The Final Deduction (8 page)

After dinner I went out. Wednesday was poker night, and that Wednesday Saul Panzer was the host, at his one-man apartment on the top floor of a remodeled house on 38th Street between Lexington and Third. You’ll meet Saul further on. If you’ve already met him you know why I would have liked to have an hour alone with him, to give him the picture and see if he agreed with me about Jimmy Vail. It was just as well I couldn’t have the hour, because if Saul had agreed with me I would have had a personal problem; it would no longer have been just my private guess. Jimmy Vail was responsible for our holding it back until Friday, and if he had killed Dinah Utley he was making monkeys of us. Of course that would serve Wolfe right, but how about me? It affected my poker, with Saul right there, but four other men were there also so I couldn’t tell him. Saul, who misses nothing, saw that I was off my game and made remarks about it. It didn’t affect his game any. He usually wins, and that night he raked it in. When we quit at the usual deadline, two o’clock, he had more than a hundred bucks of my money, and I was in no mood to stay and confide in him as an old and trusted friend.

Thursday, the morning after a late session of hard, tight poker, I don’t turn out until nine or nine-thirty unless
something important is cooking, but that Thursday I found myself lying on my back with my eyes wide open before eight. It was getting on my nerves. I said aloud, “Goddam Jimmy Vail anyhow,” swung my legs around, and got erect.

I like to walk. I liked to walk in woods and pastures when I was a kid in Ohio, and now I like to walk even more on Manhattan sidewalks. If you don’t walk much you wouldn’t know, but the angle you get on people and things when you’re walking is absolutely different from the one you get when you’re in a car or in anything else that does the moving for you. So after washing and shaving and dressing and eating breakfast and reading about Dinah Utley in the
Times
, nothing I didn’t already know, I buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone to tell Wolfe I was going out on a personal errand and would be back by noon, and went.

Of course you don’t learn anything about people in general by walking around taking them in; you only learn things about this one or that one. I learned something that morning about a girl in a gray checked suit who caught her heel in a grating on Second Avenue in the Eighties. No girl I had ever known would have done what she did. Maybe no other girl in the world would. But I shouldn’t have got started about walking. I mentioned walking only to explain how it happened that at a quarter past eleven I entered a drugstore at the corner of 54th Street and Eighth Avenue, sat at the counter, and requested a glass of milk. As it was brought and I took a sip, a Broadway type came in and got on the stool next to me and said to the soda jerk, “Cuppa coffee, Sam. You heard about Jimmy Vail?”

“Where would I hear about Jimmy Vail?” Sam demanded, getting a cup. “All I hear is step on it. What about Jimmy Vail?”

“He died. It was on the radio just now. Found him dead on the floor with a statue on top of him. You know I used to know Jimmy before he married a billion. Knew him well.”

“I didn’t know.” Sam brought the coffee. “Too bad.” A customer came to a stool down the line, and Sam moved.

I finished the glass of milk before I went to the phone
booth. I may have gulped it some, but by God I finished it. I wasn’t arranging my mind; there was nothing in it to arrange; I was just drinking milk. When I went to the phone booth I got out a dime and started my hand to the slot but pulled it back. Not good enough. A voice on a phone is all right up to a point, but I might decide to go beyond that point, and a little more walking might help. I returned the dime to my pocket, departed, walked seven blocks crosstown and ten blocks downtown, entered the marble lobby of a building, and took an elevator.

I gave the receptionist on the twentieth floor a nod and went on by. Lon Cohen’s room, with his name on the door but no title, was two doors this side of the
Gazette
’s publisher’s. I don’t remember a time that I have ever entered it and he wasn’t on the phone, and that time was no exception. He darted a glance at me and went on talking, and I took the chair at the end of his desk and noted that he showed no sign of being short on sleep, though he had left Saul’s place the same time I had, a little after two. His little dark face was neat and smooth, and his dark brown, deep-set eyes were clear and keen. When he had finished on the phone he turned to me and shook his head.

“Sorry, I’ve banked it. I guess I could spare a ducat.”

He had been the only winner last night besides Saul. “I wouldn’t want to strap you,” I said. “A dime would see me through the week. But first, what about Jimmy Vail?”

“Oh.” He cocked his head. “Is Wolfe looking for a job, or has he got one?”

