Three For The Chair (18 page)

'There's ladies here,' Amsel reproached him.

'They're not ladies, they're fellow members. Why, wasn't he a bastard'Look how he played Wolfe and Dol Bonner, two professionals of the highest standards. A skunk. I'll be glad to ante all I know about him, but I want a drink first.'

'I beg your pardon,' Wolfe apologized, and he meant it. 'Away from home I'm not myself, and I even neglect the amenities. Archie'If you please?'

FOR DOL BONNER it was brandy and coffee, for Sally rum and coke, another flaw, for Ide tea with lemon, for Amsel double bourbon with water, for Kerr double scotch on the rocks, for Wolfe two bottles of beer, and for me double milk. I like a drink occasionally, but not when I'm out on bail. Then I need all my faculties.

Kerr had said he wanted a drink first, so while we waited for the supplies to come up Wolfe went back to some details with Dol Bonner, such as the date Donahue had first called on her, but that was just to pass the time. Or maybe not. I was glad Fritz wasn't there. He suspects every woman who ever crosses the threshold of wanting to take over his kitchen, not to mention the rest of the house. He would have been squirming. Dol Bonner's caramel-colored eyes and long dark lashes were by no means her only physical attractions, and she was the right age, she had shown some sense and had done a pretty good job of reporting, and she was a companion in misery, having also been made a monkey of by Donahue. Of course if Wolfe hung a murder on her she would no longer be a danger, but I noticed that he had stopped frowning at her. Oh well, I thought, if she hooks him and Sally hooks me we can all solve cases together and dominate the field.

After the drinks had come and been distributed, and Wolfe had taken a couple of healthy gulps of beer, he focused on Jay Kerr. 'Yes, sir'You were going to tell us.'

Kerr was sipping his scotch. 'He played me too. Good. Only not the same pattern exactly. What was eating him was his wife. He wanted his home tapped, an apartment in Brooklyn. He wanted full reports on all voices, male and female, because he thought there might be a male around when he was away that shouldn't be there. I can tell you and Miss Bonner too, you got gypped. He gave me two thousand at the go and another pair later.'

'Thank you. I'll demand more next time. When was this?'

'It was early April when he contacted me. After two weeks, sixteen days if I remember right, he called the tap off and settled up.'

'What was his name'The name he gave.'

Kerr took a sip, swallowed, and made a face. 'This whiskey don't taste right, but that's not the whiskey's fault. I had cabbage for dinner. About his name, well, the name he gave was Leggett. Arthur M. Leggett.'

'That sounds familiar. L-e-g-g-e-double-t?'

'That's right.'

'I've seen it. Archie?'

'Yeah,' I agreed. 'He's the head of something.'

'He's the president,' Dol Bonner said, 'of the Metropolitan Citizens League.'

That woman was getting on my nerves. Now she was giving him information he had asked me for and hadn't got, and they weren't even engaged yet. Wolfe thanked her courteously. Courtesy is okay, but I hoped he wasn't making a fetish of it. He asked Kerr, 'How did he establish his identity?'

'He didn't.'

Kerr took another sip and made another face, and Wolfe turned to me and said sharply, 'Taste that whiskey.'

I had had the same idea myself. It was beginning to look as if we might have a murderer with us, and not only that, it hadn't been long since a guy named Assa, right in our office, had swallowed a drink that had been served to him by me and had dropped dead. Cyanide. Wolfe didn't want a rerun of that one, and neither did I. I went and asked Kerr to let me taste it, and he said what the hell but handed it over. I took in a dribble, distributed it with my tongue, let it trickle down, repeated the performance with a thimbleful, and handed it back to him.

'Okay,' I told Wolfe. 'It must be the cabbage.'

He grunted. 'You say he didn't establish his identity, Mr. Kerr'Why not?'

'Why should he?' Kerr demanded. 'Do you know how many husbands in the metropolitan area get suspicious about their wives every week on an average'Hundreds. Thousands! Some of them come to me for help. A man comes and wants to pay me for expert service. Why should I doubt if he knows who he is'If I tried to check on all of them I'd spend all my time on it.'

'You must have heard that name, Arthur M. Leggett. A man of your widespread ' uh, activities.'

Kerr jerked his chin up. 'Look, are you a cop'Or one of us?'

'I'm one of us.'

