Death Times Three SSC Page 11

  "She wouldn't be if you ran across her. What does she want?"

  "It's a little vague. I'd rather she told you."

  He snorted. "One of your functions is to learn what people want. You are trying to dragoon me. I won't see her. I'll come down later. Let me know when she has gone."

  "Yes, sir." I was apologetic, "You're absolutely right. You'd probably be wasting your time. But when I was dancing with her last evening I must have got sentimental, because I told her I would help her with her problem. So I'm stuck. I'll have to tackle it myself. I'll have to take a leave of absence without pay, starting now. Say a couple of weeks, that should do it. We have nothing important on, and of course Fred can attend to Putz, and if you--"

  "Archie, this is beyond tolerance. This is egregious."

  "I know it is, but I'm stuck. If I were you I'd fire me. It may take--"

  The house phone buzzed. He didn't move, so I went and got it. After listening to Fritz, I told him to hold on, and turned: "She's at the door. If she comes in, it will

  disrupt your schedule, so I'd better go down and take her somewhere. I'll--"

  "Confound you," he growled. "I'll be down shortly."

  I told Fritz to put her in the office and I would be right down, hung up and went. On my way through the intermediate room I cut off a raceme of Miltonia and took it along. Orchids are good for girls, whether they have problems or not. At the bottom of the stairs, Fritz was posted on guard, awaiting me. He is by no means a woman hater, but he suspects every female who enters the house of having designs on his kitchen and therefore needing to be watched. I told him O.K., I'd see to her, and crossed to the office.

  She was in the red leather chair facing the end of Wolfe's desk. I told her good morning, went and got a pin from my desk tray and returned to her.

  "Here," I said, handing her the raceme and pin. "I see why you asked me what his favorite color is. He'll like that dress if he's not too grouchy to notice it."

  "Then he'll see me?"

  "Yeah, he'll see you, any minute now. I had to back him into a corner and stick a spear in him. I doubt if I like you that much, but my honor was at stake, and I well, if you insist

  She was on her feet, putting her palms on my cheeks and giving me an emphatic kiss.

  Since it was in the office and during hours, I merely accepted it.

  "You should have another one," she said, sitting again, "for the orchids. They're lovely."

  I told her to save it for a better occasion. "And," I added, "don't try it on Mr. Wolfe. He might bite you." The sound of the elevator, creaking under his seventh of a ton, came from the hall. "Here he comes. Don't offer him a hand. He doesn't like to shake hands even with men, let alone women."

  There was the sound of the elevator door opening, and footsteps, and he entered. He thinks he believes in civility, so he stopped in front of her, told her good morning, and then proceeded to the over-sized, custom-made chair behind his desk.

  "Your name is Flora Gallant?" he growled. The growl implied that he strongly doubted it and wouldn't be surprised if she had no name at all.

  She smiled at him. I should have warned her to go slow on smiles. "Yes, Mr. Wolfe. I suppose Mr. Goodwin has told you who I am. I know I'm being nervy to expect you to take any time for my troubles--a man as busy and important as you are--but, you see, it's not for myself. I'm not anybody, but you know who my brother is? My brother Alec?"

  "Yes. Mr. Goodwin has informed me. An illustrious dressmaker."

  "He is not merely a dressmaker. He is an artist--a great artist." She wasn't arguing, just stating a fact. "The trouble is about him, and that's why I must be careful with it. That's why I came to you--not only that you are a great detective--the very greatest, of course; everybody knows that--but also that you are a gentleman. So I know you are worthy of confidence."

  She stopped, apparently for acknowledgment. Wolfe obliged her: "Umph." I was thinking that I might also have warned her not to spread the butter too thick.

  She resumed, "So it is understood I am trusting you?"

  "You may," he growled.

  She hesitated, seeming to consider if that point was properly covered, and decided that it was. "Then I'll tell you. I must explain that in France, where my brother and I were born and brought up, our name was not 'Gallant.' What it was doesn't matter. I have been in this country only four years. Alec came here in 1946, more than a year after the war ended. He had changed his name to Gallant and entered legally under that name. Within five years he had made a reputation as a designer, and then--I don't suppose you remember his fall collection in 1953?"

  Wolfe merely grunted.

  She fluttered a little hand. "But of course you are not married, and feeling as you do about women--" She let that hang. "Anyway, that collection showed everybody what my brother was--a creator, a true creator. He got financial backing, more than he needed, and opened his place on Fifty-fourth Street. That was when he sent for me to come to America, and I was glad to. From 1953 on, it has been all a triumph--many triumphs. Of course I have not had any hand in them, but I have been with him and have tried to help in my little way. The glory of great success has been my brother's, but then, he can't do everything in an affair so big as that. You understand?"

  "No one can do everything," Wolfe conceded.

  She nodded. "Even you, you have Mr. Goodwin. My brother has Carl Drew, and Anita Prince, and Emmy Thorne--and me, if I count. But now trouble has come. The trouble is. a woman--a woman named Bianca Voss."

