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 rchain would permit, and spoke through the crack. "I lon't want to catch cold." 90 Rex Stout
"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
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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 d6or 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 Saf ford'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."
92 Rex Stout
"How much did I miss?" I demanded.
"Stop them!" Wolfe ordered me.
Talbott's right glanced off of Safford's cheek, and Safford got in another one over the kidney. They were operating properly and in an orderly manner, but Wolfe was the boss and he hated commotion in the office, so I stepped across, grabbed Talbott's coat collar and yanked him back so hard he fell over a chair, and faced Safford to block him. For a second I thought Safford was going to paste me with one he had waiting, but he let it drop.
"What started it so quick?" I wanted to know.
Audrey was there, clutching my sleeve, protesting fiercely, "You shouldn't have stopped him! Wayne could have knocked him down! He did before!" She sounded more bloodthirsty than milkthirsty.
"He made a remark about Miss Rooney," Broadyke permitted himself to say.
"Get him out of here!" Wolfe spluttered.
"Which one?" I asked, watching Safford with one eye and Talbott with the other.
"Mr. Talbott!"
"You did very well, Vie," Dorothy was saying. "You were fantastically handsome with the gleam of battle in your eye." She put her palms against Talbott's cheeks, pulled his head forward, and stretched her neck to kiss him on the lips--a quick one. "There!"
"Vie is going now," I told her. "Come on, Talbott, I'll let you out."
Before he came he enfolded Dorothy in his arms. I glanced at Safford, expecting him to counter by enfolding Audrey, but he was standing by with his fists still doubled up. So I herded Talbott out of the room ahead of me. In the hall, while he was getting his hat and coat, I took a look through the one-way panel, saw
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that the stoop was clear, and opened the door. As he crossed the sill I told him, "You go for the head too much. You'll break a hand that way someday."
Back in the office someone had righted the overturned chair, and they were all seated again. Apparently, though her knight had been given the boot, Dorothy was going to stick. As I crossed to resume my place at my desk Wolfe was saying, "We got interrupted, Miss Rooney. As I said, you seem to be the most vulnerable, since you were on the scene. Will you please move a little closer--that chair there? Archie, your notebook."
VI
At 10:55 the next morning I was sitting in the office-- not still, but again--waiting for Wolfe to come down from the plant rooms on the roof, where he keeps ten thousand orchids and an assortment of other specimens of vegetation. I was playing three-handed pinochle with Saul Panzer and Orrie Gather, who had been phoned to come in for a job. Saul always wore an old brown cap, was undersized and homely, with a big nose, and was the best field man in the world for everything that could be done without a dinner jacket. Orrie, who would be able to get along without a hairbrush in a few years, was by no means up to Saul but was a good all-round man.
At 10:55 I was three bucks down.
In a drawer of my desk were two notebookfuls. Wolfe hadn't kept the clients all night, but there hadn't been much left of it when he let them go, and we now knew a good deal more about all of them than any of the papers had printed. In some respects they were all
94 Rex Stout
alike, as they told it. For instance, none of them had killed Sigmund Keyes; none was heartbroken over his death, not even his daughter; none had ever owned a revolver or knew much about shooting one; none could produce any evidence that would help to convict Talbott or even get him arrested; none had an airtight alibi; and each had a motive of his own which might not have been the best in the world, like Talbott's, but was nothing to sneeze at.
So they said.
Ferdinand Pohl had been indignant. He couldn't see why time should be wasted on them and theirs, since the proper and sole objective was to bust Talbott's alibi and nab him. But he came through with his facts. Ten years previously he had furnished the hundred thousand dollars that had been needed to get Sigmund Keyes started with the style of setup suitable for a big-time industrial designer. In the past couple of years the Keyes profits had been up above the clouds, and Pohl had wanted an even split and hadn't got it. Keyes had ladled out a measly annual five per cent on Pohl's ante, five thousand a year, whereas half the profits would have been ten times that, and Pohl couldn't confront him with the classic alternative, buy my share or sell me yours, because Pohl had been making bad guesses on other matters and was deep in debt. The law wouldn't have helped, since the partnership agreement had guaranteed Pohl only the five per cent and Keyes had given the profits an alias by taking the gravy as salary, claiming it was his designing ability that made the money. It had been, Pohl said, a case of misjudging a man's character. Now that Keyes was dead it would be a different story, with the contracts on hand and royalties to come for periods up to twenty years. If Pohl and Dorothy, who inherited, couldn't