“Neither one. I’m interested personally. I was taking a walk and heard something. I could wait and buy a paper, but I’m curious. What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“So I heard. How?”

“He was found—you know about the Harold F. Tedder library.”

“Yeah. Statues.”

“He was found there a little after nine o’clock this morning by his stepdaughter, Margot Tedder. On the floor, with Benjamin Franklin on him. Benjamin Franklin in bronze, a copy of the one in Philadelphia by John
Thomas Macklin. That would be a beautiful picture, but I don’t know if we got one. I can phone downstairs.”

“No, thanks. How did Benjamin Franklin get on him?”

“If we only knew that and knew it first. You got any ideas?”

“No. What do you know?”

“Damn little. Nothing. I can phone downstairs and see if anything more is in, but I doubt it. We’ve got five men on it, but you know how the cops are, and the DA, when it’s people in that bracket. They don’t even snarl, they just button their lips.”

“You must know
some
thing. Like how long he’d been dead.”

“We don’t. We will in time for the three-o’clock.” The phone buzzed. He got it said “Yes” twice and “No” four times, and returned to me. “Your turn, Archie. Your fee’s showing, or Wolfe’s fee is. Yesterday morning the body of Mrs. Vail’s secretary is found in a ditch in Westchester. This morning the body of her husband is found in her library, and here you come—not on the phone, in person. So of course Wolfe has been hired by someone. When? Yesterday? About the secretary?”

I eyed him. “I could give you a whole front page.”

“I’ll settle for half. Don’t pin me to the wall with your steely eyes. I’m sensitive. You know who killed the secretary.”

“No. I thought I did, but not now. What I’ve got may break any minute—or it may not. If I give it to you now you’ll have to save it until I give the word—unless it breaks, of course. This is personal. Mr. Wolfe doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“Okay. I’ll save it.”

“You don’t mean maybe.”

“No. I’ll save it unless it breaks.”

“Then get pencil and paper. Jimmy Vail was expected home from the country Sunday night but didn’t come. Monday morning Mrs. Vail got a note in the mail saying she could have him back for five hundred grand and she would get a phone call from Mr. Knapp. I have a photograph of the note, taken by me, and I may let you have a print if you’ll help me mark a deck of cards so I can win
my money back from Saul. How would you like to run a good picture of that note, exclusive?”

“I’d help you mark ten decks of cards. A hundred. Is this straight, Archie?”

“Yes.”

“My God. That ‘Knapp’ is beautiful. How did he spell it?”

I spelled it. “He phoned Monday afternoon and told her to get the money, put it in a suitcase, put the suitcase in the trunk of her blue sedan, and Tuesday evening drive to Fowler’s Inn on Route Thirty-three, arriving at ten o’clock. She did so. At Fowler’s Inn she was called to the phone and was told, probably the same voice, to look in the phone book where Z begins. There was a note there giving instructions. I haven’t—”

“Beautiful,” Lon said. His pencil was moving fast.

“Not bad. Don’t interrupt, I’m in a hurry. I haven’t got a picture of that note, but I have the text, taken from the original by me. The notes were typewritten. Following the instructions, she drove around a while and got to The Fatted Calf around eleven o’clock. There she got another phone call and was told to look in the phone book where U begins. Another note, same typewriting—I have the text. More instructions. Following them, she took Route Seven to Route Thirty-five, Route Thirty-five to Route One Twenty-three, and Route One Twenty-three to Iron Mine Road, which is all rock and a yard wide. She turned into it. When a car—”

“Dinah Utley,” Lon said. “The secretary. Her body was found on Iron Mine Road.”

“Don’t interrupt. When a car behind her blinked its lights she stopped and got out and got the suitcase from the trunk. A man with only his eyes uncovered came from the other car, took the suitcase, and told her to go straight home, stop nowhere, and say nothing, which she did. Around seven-thirty yesterday morning her husband phoned her from their place in the country and said the kidnapers had let him go in one piece and he would come to town as soon as he cleaned up and ate. He also said they had told him to keep the lid on for forty-eight hours or he would regret it, and he was going to and expected her to. I don’t know exactly when he arrived at the house
on Fifth Avenue, but it must have been around ten o’clock.”