  Wolfe made a face. She saw it and responded to it. "No, not an affaire d'amour, I'm sure of that. Though my brother has never married, I am certain this Bianca Voss has not attracted him -that way. She first came there a little more than a year ago. My brother had told us to expect her, but we don't know where he had met her or where she came from. He designed a dress and a suit for her, and they were made there in the shop, but no bill was ever sent her. Then he gave her one of the rooms, the offices, on the third floor, and she started to come every day, and soon the trouble began. My brother never told us she had any authority, but she took it and he allowed her to. Sometimes she interferes directly, and sometimes through him. She pokes her nose into everything. She got my brother to discharge a fitter, a very capable woman, who had been with him for years. She has a private telephone line in her office upstairs, but no one else has. About two months ago some of the others persuaded me to try to find out about her, what her standing is, and I asked my brother, but he wouldn't tell me. I begged him to, but he wouldn't."

  "It sounds," Wolfe said, "as if she owns the business. Perhaps she bought it."

  Flora shook her head. "No, she hasn't. I'm sure she hasn't. She wasn't one of the financial backers in 1953, and since then there have been good profits, and anyway, my brother has control. But now she's going to cheapen it and spoil it, and he's going to let her, we don't know why. She wants him to design a factory line to be promoted by a chain of department stores using his name. She wants him to sponsor a line of Alec Gallant cosmetics on a royalty basis. And other things. We're against all of them, and my brother is, too, really, but we think he's going to give in to her, and that will ruin it."

  She stopped to swallow. "Mr. Wolfe, I want you to ruin her."

  He grunted. "By wiggling a finger?"

  "No, but you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure she has some hold on him, but I don't know what. I don't know who she is or where she came from. I don't know if Bianca Voss is her real name. She speaks with an accent, and it may be French, but if it is, it's from some part of France I don't know; I'm not sure what it is. I don't know when she came to America; she may be here illegally. She may have known my brother in France during the war; I was young then. You can find out. If she has a hold on my brother, you can find out what it is. If she is blackmailing him, isn't that against the law? Wouldn't that ruin her?"

  "It might. It might ruin him too."

  "Not unless you betrayed him." She gave a little gasp and added hast
ily, "I don't mean that, I only mean I am trusting you, you said I could, and you could make her stop, and that's all you would have to do. Couldn't you do just that?"

  "Conceivably." Wolfe wasn't enthusiastic. "I fear, madam, that you're biting off more than you can chew. The procedure you suggest would be prolonged, laborious, and extremely expensive. It would probably require elaborate investigation abroad. Aside from my fee, which would not be modest, the outlay would be considerable and the outcome highly uncertain. Are you in a position to undertake it?"

  "I am not rich myself, Mr. Wolfe. I have some savings. But my brother--if you get her away, if you release him from her--he is truly genereux--pardon--he is a generous man. He is not stingy."

  "But he isn't hiring me, and your assumption that she is coercing him may be groundless." Wolfe shook his head. "No. Not a reasonable venture. Unless, of course, your brother himself consults me. If you care to bring him? Or send him?"

  "Oh, I couldn't!" She waved it away. "You must see that isn't possible! When I asked him about her, I told you, he wouldn't tell me anything. He was annoyed. He is never abrupt with me, but he was then. I assure you, Mr. Wolfe, she is a villain. You are sagace--pardon you are an acute man. You would know it if you saw her, spoke with her."

  "Perhaps," Wolfe was losing patience. "Even so, my perception of her villainy wouldn't avail. No, madam."

  "But you would know I am right." She opened her bag, fingered in it with both hands, came out with something, left her chair to step to Wolfe's desk, and put the something on the desk pad in front of him. "There," she said, "that is three hundred dollars. For you that is nothing, but it shows how I am in earnest." She returned to the chair. "I know you never leave your home on business, you wouldn't go there, and I can't ask her to come here so you can speak with her, she would merely laugh at me, but you can. You can tell her you have been asked in confidence to discuss a matter with her and ask her to come to see you. You will not tell her what it is. She will come--she will be afraid not to--and that alone will show you she has a secret, perhaps many secrets. Then, when she comes, you will ask her whatever occurs to you. For that you do not need my suggestions. You are sagace."

  "Pfui," Wolfe shook his head. "Everybody has secrets; not necessarily guilty ones."

  "Yes," she agreed, "but not secrets that would make them afraid not to come to see Nero Wolfe. When she comes and you have spoken with her, we shall see. That may be all or it may not. We shall see."

  I do not say that the three hundred bucks there on his desk was no factor. Even though income tax would take two-thirds of it, there would be enough left for three weeks' supply of beer or for two days' salary for me. Another factor was plain curiosity: would Bianca Voss come or wouldn't she? Another was the chance that it might develop into a decent fee. Still another was her saying "We shall see" instead of "We'll see" or "We will see." He will always stretch a point, within reason, for people who use words as he thinks they should be used. But all of those together might not have swung him if he hadn't known that if he turned her down, and she went, I was pigheaded enough to go with her on leave of absence.

  So he muttered at her, "Where is she?"

  "At my brother's place. She always is."

  "Give Mr. Goodwin the phone number."

