Too Many Clients (7 page)

Aiken was frowning. “But that may be impossible.”

“Also it may not be. It is highly probable that whoever killed him knew of that room and its character and function; but suppose, for instance, that it was an outraged husband or father or brother or paramour. That might conceivably be established without disclosing some of the particulars, including the place where the misconduct had occurred. It would be difficult, but it might be done. It would be pointless even to conjecture until more is known.”

“And if it proved to be impossible?”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down. “You will have wasted your money. My self-esteem is not up to tackling the impossible. I remark that you are coerced not by me but by the situation. You are threatened not by me but by my possession of a fact. So you want to hire me, and I am willing to be hired, but I will perform only those services that are proper to my calling and my probity. I can’t exclude any possibility, even that you killed Yeager yourself.”

Aiken smiled, again not with amusement. “I can.” “Naturally.” Wolfe turned. “Archie, the typewriter. Two carbons.”

I whirled my chair, pulled the machine around, arranged the paper with carbons, and inserted them. “Yes, sir.”

“Single-spaced, wide margins. The date. On behalf of my corporation, Continental Plastic Products, I hereby engage Nero Wolfe to investigate the circumstances of the death of Thomas G. Yeager. It is understood that Wolfe will make every effort to protect the reputation and interests of the corporation, comma, and will disclose no facts or information that will harm the corporation’s repute or prestige, comma, unless he is compelled to do so by his legal obligation as a citizen and a licensed private detective, semicolon; and if he fails to observe this provision he is to receive no pay for his services or reimbursement for his expenses. The purpose of this engagement of Nero Wolfe is to prevent, comma, as far as possible, comma, any damage to the corporation as a result of the special circumstances of Yeager’s death. Below a space for signature put ‘President, Continental Plastic Products.’”

I had typed it as he spoke. After taking it out and running over it, I handed the original to Aiken and the carbons to Wolfe. Aiken read it twice and looked up. “Your fee isn’t specified.”

“No, sir. It can’t be. It will depend on what and how much I do.”

“Who decides if you have faithfully observed the provision?”

“Reason and good faith, applied jointly. If that failed, it would be decided by a court, but that contingency is remote.”

Aiken glanced over it again, put it on the stand at his elbow, took a pen from his pocket, and signed it. I took it and gave it to Wolfe and handed one of the carbons to Aiken. He folded it and stuck it in his pocket, and spoke.

“How and when did you learn about that room?”

Wolfe shook his head. “I don’t start a difficult job by babbling, even to you.” He glanced at the wall clock, pushed his chair back, and arose. “It’s past midnight. I’ll report to you, of course, but when and what is solely in my discretion.”

“That’s absurd. You’re working for me.”

“Yes, sir. But the only test of my performance is its result. It may be that the less you know of its particulars the better.” He picked up the signed original. “Do you want this back?”

“No. I want to know how you’re going to proceed.”

“I don’t know myself.”

“You know this. Did one of my directors tell you about that room?” “No.”

“Did Mrs. Yeager tell you?” “No.”

“Then who did?”

Wolfe glared at him. “Confound it, sir, shall I drop this thing in the wastebasket'Do you want this job done or not?”

“It’s not what I want, it’s what I’m stuck with. You have the handle.” He got up. “Come, Miss McGee.”

At half past ten Wednesday morning I stood by the big globe in the office, twirling it, trying to find a good spot to spend my vacation in the fall. Having spent a couple of hours trying to decide what I would tell me to do if I were Wolfe, and coming to the conclusion that the most sensible would be to go out and sweep the sidewalk, it had seemed advisable to put my mind on something else for a while. When Wolfe has instructions for me in the morning he sends word by Fritz that I am to come up to his room. That morning there had been no word, and at a quarter to nine I had buzzed him on the house phone. Getting nothing but a prolonged growl, I had started to make a list of the things he might have put on my program for the day and came up with that one item: sweeping the sidewalk.

