The Red Box (7 page)

“All right.” Dudley Frost had his frown on me. “My son is willing for Wolfe to continue. I’ve thought all along that’s the best way to handle it. But he won’t sign this. He won’t sign anything—”

“Yes, he will.” I took the paper from Calida Frost and put it on the desk again. “What do you think?” I threw up my hands. “Holy heaven! You’re three and I’m one. That’s no good in case of bad memories. What is there to it, anyhow? It says ‘until further notice.’ Mr. Wolfe said you could tell me your decision. Well, I’ve got to have a record of it or so help me, I’ll have a talk with Inspector Cramer myself.”

Lew Frost looked at his aunt and his father, and then at me. “It certainly is one sweet mess.” He grimaced in disgust. “If I had ten thousand dollars this minute, I swear to God …”

I said, “Look out, that pen drips sometimes. Go ahead and sign it.”

While the other two frowned at him, he bent over the paper and scrawled his name.

“I
had a notion to call in a notary and make Stebbins swear to an affidavit.” Inspector Cramer chewed on his cigar some more. “Nero Wolfe a mile away from home in broad daylight and in his right mind? Then it must be a raid on the United States Treasury and we’ll have to call out the army and declare martial law.”

It was a quarter past six. Wolfe was back in the office again, fairly placid after two hours with Horstmann among the plants, and was on his second bottle of beer. I was comfortable, with my feet up on the edge of the bottom drawer pulled out, and my notebook on my knees.

Wolfe, leaning back in his chair with his fingers twined at the peak of his middle, nodded grimly. “I don’t wonder, sir. Some day I’ll explain it to you. Just now the memory of it is too vivid; I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Okay. What I thought, maybe you’re not eccentric any more.”

“Certainly I’m eccentric. Who isn’t?”

“God knows I’m not.” Cramer took his cigar from his mouth and looked at it and put it back again. “I’m
too damn dumb to be eccentric. Take this Molly Lauck business, for instance. In eight days of intense effort, what do you think I’ve found out? Ask me.” He leaned forward. “I’ve found out Molly Lauck’s dead! No doubt about it! I screwed that out of the Medical Examiner.” He leaned back again and made a face of disgust at both of us. “By God, I’m a whirlwind. Now that I’ve emptied the bag for you, how about you doing the same for me? Then you’ll have your fee, which is what you want, and I’ll have an excuse for keeping my job, which is what I need.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Nothing, Mr. Cramer. I am not even aware Miss Lauck is dead, except by hearsay. I have not seen the Medical Examiner.”

“Oh, come on.” Cramer removed his cigar. “Who hired you?”

“Mr. Llewellyn Frost.”

“That one, eh?” Cramer grunted. “To keep somebody clear?”

“No. To solve the murder.”

“You don’t say. How long did it take you?”

Wolfe got himself forward to pour beer, and drank. Cramer was going on: “What got Lew Frost so worked up about it? I don’t get it. It wasn’t him that the Lauck girl was after, it was that Frenchman, Perren Gebert. Why is Lew Frost so anxious to spend good dough for a hunk of truth and justice?”

“I couldn’t say.” Wolfe wiped his lips. “As a matter of fact, there is nothing whatever I can tell you. I haven’t the faintest notion—”

“You mean to say you went clear to 52nd Street just for the exercise?”

“No. God forbid. But I have no scrap of information, or surmise, for you regarding Miss Lauck’s death.”

“Well.” Cramer rubbed a palm on his knee. “Of course, I know that the fact you’ve got nothing for me doesn’t prove you have nothing for yourself. You going on with it?”

“I am.”

“You’re not committed to Lew Frost to dig holes for anybody?”

“If I understand you—I think I do—I am not.”

Cramer stared at his worn-out cigar for a minute, then reached out and put it in the ashtray and felt in his pocket for a new one. He bit off the end and got the shreds off his tongue, socked his teeth into it again, and lit it. He puffed a thick cloud around him, got a new grip with his teeth, and settled back.

He said, “As conceited as you are, Wolfe, you told me once that I am better equipped to handle nine murder cases out of ten than you are.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah. So I’ve been keeping count, and this Lauck case is the tenth since that rubber band guy, old man Perry. It’s your turn again, so I’m glad you’re already in it without me having to shove you. I know; you don’t like to tell people things, not even Goodwin here. But since you’ve been up there, you might be willing to admit that you know how it happened. I understand that you’ve talked with McNair and the two girls who saw her eat it.”