I stood up. “Okay, that’s it. I’ve got to go. If your sheet prints even a hint of it before I give the word, I’ll write a letter to the editor and feed your eyes to the cat. If and when I give the word, there is to be no mention of Nero Wolfe or me. If it breaks, about the kidnaping, before I give the word, you’ll still be out in front with a lot of facts the others won’t have. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Wait a minute!” Lon was up. “You know how hot this is. It could burn my ass to cinders.”

“It sure could. Then you couldn’t help me mark a deck.”

“How solid is it?”

“It isn’t. There’s an alternative. Either it’s good as gold, every word, or Mrs. Jimmy Vail is unquestionably a double-breasted liar and almost certainly a murderer. If the latter, she’ll be in no position to burn even your ears, let alone your ass. If she killed Dinah Utley, who killed Jimmy? Benjamin Franklin?” I turned to go.

“Damn it, listen!” He had my arm. “Was Dinah Utley with Mrs. Vail Tuesday night in the blue sedan?”

“No. For either alternative, that’s positive. Dinah’s own car was there at Iron Mine Road. That’s the crop for now, Lon. I just wanted to burn a bridge. You could ask questions for an hour, but I haven’t got an hour.”

I went. Out to the elevator, down to the lobby, out to the sidewalk; and I started walking again. A taxi wouldn’t have been much quicker, and I preferred to be on my feet. Down Lexington Avenue to 35th Street, and crosstown to the old brownstone. I mounted the stoop, let myself in with my key, put my coat on a hanger, and went to the office. Wolfe was at his desk, pouring beer.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “Did you turn on the radio for the twelve o’clock news?”

“Yes.”

“Did it mention Jimmy Vail?”

“Yes.”

I went to my desk and sat. “I dropped in so you could have the satisfaction of firing me face to face. I have disobeyed orders. I am disloyal. I have betrayed your trust. I just told Lon Cohen about the kidnaping of Jimmy
Vail. Not for publication; he won’t use it until I say he can. I didn’t mention Mrs. Vail’s hiring you. I kept you out of it. I’m not quitting, you’re firing me, so I’m entitled to two months’ severance pay.”

He lifted the glass and drank. The idea is to drink when there is still an inch of foam so it will get on his lips and he can lick it off. He licked it off and put the glass down. “Is this flummery?” he demanded.

“No, sir. It’s straight. If you want me to tell you why I did it, I will, but not as an excuse, just as information. Do you want it?”

“Yes.”

“It was getting too hot. I knew too much that you didn’t know. You wouldn’t take what I had got at White Plains, and you knew darned well I had seen Mrs. Vail on my way back, and you wouldn’t take what I had got there either. From what—”

“I did not refuse to listen to you.”

“Nuts. You know as well as I do how it stood. You had said we didn’t care what had happened to Dinah Utley and we were not concerned. Will it help to chew at that?”

“No.”

“Okay. What I had got had made me decide that Jimmy had probably kidnaped himself, and he had killed Dinah Utley, and he was making monkeys of us. So I was stuck. I had to give in and say, please Mr. Wolfe, put your book down for a while and kindly permit me to tell you what happened yesterday so you can decide what to do. When you came down at eleven o’clock. You know how I liked that. I wasn’t going to sit here on my rump all morning looking forward to it, so I went for a walk, and at eighteen minutes past eleven I heard a man tell another man that Jimmy Vail had been found dead on the floor of the library, where I had been yesterday afternoon.”

I paused for dramatic effect. “So where was I? If Homicide hadn’t already learned that I had been there yesterday in conference with the whole damn family, they soon would. Cramer himself might already be here ringing the bell. When he asked me what I was doing there, if I told him, I would be ditching our commitment to Mrs.
Vail, and if I didn’t tell him. I would be in for a picnic and the least I could expect would be losing my license. It wouldn’t help any to come and say, please, Mr. Wolfe, even if you’re not concerned kindly permit me to tell you what has happened because I’m in a jam. What could you do? I had to handle it myself, and I did. I went and did something you had told me not to do. I told Lon Cohen about the kidnaping. Then I came and saw that Cramer or Stebbins wasn’t here, since there was no police car out front, and entered. Now you fire me and I go. Fast. One will get you a thousand that no one will find me before eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, the deadline.” I arose.

“Sit down,” he growled.

“No. Cramer or Stebbins may be here any minute.”

“He won’t be admitted.”

“They’ll cover the house front and back and come back with a warrant.” I moved.