I had done fine, no question about that. I had set out at nine o’clock Tuesday morning to dig up a client, and by midnight, in only fifteen hours, we had a beaut, not only the president of a big corporation but the corporation itself. To collect a five-figure fee all we had to do was earn it. So first we . . .

We what'Our big advantage was that we knew Yeager had been killed in that room, and probably no one else knew it but the Perez family and the murderer. We also knew that Yeager had expected female company Sunday evening, since he had ordered caviar and pheasant for midnight delivery. But granting that she had come, it didn’t have to be that she had killed him; she might have found him dead on arrival. Taking it from that angle, the way to start would be to get a complete list of the women who had keys. That might be done in a year or so, and the next step would be to find out which one had� Nuts.

Of the three angles to a murder problem�means, opportunity, and motive�you pick the one that seems most likely to open a crack. I crossed off opportunity. Everyone who had keys had opportunity. Then means�namely, a gun capable of sending a bullet through a skull. It had not been found, so the way to go about it was to get a complete list of the people who had keys and also had access to a gun, and then� I crossed off means. Then motive. Having no personal experience of the methods and procedures in a bower of carnality, I wasn’t qualified as an expert, but surely they might have aroused strong feelings in any or all of Yeager’s guests. Say there had been ten different guests in the last couple of years. Allow them three apiece of husbands, brothers, fathers, and what Wolfe called paramours, and that made forty likely prospects with first-rate motives. I crossed off motive.

With means, opportunity, and motive hopeless, all you can do is go fishing. Catch somebody in a lie. Find two pieces that are supposed to fit but don’t. Find someone who saw or heard something�for example, someone in that house or that block who had noticed people entering or leaving the basement entrance of Number 156 who didn’t appear to belong to the neighborhood. That program might get results if you had four or five good operatives and didn’t care how long it took. But since Homicide might uncover a lead to that house any minute, and if they did they would find Fred Durkin there, and the fur would fly, and we would no longer have a client because what he wanted to buy couldn’t be had, it wouldn’t do. We needed either a genius or a lucky break.

Of course we had a genius, Nero Wolfe, but apparently he hadn’t turned his switch on. When he came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock he put the day’s orchid selection, Calanthe veitchi sandhurstiana, in the vase on his desk, circled to his chair and sat, glanced at his desk calendar, and looked through the morning crop of mail, which was mostly circulars and requests for contributions. He looked at me.

“What’s this note on my calendar'Fourteen million, six hundred eighty-two thousand, two hundred thirty-five dollars and fifty-seven cents.”

“Yes, sir. I got it from the bank. That’s the cash reserve of Continental Plastic Products as shown on their statement dated January thirty-first. I thought you might like to know, and I had nothing else to do. I like to be busy at something.” “Pfui.”

“Yes, sir. I agree.”

“Have you considered the situation?”

“I have. It’s a hell of a note. Yesterday, temporarily, we had too many clients. Two. Today we have one, and it’s still too many because we can’t possibly fill his order. If you’re going to ask me for suggestions, don’t bother. The only contribution I can make is worthless.”

“What is it?”

“Julia McGee is a liar. You’ve heard that room described, but you haven’t seen it. The man that fixed that room up, namely Yeager, did not have his secretary come there to take dictation. Any odds you want. Not even if she was a lump�he might have wanted to try an experiment�and she isn’t. She has some very good points and possibilities, speaking as a satyr. So she lies, but that gets us nowhere. However she spent her evenings with him there, she could have done what she did do, squeal on him, either because the pictures bored her or because she wanted to get solid with the president. As far as the murder is concerned, it’s a point in her favor. Having squealed on him, why should she shoot him'Do you want to ask her?”

“No.” He took in air, all his barrel would hold, and let it out again. “I was a willing to take the job. All we can do is flounder around in the slush. As evidence of our extremity, it may be that we should find the man who got us into this pickle, despite our conclusion that he didn’t know Yeager was dead. How long would it take you?”