Wolfe nodded. “I’ve heard the obvious details.”

“Okay. Obvious is right. I’ve gone over it ten times with those two. I’ve had sessions with everybody in the place. I’ve had twenty men out chasing after everyone who was there at the fashion show that day, and I’ve seen a couple of dozen of them myself. I’ve had half the force checking up all over town on sales of two-pound boxes of Bailey’s Royal Medley during the
past month, and the other half trying to trace purchases of potassium cyanide. I’ve sent two men out to Darby, Ohio, where Molly Lauck’s parents live. I’ve had shadows on ten or twelve people where it looked like there was a chance of a tie-up.”

“You see,” Wolfe murmured, “as I said, you are better equipped.”

“Go to hell. I use what I’ve got, and you know damn well I’m a good cop. But after these eight days, I don’t even know for sure whether Molly Lauck was killed by poison that was intended for someone else. What if the Frost girl and the Mitchell girl did it together? You couldn’t beat it for a set-up, and maybe they’re that clever. Knowing Molly Lauck liked to play jokes, maybe they planted it for her to swipe, or maybe they just gave it to her and then told their story. But why? That’s another item, I can’t find anyone who had any reason at all to want to kill her. It seems she was mellow in the pump about this Perren Gebert and he couldn’t see her, but there’s no evidence that she was making herself a nuisance to him.”

Wolfe murmured, “Mellow where?”

I put in, “Okay, boss. Soft-hearted.”

“Gebert was there that day, too.” Cramer went on, “but I can’t get anywhere with him on that. There hasn’t been another single nibble on motive,
if
the stuff was intended for Molly Lauck. In my opinion, it wasn’t. It looks like she really did swipe it. And the minute you take that theory, what have you got? You’ve got the ocean. There were over a hundred people there that day, and it might have been intended for any one of them, and any of them might have brought it. You can see what a swell lay-out that is. We’ve traced over three hundred sales of two-pound boxes of Bailey’s Royal Medley, and among that bunch
of humans that was there at the show we’ve uncovered enough grudges and jealousies and bad blood and biliousness to account for twenty murders. What do we do with it now? We file it.”

He stopped and chewed savagely on his cigar. I grinned at him: “Did you come here to inspect our filing system, Inspector? It’s a beaut.”

He growled at me, “Who asked you anything? I came here because I’m licked. What do you think of that? Did you ever hear me say that before? And no one else.” He turned to Wolfe. “When I heard you were up there today, of course I didn’t know for who or what, but I thought to myself, now the fur’s going to fly. Then I thought I might as well drop in and you might give me a piece as a souvenir. I’ll take anything I can get. This is one of those cases that can’t cool off, because the damn newspapers keep the heat turned on indefinitely, and I don’t mean only the tabloids. Molly Lauck was young and beautiful. Half of the dames that were there at the show that day are in the Social Register. H. R. Cragg was there himself, with his wife, and so on. The two girls that saw her die are also young and beautiful. They won’t let it cool off, and every time I go into the Commissioner’s office he beats the arm of his chair. You’ve seen him do that right here in your own office.”

Wolfe nodded. “Mr. Hombert is a disagreeable noise. I’m sorry I have nothing for you, Mr. Cramer, I really am.”

“Yeah, I am too. But you can do this, anyhow: give me a push. Even if it’s in the wrong direction and you know it.”

“Well … let’s see.” Wolfe leaned back with his eyes half closed. “You are blocked on motive. You can find none as to Miss Lauck, and too many in other
directions. You can’t trace the purchase either of the candy or the poison. In fact, you have traced or found nothing whatever, and you are without a starting-point. But you do really have one; have you used it?”

Cramer stared. “Have I used what?”

“The one thing that is indubitably connected with the murder. The box of candy. What have you done about that?”

“I’ve had it analyzed, of course.”

“Tell me about it.”

Cramer tapped ashes into the tray. “There’s not much to tell. It was a two-pound box that’s on sale pretty well all over town, at druggists and branch stores, put up by Bailey of Philadelphia, selling at a dollar sixty. They call it Royal Medley, and there’s a mixture in it, fruits, nuts, chocolates, and so on. Before I turned it over to the chemist I got Bailey’s factory on the phone and asked if all Royal Medley boxes were uniform. They said yes, they were packed strictly to a list, and they read the list to me. Then for a check I sent out for a couple of boxes of Royal Medley and spread them out and compared them with the list. Okay. By doing the same with the box Molly Lauck ate from, I found that three pieces were gone from it: candied pineapple, a candied plum, and a Jordan almond. That agreed with the Mitchell girl’s story.”

