Rex Stout
The Twisted Scarf
I
What I felt like doing was go out for a walk, but I wasn’t quite desperate enough for that, so I merely beat it down to the office, shutting the door from the hall behind me, went and sat at my desk with my feet up, leaned back and closed my eyes, and took some deep breaths.
I had made two mistakes. When Bill McNab, garden editor of the Gazette, had suggested to Nero Wolfe that the members of the Manhattan Flower Club be invited to drop in some afternoon to look at the orchids, I should have fought it. And when the date had been set and the invitations sent, and Wolfe had arranged that Fritz and Saul should do the receiving at the front door and I should stay up in the plant rooms with him and Theodore, mingling with the guests, if I had had an ounce of brains I would have put my foot down. But I hadn’t, and as a result I had been up there a good hour and a half, grinning around and acting pleased and happy. “No, sir, that’s not a brasso, it’s a laelio.” “No, madam, I doubt if you could grow that miltonia in a living room — so sorry.” “Quite all right, madam — your sleeve happened to hook it — it’ll bloom again next year.”
It wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been something for the eyes. It was understood that the Manhattan Flower Club was choosy about who it took in, but obviously its standards were totally different from mine. The men were just men, okay as men go, but the women! It was a darned good thing they had picked on flowers to love, because flowers don’t have to love back. I didn’t object to their being alive and well, since after all I’ve got a mother too, and three aunts, and I fully appreciate them, but it would have been a relief to spot just one who could have made my grin start farther down than the front of my teeth.
There had in fact been one — just one. I had got a glimpse of her at the other end of the crowded aisle as I went through the door from the cool room into the moderate room, after showing a couple of guys what a bale of osmundine looked like in the potting room. From ten paces off she looked absolutely promising, and when I had maneuvered close enough to make her an offer to answer questions if she had any, there was simply no doubt about it, and the first quick slanting glance she gave me said plainly that she could tell the difference between a flower and a man, but she just smiled and shook her head and moved on by with her companions, an older female and two males. Later I had made another try and got another brushoff, and still later, too long later, feeling that the damn grin might freeze on me for good if I didn’t take a recess, I had gone AWOL by worming my way through to the far end of the warm room and sidling on out.
All the way down the three flights of stairs new guests were coming up, though it was then four o’clock. Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street had seen no such throng as that within my memory, which is long and good. One flight down I stopped off at my bedroom for a pack of cigarettes, and another flight down I detoured to make sure the door of Wolfe’s bedroom was locked. In the main hall downstairs I halted a moment to watch Fritz Brenner, busy at the door with both departures and arrivals, and to see Paul Panzer emerge from the front room, which was being used as a cloakroom, with someone’s hat and top-coat. Then, as aforesaid, I entered the office, shutting the door from the hall behind me, went and sat at my desk with my feet up, leaned back and closed my eyes, and took some deep breaths.
I had been there eight or ten minutes, and getting relaxed and a little less bitter, when the door opened and she came in. Her companions were not along. By the time she had closed the door and turned to me I had got to my feet, with a friendly leer, and had begun, “I was just sitting here thinking—”
The look on her face stopped me. There was nothing wrong with it basically, but something had got it out of kilter. She headed for me, got halfway, jerked to a stop, sank into one of the yellow chairs, and squeaked, “Could I have a drink?”
Upstairs her voice had not squeaked at all. I had liked it.
“Scotch?” I asked her. “Rye, bourbon, gin—”
She just fluttered a hand. I went to the cupboard and got a hooker of Old Woody. Her hand was shaking as she took the glass, but she didn’t spill any, and she got it down in two swallows, as if it had been milk, which wasn’t very ladylike. She shuddered all over and shut her eyes. In a minute she opened them again and said hoarsely, the squeak gone, “Did I need that!”
“More?”
She shook her head. Her bright brown eyes were moist, from the whisky, as she gave me a full straight look with her head tilted up. “You’re Archie Goodwin,” she stated.
I nodded. “And you’re the Queen of Egypt?”
“I’m a baboon,” she declared. “I don’t know how they ever taught me to talk.” She looked around for something to put the glass on, and I moved a step and reached for it. “Look at my hand shake,” she complained. “I’m all to pieces.”
She kept her hand out, looking at it, so I took it in mine and gave it some friendly but gentle pressure. “You do seem a little upset,” I conceded. “I doubt if your hand usually feels clammy. When I saw you upstairs—”
She jerked the hand away and blurted, “I want to see Nero Wolfe. I want to see him right away, before I change my mind.” She was gazing up at me, with the moist brown eyes. “My God, I’m in a fix now all right! I’m one scared baboon! I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to get Nero Wolfe to get me out of this somehow — why shouldn’t he? He did a job for Dazy Perrit, didn’t he? Then I’m through. I’ll get a job at Macy’s or marry a truck driver! I want to see Nero Wolfe!”
I told her it couldn’t be done until the party was over.
She looked around. “Are people coming in here?”
I told her no.
“May I have another drink, please?”
I told her she should give the first one time to settle, and instead of arguing she arose and got the glass from the corner of Wolfe’s desk, went to the cupboard, and helped herself. I sat down and frowned at her. Her line sounded fairly screwy for a member of the Manhattan Flower Club, or even for a daughter of one. She came back to her chair, sat, and met my eyes. Looking at her straight like that could have been a nice way to pass the time if there had been any chance for a meeting of minds, but it was easy to see that what her mind was fighting with was connected with me only accidentally.
“I could tell you,” she said, hoarse again.
“Many people have,” I said modestly.
“I’m going to.”
“Good. Shoot.”
“I’m afraid I’ll change my mind and I don’t want to.”
“Okay. Ready, go.”
“I’m a crook.”
“It doesn’t show,” I objected. “What do you do, cheat at canasta?”
“I didn’t say I’m a cheat.” She cleared her throat for the hoarseness. “I said I’m a crook. Remind me someday to tell you the story of my life, how my husband got killed in the war and I broke through the gate. Don’t I sound interesting?”
“You sure do. What’s your line, orchid-stealing?”
“No. I wouldn’t be small and I wouldn’t be dirty — that’s what I thought, but once you start it’s not so easy. You meet people and you get involved. You can’t go it alone. Two years ago four of us took over a hundred grand from a certain rich woman with a rich husband. I can tell you about that one, even names, because she couldn’t move anyhow.”
I nodded. “Blackmailers’ customers seldom can. What—”
“I’m not a blackmailer!” Her eyes were blazing.
“Excuse me. Mr. Wolfe often says I jump to conclusions.”
“You did that time.” She was still indignant. “A blackmailer’s not a crook, he’s a snake! Not that it really matters. What’s wrong with being a crook is the other crooks — they make it dirty whether you like it or not. I’ve been up to my knees in it. It makes a coward of you too — that’s the worst. I had a friend once — as close as a crook ever comes to having a friend — and a man killed her, strangled her, and if I had told what I knew about it they could have caught him, but I was afraid to go to the cops, so he’s still loose. And she was my friend! That’s getting down toward the bottom. Isn’t it?”