Death Times Three SSC Page 17

  "What is it?"

  "I'll tell Nero Wolfe. Look, Buster, I'm no Eskimo. Let the lady in."

  That wasn't feasible. I had been in the hall with my hat and overcoat and gloves on, on my way for a morning walk cross-town to the bank to deposit a check for $7,417.65 in Wolfe's account, when I had seen her through the one-way glass panel aiming her finger at the bell button. Letting her in and leaving her in the office while I took my walk was out of the question. The

  other inhabitants of that old brownstone on West 35th Street, the property of Nero Wolfe except for the furniture and other items in my bedroom, were around but they were busy. Fritz Brenner, the chef and housekeeper, was in the kitchen making chestnut soup. Wolfe was up in the plant rooms on the roof for his two-hour morning session with the orchids, and of course Theodore Horstmann was with him.

  I wasn't rude about it. I told her there were several places nearby where she could spend the hour and thaw out--Sam's Diner at the corner of Tenth Avenue, or the drug store at the corner of Ninth, or Tony's tailor shop where she could have a button sewed on her coat and charge it to me. She didn't push. I said if she came back at a quarter past eleven I might have persuaded Wolfe to see her, and she turned to go, and then turned back, opened the black leather handbag, and took out a package wrapped in brown paper with a string around it.

  . "Keep this for me, Buster," she said. "Some nosy copy might take it on himself. Come on, it won't bite. And don't open it. Can I trust you not to open it?"

  I took it because I liked her. She had fine instincts and no sense at all. She had refused to tell me what was in it, and was leaving it with me and telling me not to open it--my idea of a true woman if only she would comb her hair and wash her face and sew a button on. So I took it, and told her I would expect her at a quarter past eleven, and she went. When I had seen her descend the seven steps to the sidewalk and turn left, toward Tenth Avenue, I shut the door from the inside and took a look at the package. It was rectangular, some six inches long and three wide, and a couple of inches thick. I put it to my ear and held my breath, and heard nothing. But you never know what science will

  do next, and there were at least three dozen people in the metropolitan area who had it in for Wolfe, not to mention a few who didn't care much for me, so instead of taking it to the office, to my desk or the safe, I went to the front room and stashed it under the couch. If you ask if I untied the string and unwrapped the paper for a look, your instincts are not as fine as they should be. Anyhow, I had gloves on.

  Also there had been nothing doing for more than a week, since we had cleaned up the Brigham forgery case, and my mind needed exercise as much as my legs and lungs, so walking cross-town and back I figured out what was in the package. After discarding a dozen guesses that didn't appeal to me I decided it was the Hope diamond. The one that had been sent to Washington was a phony. I was still working on various details, such as Hattie Annis' real name and station and how she had got hold of it, on the last stretch approaching the old brownstone, and therefore got nearly to the stoop before I saw that it was occupied. Perched on the top step was exactly the kind of female Wolfe expects to see when I talk him into seeing one. The right age, the right face, the right legs--what showed of them below the edge of her fur coat. The coat was not mink or sable. As I started to mount she got up.

  "Well," she said. "A grand idea, this outdoor waiting room, but there ought to be magazines."

  I reached her level. The top of her fuzzy little turban was even with my nose. "I suppose you rang?" I

  asked. I

  "I did. And was told through a crack that Mr. Wolfe was engaged and Mr. Goodwin was out. Mr. Goodwin, I presume?"

  "Right." I had my key ring out. "I'll bring some magazines. Which ones do you like?"

  "Let's go in and look them over."

  Wolfe wouldn't be down for more than half an hour, and it would be interesting to know what she was selling, so I used the key on the door and swung it open. When I had disposed of my hat and coat on the hall rack I ushered her to the office, moved one of the yellow chairs up for her, and went to my desk and sat.

  "We have no vacancies at the moment," I said, "but you can leave your number. Don't call us, we'll call--"

  "That's pretty corny," she said. She had thrown her coat open to drape it over the back of the chair, revealing other personal details that went fine with the face and legs.

  "Okay," I conceded. "It's your turn."

  "My name is Tammy Baxter. Short for Tamiris. I haven't decided yet which one to use on a theatre program when the time comes. What do you think, Tammy or Tamiris?"

  "It would depend on the part. If it's the lead in a musical, Tammy. If it packs some weight, O'Neill for instance, Tamiris."

  "It's more apt to be a girl at one of the tables in the night club scene. The one who jumps up and says, `Come on, Bill, let's get out of here.' That's her big line." She fluttered a gloved hand. "Oh, well. What do you care? Why don't you ask me what I want?"

  "I'm putting it off because I may not have it."

  "That's nice. I like that. That's a good line, only you threw it away. There should be a pause after 'off.' 'I'm putting it off . . . because I may not have it.' Try it again."

  "Nuts. I said it the way I felt it. You actresses are all alike. I was getting a sociable feeling about you and look what you've done to it. What do you want?"

  She laughed a little ripple. "I'm not an actress, I'm

  only going to be. I don't want anything much, just to ask about my landlady, Miss Annis--Hattie Annis. Has she been here?"