“Something between a day and a year.”

He made a face. “Or we could try a coup. We confront Mr. and Mrs. Perez with our conviction that they killed Yeager because he had defiled their daughter. We tell them that if the police learn of that room and Yeager’s use of it they are probably doomed, as they are. Certainly they can’t hope to stay there indefinitely. We offer them a large sum, twenty thousand, fifty thousand�no matter, it will come from that cash reserve�to go to some far corner of the earth, provided they will sign a confession that they killed Yeager because their daughter told them that he had made improper advances to her. They need not admit that the advances were successful; it can even be implied that they were never made, that their daughter had invented them. The confession will be left with us, and we’ll get it to the police anonymously after they are safely out of reach. It will not mention that room. Of course the police will find it, but there will be nothing in it to connect it with Yeager. They will assume that it was his, but they can’t establish it, and they do not publish assumptions that besmirch a prominent citizen.”

“Wonderful,” I said with enthusiasm. “It only has two minor flaws. First, since Yeager owned the house, it will be an item in his estate. Second, they didn’t kill him. But what the hell, hanging a murder on�”

“That’s your opinion.”

“With damn good legs under it. I’ll concede that you’re being gallant, making Maria an inventor instead of a floozy, but it would be even better�”

I was interrupted by the doorbell. Going to the hall, I saw on the stoop what I have in mind, more or less, when I apply the word “lump” to a female. Not a hag, not a fright, just a woman, this one middle-aged or more, who would have to be completely retooled and reassembled before she could be used for show purposes. With her you would have some spare parts left when you finished, for instance the extra chin. Her well-made dark suit and her platinum mink stole were no real help. I went and opened the door and told her good morning.

“Nero Wolfe?” she asked.

I nodded. “His house.”

“I want to see him. I’m Ellen Yeager. Mrs. Thomas G. Yeager.”

When a caller comes without an appointment I am supposed to leave him on the stoop until I consult Wolfe, and I do, but this was a crisis. Not only were we up a stump; there was even a chance that Wolfe would be pigheaded enough to try that cockeyed stunt with the Perez family if he wasn’t sidetracked. So I invited her to enter, led her to the office and on in, and said, “Mr. Wolfe, Mrs. Yeager. Mrs. Thomas G. Yeager.”

He glared at me. “I wasn’t informed that I had an appointment.”

“No, sir. You didn’t.”

“I didn’t stop to phone,” Ellen Yeager said. “It’s urgent.” She went to the red leather chair and took it as if she owned it, put her bag on the stand, and aimed sharp little eyes at Wolfe. “I want to hire you to do something.” She reached for the bag, opened it, and took out a checkfold. “How much do you want as a retainer?”

Client number four, not counting the phony Yeager. When I go scouting for clients I get results. She was going on. “My husband was murdered, you know about that. I want you to find out who killed him and exactly what happened, and then I will decide what to do about it. He was a sick man, he was oversexed, I know all about that. I’ve kept still about it for years, but I’m not going to let it keep me from�”

Wolfe cut in. “Shut up,” he commanded.

She stopped, astonished.

“I’m blunt,” he said, “because I must be. I can’t let you rattle off confidential information under the illusion that you are hiring me. You aren’t and you can’t. I’m already engaged to investigate the murder of your husband.”

“You are not,” she declared.

“Indeed?”

“No. You’re engaged to keep it from being investigated, to keep it from coming out, to protect that corporation, Continental Plastic Products. One of the directors has told me all about it. There was a meeting of the board this morning, and Benedict Aiken told them what he had done and they approved it. They don’t care if the murderer of my husband is caught or not. They don’t want him caught. All they care about is the corporation. I’ll own a block of stock now, but that doesn’t matter. They can’t keep me from telling the District Attorney about that room if I decide to.”

“What room?”