'Then be yourself. Let the cops tell me what names I must have heard. Don't worry, they have and they will. And I reported the tap in my statement to the secretary of state, because it was ethical and because I knew I had to. I knew they had two of the technicians singing, and I would have been sunk if they connected me with a job I hadn't reported.'

Wolfe nodded. 'We have no desire to harass you, Mr. Kerr. We only ask that you contribute your share to our pool of information. You had no suspicion that your client was not Arthur M. Leggett?'

'No.'

'And never have had?'

'No.'

'Then when you were taken to view the corpse today you must have identified it as Arthur M. Leggett.'

'I did.'

'I see.' Wolfe considered a moment. 'Why not'And naturally, when you learned that wasn't his name you were shocked and indignant, and now you have severe epithets for him. You're not alone in that. So have I; so has Miss Bonner; and so, doubtless, have Mr. Ide and Mr. Amsel.' He emptied his beer glass, refilled it, kept his eye on it long enough to see that the rising foam didn't break at the edge, then looked up. 'Have you, Mr. Ide?'

Ide put his cup and saucer down on my suitcase, there on the rack, which I had invited him to use for a table. He cleared his throat. 'I want to say, Mr. Wolfe, that I feel better than I did when I entered this room.'

'Good. Since it's my room, and Mr. Goodwin's, I am gratified.'

'Yes, sir. The fact is, my experience with that man was very similar to yours and Miss Bonner's, and I have deeply regretted it. He imposed on me as he did on you, and in the same pattern. If I gave you all the details it would be mostly a repetition of what you and Miss Bonner have said.'

'Nevertheless, we'd like to hear them.'

'I see no point in it.'

Ide's voice had sharpened a little, but Wolfe stayed affable. 'One or more of the details might be suggestive. Or at least corroborative. When did it happen?'

'In April.'

'How much did he pay you?'

'Two thousand dollars.'

'Did he give his name as Donahue?'

'No. Another name. As I said, the pattern was very similar to the one he used with you.'

'How did he establish his identity?'

'I prefer not to say. I mishandled it badly. I omitted that detail from my statement to the secretary of state. I suppose Mr. Hyatt will insist on it at the hearing, but I don't think the whole thing will be published, and I'm not going to publish it by telling it here. I was going to say, the reason I feel better is that now I have the consolation of knowing that I'm not the only one he made a fool of.'

'You have indeed. We have all qualified for dunce's caps.' Wolfe drank some beer and passed his tongue over his lips. 'How did it end'Did you get onto him, or did he call it off as he did with Miss Bonner and Mr. Kerr?'

'I prefer not to say.' From the expression on Ide's bony face, with its long hawk's nose, he would prefer to switch to some harmless topic like the weather. 'I'll say this much, the tap was discontinued after ten days, and that ended my association with him. Like you and Miss Bonner and Mr. Kerr, I never saw him again until today, and then he was a corpse.'

'And you identified the corpse?'

'Yes. There was no other& it would have been folly not to.'

'You identified it with the name he gave you when he hired you?'

'Of course.'

'What was that name?'

Ide shook his head. 'It was the name of a respectable and law-abiding citizen. I saw him and told him about it, and he was good enough to accept my apology. He is a very fine man. I hope his name won't have to be dragged into a murder case, and it won't be by me.'

'But you have given it to the police, of course.'

'No, not yet. I admit I may be compelled to. I can't let my career end by having my license taken away.'

Wolfe's eyes went around. 'I suggest that we leave the question open whether Mr. Ide has contributed his share, at least until we have heard from Mr. Amsel.' They settled on Steve Amsel. 'Well, sir?'

'If I don't play I'm it,' Amsel said. 'Huh?'

'It's not quite as simple as that,' Wolfe told him. 'But you've heard us, and it's your turn.'

'Last one in is a monkey,' Kerr declared.

'Nuts. Have I been last?' There was half a finger left of his double bourbon and water, and he finished it, left his chair to put the glass on the dresser, got out a cigarette and lit it, and turned to prop his backside against the dresser. 'I'll tell you how it is,' he said. 'My situation's a little different. One thing, I was a boob to identify that stiff, but there he was, and in a case like that you can't stall, you've got to say yes or no, and I said yes. Now here we are. Miss Bonner said we might as well tell each other what we've told the cops, and I'll buy that, but my problem's not like yours. You see, I identified him as a guy named Bill Donahue I knew once.'

He had already had six pairs of eyes, and with that he had them good. He grinned around at them.