  I raised a brow. "Here? When?"

  "This morning."

  "I'll ask." I turned my head and sang out, "Fritz!" and when he appeared, in the doorway to the hall, I inquired, "Did anyone besides this lady come while I was out?"

  "No, sir." He always sirs me when there is company and I can't make him stop.

  "Any phone calls?"

  "No, sir."

  "Okay. Thank you, sir." He went, and I told Tammy or Tamiris, "Apparently not. You say your landlady?" She nodded. "That's funny."

  "Why, did you tell her to come?"

  "No, she told me. She said she was going to take something--she was going to see Nero Wolfe about something. She wouldn't say what, and after she left I began to worry about her. She never got here?"

  "You heard what Fritz said. Why should you worry?"

  "You would too if you knew her. She almost never leaves the house, and she never goes more than a block away. She's not a loony really, but she's not quite all there, and I should have come with her. We all feel responsible for her. Her house is an awful dump, but anybody in show business, or even trying to be, can have a room for five dollars a week, and it doesn't have to be every week. So we feel responsible. I certainly hope ." She stood up, letting it hang. "If she comes will you phone me?"

  "Sure." She gave me the number and I jotted it down, and then went to hold her coat. My feelings were mixed. It would have been a pleasure to relieve her mind, but of what? What if her real worry was about the Hope diamond, which she had had under her mattress, and she knew or suspected that Hattie Annis had snitched it? I would have liked to put her in the front room, supplied with magazines, to wait until her landlady arrived, but you can't afford to be sentimental when the fate of a million-dollar diamond is at stake, so I let her go. Another consideration was that it would be enough of a job to sell Wolfe on seeing Hattie Annis without also accounting for the presence of another female in the front room. He can stand having one woman under his roof temporarily if he has to, but not two at once.

  At eleven o'clock on the nose the sound of the elevator came, then its usual clang as it jolted to a stop at the bottom, and he entered, told me good morning, went to his desk, got his seventh of a ton deposited in the oversized custom-built chair, fingered through the mail, glanced at his desk calendar, and spoke.

  "No check from Brigham?"

  "Yes, sir, it came." I swiveled to face him. "Withou
t comment. I took it to the bank. Also my weakness has cropped up again, but with a new slant."

  He grunted. "Which weakness?"

  "Women. One came, a stranger, and I told her to come back at eleven-fifteen. The trouble is, she's a type that never appealed to me before. I hope to goodness my taste hasn't shifted. I want your opinion."

  "Pfui. Flummery."

  "No, sir. It's a real problem. Wait till you see her." "I'm not going to see her."

  "Then I'm stuck. She has a strange fascination. Nobody believes in witches casting spells anymore, I certainly don't, but I don't know. As for what she wants to see you about, that's simple. She has got something that she thinks is good for a reward, and she's coming to you instead of the police because she hates cops. I don't know what it is or where she got it. That part's easy, you can deal with that in two minutes, but what about me? Why did I tell her I would try to persuade you to see her? Should I see a psychiatrist?"

  "Yes."

  He picked up the top item from the little pile of mail, an airmail letter from an orchid hunter in Venezuela, and started to read it. I swung my chair around and started sharpening pencils that didn't need it. The noise of the sharpener irritates him. I was on the sixth pencil when his voice came.

  "What's her name?" he demanded.

  "Miss Hattie Annis. That's another aspect of it. I don't like the name Hattie."

  "Who is she?"

  "She didn't say, and I didn't even ask her. That's still another aspect."

  "Is she coming or phoning?"

  "Coming."

  "I'll give her two minutes."

  You can appreciate what I had accomplished only if you know how allergic he is to strangers, especially women, and how much he hates to work, especially when a respectable check has just been deposited. Besides that satisfaction I had something to look forward to, seeing his expression when I escorted Hattie Annis in. I thought I might as well go and retrieve the package from under the couch and put it in my desk drawer, but vetoed it. It could wait till she came.

  But she didn't come. 11:20. 11:25. At 11:30 Wolfe looked over the top of the book he was reading to say that he had some letters to give me but didn't like to be interrupted, and I said neither did I. At 11:45 he got up and went to the kitchen, probably to sample the chestnut soup, in which he and Fritz had decided to include tarragon for the first time. At noon I went to the hall and mounted two flights to my room, and from there dialed the number Tammy Baxter had given me. After four buzzes I got a male voice:

  "Who is this?"

  It would be a pleasure to kick anyone who answers a phone like that. "My name," I said, "is Buster. I want to speak to Miss Annis."

  "She's not here. Buster what?"

  "Then I'll speak to Miss Baxter, please."

  "She's not here either. Who is this?"

  I hung up.

  She never came. When I returned to the office Wolfe was back at his desk, and until lunch time I was busy with the notebook and typewriter. The chestnut soup was fine as usual, but I couldn't taste the tarragon. After lunch Theodore brought files down from the plant rooms and we worked on propagation records while Wolfe read his book and drank beer, and at four O'clock they left for the afternoon session with the orchids, which is from four to six no matter what. As soon as they were gone I dialed the Gazette number and got Lon Cohen.

