Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Too Many Women Read online

  Too Many Women A Nero Wolfe Mystery

  by Rex Stout

  CHAPTER One

  It was the same old rigmarole. Sometimes I found it amusing; sometimes it only bored me; sometimes it gave me a pronounced pain, especially when I had had more of Wolfe than was good for either of us.

  This time it was fairly funny at first, but it developed along regrettable lines. Mr. Jasper Pine, president of Naylor-Kerr, Inc., 914 William Street, down where a thirty-story building is a shanty, wanted Nero Wolfe to come to see him about something. I explained patiently, all about Wolfe being too lazy, too big and fat, and too much of a genius, to let himself be evoked. When Mr. Pine phoned again, in the afternoon, he insisted on speaking to Wolfe himself, and Wolfe made it short, sour, and final. An hour later, after Wolfe had gone up to the plant rooms, just to pass the time I dialed the number of Naylor-Kerr, Inc., managed to get through to Mr. Pine, and asked him why he didn’t come to see us.

  He snapped that he was too busy, and then he wanted to know, “Who are you?” I told him I was Archie Goodwin, the heart, liver, lungs, and gizzard of the private detective business of Nero Wolfe, Wolfe being merely the brains. He asked sarcastically if I was a genius too, and I told him no indeed, I was comparatively human.

  “I could run down now,” I said.

  “No.” He was curt but not discourteous. “I’m filled up for today. Come tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Better make it ten-fifteen.”

  CHAPTER Two

  Those pyramids of profit down in the Wall Street section, sticking straight up nine hundred feet and more, are tenanted by everything from one-room midgets to ten-floor super-giants. Though the name of Naylor-Kerr, Inc., was vaguely familiar to me, it was not a household word, and I lifted the brows when I learned from the lobby directory that it paid the rent for three whole floors.

  The executive offices were on the thirty-sixth, so up I went. The atmosphere up there was of thick carpets, wood panels, and plenty of space, but as for the receptionist, though she was not really miscast she was way past the deadline, having reached the age when it is more blessed to receive than to give.

  She received me at ten-fourteen, and at ten-nineteen I was escorted down a corridor to the office of the president. Naturally he had a corner room with batteries of big windows, but I had to admit that in spite of more panels and carpets and the kind of office furniture you see in Sloane’s window, it gave me the impression of a place where somebody got some work done.

  Mr. Jasper Pine was about the same age as the receptionist, a little short of fifty maybe, but on him it looked good. Except for his clothes, with the coat obviously cut for the stoop of his shoulders, he had more the appearance of a foreman or a job boss than a top executive of a big corporation. In the middle of the room he shook hands as if he were comparatively human too, and, instead of fencing himself off behind his desk, assigned us to a couple of comfortable chairs between two windows.

  “My morning’s a little crowded,” he told me in a deep voice that sounded as if all it needed was more breath to reach to Central Park, and he could furnish the breath when necessary. I was sizing him up, not knowing then whether the job was a lead pencil leak in the supply room, which would have been beneath our notice, or wife-tailing, which was out of bounds for Nero Wolfe. On the phone he had refused to specify.

  “So,” he was going on, “I’ll sketch it briefly. Looking over some reports recently, I noticed that our employee turnover here in the home office, exclusive of the technical staff, was over twenty-eight per cent for the year nineteen forty-six. That was excessive. I decided to look into it. As a first step I had a form drawn up and two thousand copies of it multigraphed, and sent a supply of it to all heads of departments, with instructions that one be filled out for each person who had left our employ during nineteen forty-six. The forms were to be returned direct to me. Here’s one that came from the head of the stock department.” He extended a hand with a paper in it. “Take a look at it.

  Read it through.” It was a single sheet, letter size, with a neat job of multigraphing on one side. At the top it said: RETURN TO THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT BY MARCH TENTH

  The blank spaces had been filled in with a typewriter. First came the name of the ex-employee, which in this case was Waldo Wilmot Moore. Age: 30. Unmarried.