'I said my situation's different. So I was stuck with that. So what I've told the cops. I've told them I'd seen him around a few times last spring, but it was kinda vague, I couldn't remember much about it except that once he came and wanted me to arrange a tap for him and I turned him down. They wanted to know whose wire he wanted tapped, and I tried to remember but couldn't. I said just for a fact I wasn't sure he had told me the name. So that's what I've told the cops, and that's what I'm telling you.' He went to his chair and sat.

He still had the eyes. Wolfe's were half closed. He spoke. 'I suggest, Mr. Amsel, that since talking with the police you've had time to jog your memory. Possibly you can be a little more definite about the occasions when you saw Donahue around last spring.'

'Nothing doing. Just vague.'

'Or the name of the man whose wire he wanted tapped?'

'Nope. Sorry.'

'One thing occurs to me. Mr. Kerr has said he knew ' to use his words ' that 'they had two of the technicians singing.' Supposing that your memory has failed you on another detail, supposing that you did arrange the tap and have forgotten about it ' just a supposition ' wouldn't your situation be quite untenable if the technicians do remember it?'

'Just supposing.'

'Certainly.'

'Well, I've heard there were a lot of technicians around. I guess they're pretty scarce now. Supposing the ones doing the singing aren't the ones I used'Supposing the ones I used aren't going to sing?'

Wolfe nodded. 'Yes, if I can suppose you can too. I understand your disinclination to tell us anything you haven't told the police, but I think we may reasonably ask this: did you mention this incident in your statement to the secretary of state?'

'What incident?'

'Your refusal to make the tap requested by Donahue.'

'Why should I'We were told to report all taps. We weren't told to report refusals to make taps.'

'You're quite right. Did you mention the name of Donahue at all in the statement?'

'No. What for?'

'Just so. You're right again, of course. I'm sure you'll agree, Mr. Amsel, that your contribution is even skimpier than Mr. Ide's. I don't know -'

The phone rang, and I went and got it. It was Lon Cohen. As I spoke with him, or rather, listened to him, Wolfe uncapped the second bottle of beer and poured. The guests were politely silent, as before. Again, after Lon had reported, he wanted the low-down, and I promised to supply him with an eight-column headline as soon as we got one. I asked him to hold on a minute and told Wolfe, 'Alan Samuels is a retired broker, Wall Street. He could live on Park Avenue but prefers the Bronx. His wife died four years ago. He has two sons and two daughters, all married. He gives money to worthy causes, nothing spectacular. Harvard Club. Director of the Ethical Culture Society. A year ago the governor appointed him a member of the Charity Funds Investigating Committee. I've got more, but it's not very exciting. Of course you note the item that might possibly be interesting.'

'Yes. He's still on'Get the names of the members of that committee.'

'Right.' I went back to Lon. He said he'd have to send to the files, and did so, and then demanded some dope. I couldn't very well tell him that the other suspects were there in our room and Wolfe was doing his damnedest to find a crack to start a wedge in, so I gave him a human interest story about Nero Wolfe's behavior in the jug and other little sidelights. The list came, and he read it off while I wrote it down, and I told him not to expect the headline in time for the morning edition. I tore the sheet off of the memo pad and went and handed it to Wolfe, telling him, 'That's it. Just five members, including the chairman.'

He looked it over. He grunted. He looked at the guests. 'Well. You may remember, from my statement, that Otis Ross is the chairman of the Charity Funds Investigating Committee. You have just heard that Alan Samuels is a member of that committee. So is Arthur M. Leggett. The names of the other two members are James P. Finch and Philip Maresco. It's a pity we have only three out of five. If it were unanimous it would be more than suggestive, it would be conclusive. Can you help us, Mr. Ide?'

Ide was looking uncomfortable. He pinched the skin over his Adam's apple, but that didn't seem to help, and he tried chewing on his lower lip, but since his teeth were a brownish yellow it didn't make him any handsomer. He spoke. 'I said I wouldn't drag his name into this, but now it is in. I can't help it. You have named him.'

'That makes four. Is there any point in leaving it to conjecture whether it was Finch or Maresco?'

'No. Finch.'

Wolfe nodded. 'That leaves only Maresco, and I hope he wasn't slighted. Mr. Amsel. Doesn't that name, Philip Maresco, strike a chord in your memory'At least a faint echo?'

Amsel grinned at him. 'Nothing doing, Wolfe. My memory's gone very bad. But if you want my advice, just forget my memory. It's a cinch. If I was you I'd just take it for granted.'