HESTER LIVSEY was a phony, a heel, and a halfwit. Moore had kidded her along and had never had the faintest intention of marrying her. He would never have married anyone, but she was too dumb to know it. For a while she had actually believed that Moore was her private property, and when she had learned that he was still enjoying the companionship of Rosa, not to mention any others, she had gone completely crazy and had not recovered to date.
SUMNER HOFF was something special, being a civil engineer and a technical adviser to the whole stock department. He had been the hero-or the villain, depending On where you stood-of the most dramatic episode of the whole Moore story. On a day in October, just before quitting time, at the edge of the arena outside Dickerson’s office, he had plugged Moore in the jaw and knocked him into the lap of a girl at a near-by desk, ruining a letter she was typing. He had implied, just before he swung, that what was biting him was a checker’s report Moore had made on a letter he had dictated, but according to Rosa that was only a cover and what was really biting him was Moore’s conquest of Hester Livsey.
Sumner Hoff had been after Hester Livsey, strictly honorable, for over a year.
I was beginning to understand why Pine had said that Moore was the type that stirs up gossip.
For nearly two hours, sitting there working on the steak and its accessories, and another bottle of wine, and then pastry and coffee and brandy, Rosa told me things. When she got through I had a bushel of details, but fundamentally I didn’t know anything I hadn’t known before. It was no news that Moore had made various people sore in his capacity as a correspondence checker, or that his own section head hadn’t liked him or wanted him, or even that he was death on dames.
All Rosa had done was fill in., and when we got right down to it, how did she know Moore had been murdered and who did it, all she had was loose feathers. She knew he had been murdered because she knew who wanted him dead. Okay, who? On that she reminded me of the old gag about which one would he save, his wife or his son? She would have rooted for Hester Livsey if it hadn’t been for Gwynne Ferris, and she would have rooted for Ferris if it hadn’t been for Livsey. As for the actual circumstances of Moore’s death, she had plenty of gossip, unshakable opinions, and a fine healthy set of suspicions and prejudices, but no facts I didn’t already know.
I wasn’t greatly disappointed, since in the detective business you always draw ten times as many blanks as you do paying numbers, but with all her pouring it out I had an uneasy feeling that she might have something I wasn’t getting. It was plausible that she had waylaid me just to give me moral support and a friendly shove in what she regarded as the right direction, she was quite capable of that, but by the time we finished with the brandy I had decided that she was also capable of hiding an ace. And I seemed to be stymied. So I told her: “It’s only a little after eight. We could go somewhere and dance, or take in a show, or I could get my car and we could ride around, but that can wait. I think for tonight we ought to concentrate on Wally Moore, Did you ever hear of Nero Wolfe?” “Nero Wolfe the detective? Certainly.” “Good. I know him quite well. As I said. I’m not a cop, but I’m a sort of a detective myself, and I often consult Nero Wolfe. His office is in his house on Thirty-fifth Street. What do you say we go down there and talk it over with him?
He knows how to fit things together.” She had got completely relaxed, but now she darted a glance at me.
“What is it, just a house?” “Sure, with a room in it he uses for an office.” She shook her head. “You’ve got me wrong, Mr. Truett. I wouldn’t go into a house I’d never been in with a man I didn’t know well enough to call him by his first name.” The girl interpreted everything in terms of companionship. “You’ve got me wrong,” I assured her. “If and when I ask you to enjoy life with me it won’t be on the pretense that we’ve got work to do. I doubt if I’ll feel like it until you get this Wally Moore out of your system. That might even be why I want to go and discuss it with Mr. Wolfe.” She wasn’t stubborn. Fifteen minutes later we were down on the sidewalk, climbing into a taxi. In that quarter-hour I had signed the check, drawn the curtain again for a decent interval, and phoned Wolfe to tell him what was coming.
In the taxi she was nervous. Thinking it would be a good idea to keep her relaxed, and anyway I had drunk my half of the wine and brandy, I courteously got hold of her hand, but she pulled it away. It irritated me a little, because I felt sure that what made her balky was not the idea of discussing murder with Nero Wolfe but the prospect of entering a strange house with me. It seemed a little late in the day for a Puritan streak to show. As a result, however, my faculties resumed their normal operations, and therefore I became aware, at Forty-seventh Street and Tenth Avenue, that we had an outrider. Another taxi had stuck to our rear all the way across town, and turned south on Tenth Avenue behind us. The driver was apparently not the subtle type. Since Rosa had seen fit to build a fence between us, I said nothing about it to her.
When we turned right on Thirty-fifth Street our suffix came along. By the time we rolled to the curb in front of Wolfe’s house there wasn’t even a hyphen between us. I paid the driver from my seat, and my giving Rosa a hand out to the sidewalk, and the emergence from the other cab of a big husky male in a topcoat and a conservative felt hat, were simultaneous.
As he started toward us I addressed him, “I didn’t quite catch the name.” He snubbed me and spoke to her, coming right up to her and ignoring me entirely.
“Where are you going with this man?” Masterful as he was, it by no means withered her. “You’re getting to be a bigger fool every day, Harry,” she declared, extremely annoyed. “I’ve told you a thousand times that it’s none of your business where I go or who with!” “And I’ve told you it is and it still is.” He was towering over her. “You were going in that house with him. By God, you come with me!” He gripped her shoulder.
She squirmed, but not a panicky squirm; he was probably squeezing her flesh into her bones. With his build he could have tucked her under one arm. Grimacing from it, she appealed to me.
“Mr. Truett, this is that husband I was telling you about. He’s so big!” Implying I was helpless. So I spoke to “Listen, brother, here’s a suggestion.
We’ll only be in there three or four hours that ought to do it. You wait here on the stoop and when she comes out you can take her home.” I suppose it was badly phrased, but husbands who try to go on steering when the car is upside down in a ditch always aggravate me. He reacted immediately by letting go of her shoulder, which was a necessary preliminary to his next move, an accurate and powerful punch aimed for the middle of my face.
Ducking out of its path, my thought was that this would be simple, since he didn’t know enough about it to go for something more vulnerable and easier to get at than a face, but I was wrong. He knew plenty about it, and evidently, also thinking it would be simple, hadn’t bothered about tactics. When I merely jerked my head sideways to let the punch go by and planted a left hook with my weight behind it just below the crotch of his ribs, thereby informing him that I knew the alphabet, he became a different man.
Within a minute he had landed on my body three times and underneath my jaw once, and I had become aware that, with his extra fifteen or twenty pounds, he had the advantage in every way but one: he was mad and I wasn’t. Believing as I do in advantages, so long as you don’t do anything you aren’t willing to have done back at you, I carefully chose moments to use a little precious breath on remarks.