  Home address: Hotel Churchill. Employment began: April 8,1946. Hired through: Applied personally. Job: Correspondence checker. Salary: $100 weekly. Rises: To $150 weekly September 30, 1946. Employment ended: December 5, 1946.

  Other spaces had been filled in, about how well he had done his job, and his relations with other employees and his immediate superiors, and so forth, and then at the bottom came what was of course the key question: Reason for ending of employment (give details). There was three inches of space after it, plenty of room for details, but for Waldo Wilmot Moore only one word had been thought necessary and there it was: Murdered.

  CHAPTER Three

  So apparently it wasn’t a lead pencil leak.

  I looked at Jasper Pine. “An excellent idea,” I said enthusiastically. “These reports will show you where the weak spots are, and you can take steps. Though Moore’s case was probably an exception. I don’t suppose many of the twenty-eight per cent got murdered. Incidentally, I keep track of murders for business reasons, and I don’t remember this one. Was it local?” Pine was shaking his head. “Moore was run over by a car, a hit-and-run driver—here in New York somewhere uptown. I believe that is called manslaughter, not murder, which requires malice aforethought. I’m not a lawyer, but I looked it up when this report—when I saw this.” He made a gesture of impatience. “The hit-and-run driver was not found. I want Nero Wolfe to find out if there is any basis for the supposition that it was murder.” “Just curiosity?” “No. I took it up with the head of the stock department, who made that report, because I didn’t think it desirable to have it in our files, stating that one of our employees had been murdered, unless that was actually the case. Also I wanted to know what reason he had, if any, to make that statement. He refused to give any reason. He agreed with my definition of murder and manslaughter, but he refused to change the report or to make another report using a different word or phrase. He insisted that the report is correct as it stands. He refused to elaborate. He refused to discuss it.” “Goodness.” I was impressed. “That ought to be a record. Four refuses to a corporation president from a mere head of a department! Who is he? Mr. Naylor?

  Or Mr. Kerr?” “His name is Kerr Naylor.” I thought for a second he was injecting comic relief, but the look on his face showed me quite the contrary. He was talking time out to light a cigarette, and it was easy to see that the purpose of the maneuver was to hide embarrassment.

  The president was unquestionably embarrassed.

  After a good puff he coughed explosively and explained, “Kerr Naylor is the son of one of the founders of this business. He was named Kerr after the other founder. He has had a—uh, varied career. Also he is my wife’s brother. He actually controls a large block of the corporation’s stock, but he no longer owns it because he gave it away. He refuses to be an officer of the company, and he refuses to serve on the Board of Directors.” “I see. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool refuser.” Pine made the gesture of impatience again. He did it with a little fling of a hand, and it was abrupt but not domineering. “As you see,” he said, “the situation is not simple. After Mr.

  Naylor’s refusal either to justify the report or to change it, I was inclined just to let the matter drop and merely destroy the report, but I mentioned it to two of my brother executives and to a member of the Board, and they were all of the opinion that i
t should be followed up. Besides that, news of the report, with that word on it, has got around among the employees of the department, presumably through the stenographer who typed it, and there is a lot of unhealthy gossip. This man Moore was the type—I’ll put it this way—he was the type that stirs up gossip in the circle he lives in, and now, nearly four months after his death, here he is stirring it up again. We don’t like it and we want it stopped.” “Oh. You said you wanted Mr. Wolfe to find out if there was any basis for using the word murdered. Now you want the gossip stopped. You’d better pick which.” “It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?” “Not necessarily. If we find out he was murdered and the finding percolates, the gossip gauge will go right through the ceiling, not to mention other possible results.” Pine glanced at his wristwatch, reached to an ash tray to ditch his cigarette, and stood up. “Damn it,” he said, with more breath but not more noise, “do I have to explain that the situation is made more complicated by the fact that it was Mr. Kerr Naylor who signed that report? This is a damn nuisance and it’s taking my time that ought to be spent working! His father, old George Naylor, is still living and is Chairman of the Board, though he turned over his stock to his children long ago. This is the oldest and largest company in its field, the largest in the world, and it has built up a reputation and a tradition. It has also built up—oh, complexities. The directors and executives now managing its affairs—of whom I am one— want this thing looked into, and I want to hire Nero Wolfe to do the looking.” “You mean the corporation? Wants to hire him?” “Certainly!” “To do what? Wait a minute, can I put it this way? We’re either to make that word on that report good, or we’re to make this Mr. Kerr Naylor eat it. Is that the job?” “Roughly, yes.” “Do we get credentials for around here?” “You get all reasonable co-operation. The details will have to be arranged with me. More time gone. It will have to be handled with discretion—and delicately. I had an idea that a way to do it would be for Nero Wolfe to get a job in the stock department, under another name of course, and he could — what’s the matter?” “Nothing. Excuse me.” I stood up. The notion of Wolfe fighting his way down to William Street every morning, or even with me driving him, and punching a time clock, and working all day in the stock department, had been too much for my facial control.