  "Just a little personal favor," I told him. "Nothing for publication. Have you had anything, maybe an accident, anything at all, about a woman named Hattie Annis?"

  "Hell, I don't know. I never know anything. Spell it."

  I spelled it. He said he would call back, and I went and stood at a window and watched a couple of dozen flakes of snow that were darting around pretending

  they were a blizzard. When the phone rang it was Lon himself, which was a compliment, since he was near the top at the Gazette.

  "You timed it fine," he said. "Was your Hattie Annis a character that owned a house on 47th Street between Eighth and Ninth?"

  "Was? Is."

  "Not anymore. A hit-and-run driver got her on Tenth Avenue at Thirty-seventh Street at 11:05 this morning. Three blocks from your place. We just got the identification verified ten minutes ago. They found the car at two o'clock double-parked on West Fortieth Street. It was hot. It had been taken from where the owner had parked it on Thirty-sixth Street. Now give. If Wolfe's interested it wasn't just some hooligan. Who's your client?"

  "No client. He's not interested. Have you--" "Come off it! Give!"

  "Not a crumb. You know damn well I've given you plenty of breaks, and I'll hand you another one if and when. If you run a paragraph that Nero Wolfe is asking about Hattie Annis I'll chew your ear personally. Have you got a description of the driver?"

  "No. But now that you've called we'll sure try to get one."

  "Man or woman?"

  "Not even that. Look, Archie, just a helpful hint. I'll put horseradish on my ear."

  I told him I didn't like horseradish, which wasn't true, hung up, stood a minute, and stepped to the window. The snowflakes were getting reinforcements. I was deciding how to take it. I had liked her even before I had learned from Tammy Baxter that she was a screwball, and we could use more screwballs. Not that I was blaming myself. It was true that if I had postponed my trip to the bank and kept her there she might still be alive, but what the hell, you can't base your actions on the theory that anyone you don't keep your eye on is apt to get killed. That wasn't it. But I admit my feelings were personal. Even at the minimum, I was sore because I had gone out of my way to maneuver Wolfe into seeing her, and at five minutes past eleven, exactly when I was picking the right words and tone to get him, some skunk was smashing her just three blocks away.

  Having settled for that as a minimum, I got rubber gloves from a drawer of my desk, put them on, went to the front room, knelt to reach under the couch for the package, took it to the office, to my desk, untied the string, and, without touching more than I had to, removed the wrapping paper. No Hope diamond. It was a stack of new twenty-dollar bills. I picked it up and flipped the corners, the whole stack. All twenties. I got a ruler from a drawer and measured its thickness--one and seven-eighths inches. New bills run 250 to the inch. Nine thousand dollars.

  It was a comedown. Nine grand is not hay, but it is less than one percent of a million; and besides, nothing is more uninteresting than a stack of currency when it's not yours and not going to be. I picked off the top one and gave it a look. B67380945B. Of course they would be more interesting if. . . . I went and got a new twenty from the safe and put them side by side for inspection, first just with my eyes, which are good, and then with a glass Wolfe keeps in his desk. Three minutes with the glass settled it, and I took the bill from the bottom of the stack and one from the middle, and used the glass on them, with the same result. They were phonies.

  I returned the three bills to the stack, rewrapped it as before, tied it with the string, also as before, went upstairs to my room, put it in the back of my shirt drawer, went back down to the office, took off the rubber gloves and put them away, sat, and considered matters.

  II

  There were a lot of aspects. For instance, the essential thing about counterfeit money is to keep it out of circulation. I was doing so. As for having it in my possession, nobody could prove I didn't still think it was the Hope diamond or the secret Pentagon war plans or used typewriter ribbons.

  Take the Wolfe aspect. Consulting him was out. Since there was no prospect of a client and a fee, he would merely instruct me to call the Treasury Department and tell them to come and get it.

  Or the conflict-of-interest aspect. The T-men would rather see the skunk get five years for passing phonies than the chair for murder, naturally. Homicide, specifically Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins, the reverse, also naturally. Not that they are not on speaking terms, but they jostle. I had heard the inside dope on how the Lorber case had been messed up a couple of years ago. I was for Homicide, but if I took the package to W
est 20th Street and reported my chats with Hattie Annis and Tammy Baxter they would have to call the Treasury within an hour after they opened the package, and the jostling would start.

  Or the personal aspect. She had entrusted the package to me. Any reward coming to her now would be in a different jurisdiction, but she had hated cops, and as her trustee it was my duty to see that they didn't horn in on her estate. If there actually was a reward, which was doubtful, I could turn it over to the Actors' Fund. As for my position, no one but Wolfe knew she had come, and even he didn't know she had left a package with me.

  Or the logical aspect. Since she had rarely left her house and never went more than a block away, it was a fair assumption that she had found the. bills there and that one of her tenants had put them there, probably in his or her room. That was enough to start; going on to assume that he had followed her downtown could wait.