Wolfe nodded. “Fruits, nuts, chocolates—were there any caramels?”

“Caramels?” Cramer stared at him. “Why caramels?”

“No reason. I used to like them.”

Cramer grunted. “Don’t try to kid me. Anyhow, there aren’t any caramels in a Bailey’s Royal Medley. That’s too bad, huh?”

“Perhaps. It certainly decreases the interest, for
me. By the way, these details regarding the candy—have they been published? Has anyone been told?”

“No. I’m telling you. I hope you can keep a secret. It’s the only one we’ve got.”

“Excellent. And the chemist?”

“Sure, excellent, and what has it got me? The chemist found that there was nothing wrong with any of the candy left in the box, except four Jordan almonds in the top layer. The top layer of a Royal Medley box has five Jordan almonds in it, and Molly Lauck had eaten one. Each of the four had more than six grains of potassium cyanide in it.”

“Indeed. Only the almonds were poisoned.”

“Yeah, it’s easy to see why they were picked. Potassium cyanide smells and tastes like almonds, only more so. The chemist said they would taste strong, but not enough to scare you off if you liked almonds. You know Jordan almonds? They’re covered with hard candy of different colors. Holes had been bored in them, or picked in, and filled with the cyanide, and then coated over again so that you’d hardly notice it unless you looked for it.” Cramer hunched up his shoulders and dropped them again. “You say the box of candy was a starting-point? Well, I started, and where am I? I’m sitting here in your office telling you I’m licked, with that damn Goodwin pup there grinning at me.”

“Don’t mind Mr. Goodwin. Archie, don’t badger him! But, Mr. Cramer, you didn’t start; you merely made the preparations for starting. It may not be too late. If, for instance …”

Wolfe, leaning back, closed his eyes, and I saw the almost imperceptible movements of his lips—out and in, a pause, and out and in again. Then again …

Cramer looked at me and lifted his brows. I nodded and told him. “Sure, it’ll be a miracle, wait and see.”

Wolfe muttered, “Shut up, Archie.”

Cramer glared at me and I winked at him. Then we just sat. If it had gone on long I would have had to leave the room for a bust, because Cramer was funny. He sat cramped, afraid to make a movement so as not to disturb Wolfe’s genius working; he wouldn’t even knock the ashes off his cigar. I’ll say he was licked. He kept glaring at me to show he was doing something.

Finally Wolfe stirred, opened his eyes, and spoke. “Mr. Cramer. This is just an invitation to luck. Can you meet Mr. Goodwin at nine o’clock tomorrow morning at Mr. McNair’s place, and have with you five boxes of that Royal Medley?”

“Sure. Then what?”

“Well … try this. Your notebook, Archie?”

I flipped to a fresh page.

Three hours later, after dinner, at ten o’clock that night, I went over to Broadway and hunted up a box of Bailey’s Royal Medley, and sat in the office until midnight with my desk covered with pieces of candy, memorizing a code.

A
t three minutes to nine the following morning, Wednesday, as I rolled the roadster to a stop on 52nd Street, in a nice open space evidently kept free by special police orders, I was feeling a little sorry for Nero Wolfe. He loved to stage a good scene and get an audience sitting on the edge of their chairs, and here was this one, his own idea, taking place a good mile from his plant rooms and his oversized chair. But, stepping onto the sidewalk in front of Boyden McNair Incorporated, I merely shrugged my shoulders and thought to myself, Well-a-day, you fat son-of-a-gun, you can’t be a homebody and see the world too.

I walked across to the entrance, where the uniformed McNair doorman was standing alongside a chunky guy with a round red face and a hat too small for him pushed back on his forehead. As I reached for the door this latter moved to block me.

He put an arm out. “Excuse me, sir. Are you here by request? Your name, please?” He brought into view a piece of paper with a typewritten list on it.

I gazed down my nose at him. “Look here, my man. It was I who made the requests.”

He squinted at me. “Yeah? Sure. The inspector says, nothing for you boys here. Beat it.”

Naturally I would have been sore anyhow at being taken for a reporter, but what made it worse was that I had taken the trouble to put on my suit of quiet brown with a faint tan stripe, a light tan shirt, a green challis four-in-hand and my dark green soft-brim hat. I said to him: