cabinet.—Orrie, you may resume; you know your instructions. You have not brought us the solution of our case, but you have lifted the curtain to another room of the edifice we are exploring. Telephone at five after six as usual.”

Orrie went down the hall whistling.

I
had a nice piece of leather of my own, not as big as Paul Chapin’s treasure box, but fancier. Sitting at my desk around five o’clock that Wednesday afternoon, killing time waiting for a visitor who had phoned, I took it out of my inside breast pocket and looked at it; I had only had it a couple of weeks. It was brown, ostrich-skin, and was tooled in gold all over the outside. On one side the tooling was fine lines about half an inch apart, with flowers stemming out from them; the flowers were orchids; the workmanship was so good that you could tell Wolfe had given the guy a Cattleya to work from. The other side was covered with Colt automatics, fifty-two perfect little gold pistols all aiming at the center. Inside was stamped in gold:
A. G. from N. W.
Wolfe had given it to me on October 23rd, at the dinner-table, and I didn’t even know he knew when my birthday was. I carried my police and fire cards in it, and my operator’s license. I might have traded it for New York City if you had thrown in a couple of good suburbs.

When Fritz came and said Inspector Cramer was there I put it back in my pocket.

I let Cramer get eased into a chair and then I went
upstairs to the plant-rooms. Wolfe was at the potting-bench with Horstmann, spreading out some osmundine and leaning over to smell it; a dozen or so pots of Odontoglossums, overgrown, were at his elbow. I waited until he looked around, and I felt my throat drying up.

“Well?”

I swallowed. “Cramer’s downstairs. The rugged Inspector.”

“What of it? You heard me speaking to him on the telephone.”

“Look here,” I said, “I want this distinctly understood. I came up here only for one reason, because I thought maybe you had changed your mind and would like to see him. Yes or no will do it. If you give me a bawling out it will be nothing but pure childishness. You know what I think.”

Wolfe opened his eyes a little wider, winked the left one at me, twice, and turned to face the potting-bench again. All I could see was his broad back that might have been something in a Macy Thanksgiving Day parade. He said to Horstmann:

“This will do. Get the charcoal. No sphagnum, I think.”

I went back down to the office and told Cramer, “Mr. Wolfe can’t come down. He’s too infirm.”

The Inspector laughed. “I didn’t expect him to. I’ve known Nero Wolfe longer than you have, sonny. You don’t suppose I thought I was going to tear any secrets out of him? Anything he would tell me he has already told you. Can I light a pipe?”

“Shoot. Wolfe hates it. To hell with him.”

“What’s this, you staging on me?” Cramer packed his pipe, held a match to it, and puffed. “You
don’t … need to. Did Wolfe tell you what … I told him on the phone?”

“I heard it.” I patted my notebook. “I’ve got it down.”

“The hell you have. Okay. I don’t want George Pratt riding me, I’m too old to enjoy it. What went on here night before last?”

I grinned. “Just what Wolfe told you. That’s all. He closed a little contract.”

“Is it true that he nicked Pratt for four thousand dollars?”

“He didn’t nick anybody. He offered something for sale, and they gave him the order.”

“Yeah.” He puffed. “You know Pratt? Pratt thinks that it’s funny that he has to shell out to a private dick when the city maintains such a magnificent force of brave and intelligent men to cope with such problems. He said cope. I was there. He was talking to the Deputy Commissioner.”

“Indeed.” I bit my lip. I always felt like a sap when I caught myself imitating Wolfe. “Maybe he was referring to the Department of Health. That never occurred to me before, a cop coping.”

Cramer grunted. He sat back and looked at the vase of orchids, and pulled at his pipe. Pretty soon he said:

“I had a funny experience this afternoon. A woman called up downtown and said she wanted Nero Wolfe arrested because he had tried to cut her throat. They put her onto me because they knew I had Wolfe in mind about this case. I said I’d send a man up to get the details and she gave me her name and address. You could have flipped me cold with a rubber band when I heard it.”

I said, “That’s a hot one. I wonder who it could have been.”

“Sure you do. I’ll bet you’re puzzled. Then a couple of hours later a guy came to see me. By invitation. He was a taxi-driver. He said that no matter how much diversion it offered he didn’t care to take the rap for perjury, and that he saw blood on her when she got in his cab on Perry Street. That was one of the things I was wanting to mention to Wolfe on the phone, but the picture in my mind’s eye of him slicing a lady’s gullet was so damn remarkable that I didn’t get it out.” He puffed at his pipe, lit a match, and got it going again. He went on, more forceful and rugged. “Look here, Goodwin. What the hell’s the idea? I’ve tried that Chapin woman three times, and I couldn’t get her to break down enough to tell me what her name was. She put on the clamp and left it. Wolfe gets in the case late Monday night, and here already, Wednesday morning, she’s chasing up to his office to show him her operation. What the hell is it about him that gets them coming like that?”

I grinned. “It’s his sympathetic nature, inspector.”

“Yeah. Who carved her neck?”

“Search me. She told you, Wolfe. Pull him in and give him the works.”

“Was it Chapin?”

I shook my head. “If I know that secret, it’s buried here.” I tapped my chest.

“Much obliged. Now listen to me. I’m being serious. Am I on the level?”

“Absolutely.

“I am?”

“You know damn well you are.”

“Okay. Then I’m telling you, I didn’t come here to lift the silver. I’ve been after Chapin more than six
weeks, ever since Dreyer was croaked, and what I’ve got on him is exactly nothing. Maybe he killed Harrison, and I’m damn sure he killed Dreyer, and it looks like he got Hibbard, and he’s got me feeling like a Staten Island flatfoot. He’s as slick as a wet pavement. Right in a courtroom he confesses he committed murder, and the judge fines him fifty bucks for contempt of court! Later I find that he mentioned it beforehand to his publisher, as a publicity stunt! Covered everywhere. Is he slick?”

I nodded. “He’s slick.”

“Yes. Well, I’ve tried this and that. For one thing, I’ve got it figured that his wife hates him and she’s afraid of him, and probably she knows enough about it to fill out a hand for us, if we could get her to spill it. So when I heard that she had dashed up here to see Wolfe, I naturally surmised that he had learned things. And I want to say this. You don’t need to tell me a damn thing if you don’t want to. I’m not trying to horn in. But whatever you got out of that Chapin woman, maybe you can make better use of it if you see whether it fits a few pieces I’ve got hold of, and you’re welcome—”

“But, inspector. Wait a minute. If you think she came here friendly, to dump the can, how do you account for her calling up to get Wolfe arrested?”

“Now, sonny.” Cramer’s sharp eyes twinkled at me. “Didn’t I say I’ve known Nero Wolfe longer than you have? If he wanted me to think she hadn’t got confidential with him, that would be about exactly what he would tell her to do.”

I laughed. While I was laughing it occurred to me that it wouldn’t do any particular harm if Cramer continued to nurse that notion, so I laughed some more. I said, “He might, he sure might, but he didn’t.
Why she phoned you to arrest him—wait till I get a chance to tell Wolfe about it—why she did that, she’s psychopathic. So’s her husband. They’re both psychopathic. That’s Park Avenue for batty.”

Cramer nodded. “I’ve heard the word. We’ve got a department—oh, well …”

“And you’re damn sure he killed Dreyer.”

He nodded again. “I think Dreyer was murdered by Paul Chapin and Leopold Elkus.”