  "I'll get it. She may be downstairs." She got up and started for the phone on Wolfe's desk, but I told her to use mine and left my chair, and she came and sat, lifted the receiver, and dialed. In a moment she spoke. "Doris? Flora. Is Miss Voss around? . . . Oh. I thought she might have come down. 0 . No, don't bother; I'll ring her private line."

  She pushed the button down, told us, "She's up in her office," waited a moment, released the button, and dialed again. When she spoke, it was with another voice, as she barely moved her lips and brought it out through her nose, "Miss Bianca Voss? Hold the line, please. Mr. Nero Wolfe wishes to speak with you...

  "Nero Wolfe, the private detective?"

  She looked at Wolfe and he got at his phone. Having my own share of curiosity, I extended a hand for my receiver, and she let me take it and left my chair. As I got it to my ear Wolfe was speaking.

  "This is Nero Wolfe. Is this Miss Bianca Voss?" "Yes." It was more like "Yiss." "What do you want?" The "wh" and the "w" were way off.

  "If my name is unknown to you, I should explain--" "I know your name. What do you want?"

  "I wish to invite you to call on me at my office. I have been asked to discuss certain matters with you, and--"

  "Who asked you?"

  "I am not at liberty to say. I shall--"

  "What kind of matters?" The "wh" was more off.

  "If you will let me finish. The matters are personal and confidential and concern you closely. That's all I can say on the telephone. I assure you that you would be ill-advised

  A snort stopped him--a snort that might be spelled "Tzchaahh!" Followed by: "I know your name, yes! You are scum, I know, in your stinking sewer! Your slimy little ego in your big gob of fat! And you dare toowulgghh!"

  That's the best I can do at reporting it. It was part scream, part groan, and part just noise. It was followed immediately by another noise, a mixture of crash and clatter, then others, faint rustlings, and then nothing.

  I spoke to my transmitter: "Hello, hello, hello. Hello! Hello?"

  I cradled it, and so did Wolfe. Flora Gallant was asking. "What is it? She hung up?" We ignored her. Wolfe said, "Archie? You heard."

  "Yes, sir. So did you. If you want a guess, something hit her and she dragged the phone along as she went down and it struck the floor. The other noises, not even a guess, except that at the end she put the receiver back on and cut the connection or someone else did. It could be--"

  Flora had grabbed my sleeve with both hands and was demanding. "What is it? What happened?" I put a hand on her shoulder and made it emphatic:

  "I don't know what happened. There was a collection of sounds. You heard what I told Mr. Wolfe. Apparently something fell on her and then hung up the phone."

  "But it couldn't! It is not possible!"

  "That's what it sounded like. What's the number? The one downstairs."

  She just gawked at me. I looked at Wolfe and he gave me a nod, and I jerked my arm loose, sat at my desk, got the Manhattan book, flipped to the G's and got the number, PL2-0330, and dialed it.

  A refined female voice came, "Alec Gallant, Incorporated."

  "This is a friend of Miss Voss," I told her. "I was just speaking to her on the phone, on her private line, and from the sounds I got, I think something may have happened to her. Will you send someone up to see? Right away. I'll hold the wire."

  "Who is this speaking, please?"

  "Never mind that. Step on it. She may be hurt."

  I heard her calling to someone: then apparently she covered the transmitter. I sat and waited. Wolfe sat and scowled at me. Flora stood for some minutes at my elbow, staring down at me, then turned and went to the red leather chair and lowered herself onto its edge. I looked at my wristwatch: 11:40. It had said 11:31 when the connection with Bianca Voss had been cut.

  More waiting, and then a male voice came: "Hello?"

  "This is Carl Drew. What is your name please?"

  "My name is Watson--John H. Watson. Is Miss Voss all right?"

  "May I have your address, Mr. Watson?"

  "Miss Voss knows my address. Is she all right?"

  "I must have your address, Mr. Watson. I must insist. You will understand the necessity when I tell you that Miss Voss is dead. She was assaulted in her office

  and is dead. Apparently, from what you said, the assault came while she was on the phone with you, and I want your address. I must insist."

  "Who assaulted her?"

  "I don't know. Damn it, how do I know? I must 99 I hung up, gently not to be rude, swiveled and asked Flora, "Who is Carl Drew?"

  "My brother's business manager. What happened?"

  I looked at Wolfe. "My guess was close. Miss Voss is dead. In her office. He
said she was assaulted, but he didn't say with what or by whom."

  He glowered at me, then turned to let her have it. She was coming up from the chair, slow and stiff. When she was erect, she said, "No. No! It isn't possible!"

  "I'm only quoting Carl Drew," I told her.

  "But it's crazy! He said she is dead? Bianca Voss?" "Distinctly." She looked as if she might be needing a prop, and I stood up.

  "But how--" She let it hang. She repeated, "But how--" stopped again, turned, and was going.

  When Wolfe called to her, "Here, Miss Gallant, your money!" she paid no attention, but kept on, and he poked it at me, and I took it and headed for the hall.

  I caught up with her halfway to the front door, but when I offered it, she just kept going so I blocked her off, took her bag, opened it, dropped the bills in, closed it and handed it back.