“You know perfectly well what room. In that house on Eighty-second Street where Julia McGee went last night and you got her and brought her here. Benedict Aiken told the board about it, and one of them told me.” Her head jerked to me. “Are you Archie Goodwin'I want to see that room. When will you take me there?” She jerked back to Wolfe. That’s a bad habit, asking a question and not waiting for an answer, but it’s not always bad for the askee. She opened the checkfold. “How much do you want as a retainer?”

She was impetuous, no question about that, but she was no fool, and she didn’t waste words. She didn’t bother to spell it out: that if Wolfe tried to do what she thought he had been hired to do, clamp a lid on it, she could queer it with a phone call to the DA’s office, and therefore he had to switch to her.

He leaned back and clasped his fingers at the center of his frontal mound. “Madam, you have been misinformed. Archie, that paper Mr. Aiken signed. Let her read it.”

I went and got it from the cabinet and took it to her. To read it she got glasses from her bag. She took the glasses off. “It’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“No. Read it again. Archie, the typewriter. Two carbons.”

I sat, pulled the machine around, arranged the paper with carbons, and inserted them. “Yes, sir.”

“Single-spaced, wide margins. The date. I, comma, Mrs. Thomas G. Yeager, comma, hereby engage Nero Wolfe to investigate the circumstances of the death of my late husband. The purpose of this engagement is to make sure that my husband’s murderer is identified and exposed, comma, and Wolfe is to make every effort to achieve that purpose. If in doing so a conflict arises between his obligation under this engagement and his obligation under his existing engagement with Continental Plastic Products it is understood that he will terminate his engagement with Continental Plastic Products and will adhere to this engagement with me. It is also understood that I will do nothing to interfere with Wolfe’s obligation to Continental Plastic Products without giving him notice in advance.”

He turned to her. “No retainer is necessary; I have none from Mr. Aiken. Whether I bill you or not, and for what amount, will depend. I wouldn’t expect a substantial payment from two separate clients for the same services. And I would expect none at all from you if, for instance, I found that you killed your husband yourself.”

“You wouldn’t get any. There was a time when I felt like killing him, but that was long ago when the children were young.” She took the original from me and put on her glasses to read it. “This isn’t right. When you find out who killed him you tell me and / decide what to do.”

“Nonsense. The People of the State of New York will decide what to do. In the process of identifying him to my satisfaction and yours I will inevitably get evidence, and I can’t suppress it. Archie, give her a pen.”

“I’m not going to sign it. I promised my husband I would never sign anything without showing it to him.”

A corner of Wolfe’s mouth went up�his version of a smile. He was always pleased to get support for his theory that no woman was capable of what he called rational sequence. “Then,” he asked, “shall I rewrite it, for me to sign'Committing me to my part of the arrangement?”

“No.” She handed me the papers, the one Aiken had signed and the one she hadn’t. “It doesn’t do any good to sign things. What counts is what you do, not what you sign. How much do you want as a retainer?”

He had just said he didn’t want one. Now he said, “One dollar.”

Apparently that struck her as about right. She opened her bag, put the checkfold in it, took out a purse, got a dollar bill from it, and left the chair to hand it to Wolfe. She turned to me. “Now I want to see that room.”

“Not now,” Wolfe said with emphasis. “Now I have some questions. Be seated.”

“What kind of questions?”

“I need information, all I can get, and it will take some time. Please sit down.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Many kinds. You said that you have known for years that your husband was oversexed, that he was sick, so it may be presumed that you took the trouble to inform yourself as well as you could of his efforts to allay his ailment. I want names, dates, addresses, events, particulars.”

“You won’t get them from me.” She adjusted her stole. “I quit bothering about it long ago. Once when the children were young I asked my doctor about it, if something could be done, perhaps some kind of an operation, but the way he explained it I knew my husband wouldn’t do that, and there was nothing else I could do, so what was the use'I have a friend whose husband is an alcoholic, and she has a worse�”