MARQUIS ARRESTED!
BRITAIN ’S ENVOY FOUND STANDING OVER, MURDERED MAN’
Gazette Reporter Witnesses Unprecedented Drama!
At 7:05 this evening the Marquis of Clivers, special envoy of Great Britain to this country, was found by a city detective, within the cluttered enclosure of a building under construction on 5501 Street, Manhattan, standing beside the body of a dead man who had just been shot through the back of the head. The dead man was Michael Walsh, night watchman. The detective was Purley Stebbins of the Homicide Squad.
At 7:00 a Gazette reporter, walking down Madison Avenue, seeing a crowd collected at 5501 Street, stopped to investigate. Finding that it was only two cars with shattered windshields and other minor damages from a collision, he strolled on, turning into 55th. Not far from the corner he saw a man stepping off the curb to cross the street. He recognized the man as Purley Stebbins, a city detective, and was struck by something purposeful in his gait. He stopped, and saw Stebbins push open the door of a board fence where a building is being constructed.
The reporter crossed the street likewise, through curiosity, and entered the enclosure after the detective. He ventured further, and saw Stebbins grasping by the arm a man elegantly attired in evening dress, while the man tried to pull away. Then the reporter saw something else: the body of a man on the ground.
Advancing close enough to see the face of the man in evening dress and recognizing him at once, the reporter was quick-witted enough to call sharply, “Lord Clivers!”
The man replied, “Who the devil are you?”
The detective, who was feeling the man for a weapon, instructed the reporter to telephone headquarters and get Inspector Cramer. The body was lying in such a position that the reporter had to step over it to get at the telephone on the wall of a wooden shed. Meanwhile Stebbins bad blown his whistle and a few moments later a patrolman in uniform entered. Stebbins spoke to him, and the patrolman leaned over the body and exclaimed, “It’s the night watchman, old Walsh!”
Having phoned police headquarters, the reporter approached Lord Clivers and asked him for a statement. He was brushed aside by Stebbins, who commanded him to leave. The reporter persisting, Stebbins instructed the patrolman to put him out, and the reporter was forcibly ejected.
The superintendent of the construction, reached on the telephone, said that the name of the night watchman was Michael Walsh. He knew of no possible connection between Walsh and a member of the British nobility.
No information could be obtained from the suite of Lord Clivers at the Hotel Portland.
At 7:30 Inspector Cramer and various members of the police force had arrived on the scene at 55th Street, but no one was permitted to enter the enclosure and no information was forthcoming.
There was a picture of Clivers, taken the preceding week on the steps of the White House.
I was raving. If only I had gone up there! I glared at Wolfe. “Be prudent! Don’t expose ourselves! I could have been there in ten minutes after that phone call! Great God and Jehosaphat!”
I felt a yank at my sleeve and saw it was Clara Fox. “What is it? What—”
I took it out on her. I told her savagely, “Oh, nothing much. Just another of your playmates bumped off. You haven’t got much of a team left. Mike Walsh shot and killed dead. Clivers standing there—”
“Mike Walsb … no!” She jumped up and her face went white. “No! Let me see …”
Wolfe had leaned back and closed his eyes, with his lips working. I reached for the paper and pushed it at her. “Sure, go ahead, hope you enjoy it.” As she leaned over the paper I heard her breath go in. I said, “Of all the goddamn wonderful management—”
Wolfe cut in sharply, “Archie!”
I muttered, “Go to hell everybody,” and sat down and bobbed my head from side to side in severe pain. The cockeyed thing had busted wide open and instead or going where I belonged I had sat and eaten guinea chicken Brazilisomething and listened to Wolfe hum folk tunes. Not only that, it had busted at the wrong place and Nero Wolfe had made a fool of himself. If I had gone I would have been there before Cramer or anyone else….
Wolfe opened his eyes and said quietly, “Take Miss Fox upstairs and come to the office.” He lifted himself from his chair.
So did Clara Fox. She arose with her face whiter than before and looked rrom one to the other of us. She announced, “I’m not going upstairs. I …I can’t just stay here. I’m going … I’m going …”
Yes.” Wolfe lifted his brows at her. “Where?”
She burst out, “How do I know where? Don’t you see I … I’ve got to do something?” She suddenly flopped back into her chair and clasped her hands and began to tremble. “Poor old Mike Walsh … why in the name of God … why did I ever …”
Wolfe stepped to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Look here,” he snapped. “Do you wonder I’d rather have ten thousand orchids than a woman in my house?”
She looked up at him, and shivered. “And it was you that let Mike Walsh go, when you knew—”
“I knew very little. Now I know even less. Archie, bring Saul.”
“Johnny is here—”
“No. Saul.”
I went to the kitchen and got him. Wolfe asked him, “How long will it take to get Hilda Lindquist here?”
Saul considered half an instant. “Fifty minutes if I phone. An hour and a half if I go after her.”
“Good. Telephone. You had better tell her on the phone that Mike Walsh has been killed, since if she sees a Gazette on the way she might succumb also. Is there someone to bring her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Use the office phone. Tell her not to delay unnecessarily, but there is no great urgency. Wipe the spot of grease off the left side of your nose.”
“Yes, sir,” Saul went, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket.
Clara Fox said, in a much better tone, “I haven’t succumbed.” She brushed back her hair, but her hand was none too steady. “I didn’t mean, when I said you let Mike Walsh go—”
“Of course not.” Wolfe didn’t relent any. “You weren’t in a condition to mean anything. You still are not. Archie and I have one or two things to do. You can’t leave this house, certainly not now. Will you go upstairs and wait till Miss Lindquist gets here? And don’t be conceited enough to imagine yourself responsible for the death of Michael Walsh. Your meddlings have not entitled you to usurp the fatal dignity of Atropos; don’t Batter yourself. Will you go upstairs and command patience?”
“Yes.” She stood up. “But I want … if someone should telephone for me I want to talk.”
Wolfe nodded. “You shall. Though I fancy Mr. Horrocks will be too occupied with this involvement of his chief for social impulses.”
But it was Wolfe’s off day; he was wrong again. A phone call from Horrocks, for Clara Fox, came within fifteen minutes. In the interim Wolfe and I had gone to the office and learned from Saul that he had talked to Hilda Lindquist and she was coming, and Wolfe had settled himself in his chair, disposed of a bottle of beer, and repudiated my advances. Horrocks didn’t mention the predicament of his noble uncle; he just asked for Clara Fox, and I sent Saul up to tell her to take it in Wolfe’s room, since there was no phone in hers. I should have listened in as a matter of business, but I didn’t, and Wolfe didn’t tell me to.
Finally Wolfe sighed and sat up. “Try for Mr. Cramer.”
I did so. No result. They talked as if, for all they knew, Cramer might be up in Canada shooting mooseWolfe sighed again. “Archie. Have we ever encountered a greater jumble of nonsense?”
“No, sir. If only I had gone—”
“Don’t say that again, or I’ll send you upstairs with Miss Fox. Could that have ordered the chaos? The thing is completely ridiculous. It forces us to measures no less ridiculous. We shall have to investigate the movements of Mr. Muir since six o’clock this evening, to trust Mr. Cramer with at least a portion of our facts, to consider afresh the motivations and activities of Lord Clivers, to discover how a man can occupy two different spots of space at the same moment, and to make another long-distance call to Nebraska. I believe there is no small firearm that will shoot fifteen hundred miles, but we seem to be confronted with a determination and ingenuity capable of almost anything, and before we are through with this we may need Mr. Lindquist badly. Get that farm—the name is Donvaag?”