  “Okay,” I said, “I guess I know enough to put it up to Mr. Wolfe. Except about money. I ought to warn you that his charges have not joined in the postwar inflation because they were already so high that a boost would have been vulgar.” “This company never expects good work for low pay.” I told him that was fine and got my hat and coat.

  CHAPTER Four

  A coolness had sprung up between Wolfe and me. These coolnesses averaged about four a week, say, a couple of hundred a year. This particular one had two separate aspects: first, my natural desire for him to buy a new car opposed to his pigheaded determination to wait another year; and second, his notion of buying a noiseless typewriter opposed to my liking for the one we had.

  It happened that at that moment there were other coolnesses swirling around in the old brownstone house, on West Thirty-fifth Street not far from the Hudson River, which he owned and used both for a residence and an office. Four of us lived there, counting him, and we were all temporarily cool. Wolfe had somewhere picked up the idea of putting leaves of sweet basil in clam chowder, and Fritz Brenner, the cook and house manager, strongly disapproved. A guy in New Hampshire who was grateful to Wolfe for something had sent him an extra offering, three plants of a new begonia named Thimbleberry, and Wolfe had given them good bench space up in the cool room, and Theodore Horstmann, the plant nurse, who thought that everything that grew except orchids was a weed, was fit to be tied.

  So the atmosphere around the place was somewhat arctic, and on my way down in the elevator the thought struck me that this Naylor-Kerr or Kerr Naylor or Pine-Kerr Naylor business might be used as an excuse to go somewhere out of the cold for a few days. Why couldn’t it be me who got a job in the stock department? Grabbing a taxi from under the chins of two other prospective customers, I considered it. Just any job, one that happened to be loose, didn’t seem practical. A little friendly conversation with the elevator starter had informed me that the line of Naylor-Kerr, Inc., was Engineers’ Equipment and Supplies, and I knew all of nothing about them except maybe overalls. Anyway, the job would have to be one that would let me roam around and rub elbows, or it might take months, and I didn’t want months. It would be hard enough to maneuver Wolfe into letting me try it for a week, since he needed me every hour and might need me any minute, for anything and everything from opening the mail to bouncing unwanted customers or even shooting one, which had been known to happen.

  Liking the idea, and being afraid of the dark when it comes to anything resembling murder, I told the taxi driver I had had a vision and asked him to go to the address of the Homicide Squad on West Twentieth Street. There by good luck I found that Purley Stebbins, my favorite sergeant, was on hand, and he obligingly got what I wanted with only three or four growls. A phone call to a brother sergeant downtown brought the information that the death of Waldo Wilmot Moore had occurred around midnight on December 4. The body had been discovered by a man and wife on Thirty-ninth Street a hundred and twenty feet east of Eleventh Avenue. The wife had phoned in while the man stood by, and a radio car had arrived on the scene at one-nineteen A.M. on December 5. It was a DOA, dead on arrival, with Moore’s head crushed and his legs broken. The car that hit him had been found the next morning, parked on West Ninety-fifth Street near Broadway. It was hot, having been stolen the evening of the fourth from where it was parked on West Fifty-fourth Street. Its owner had been checked up and down and backwards and forwards, and was out of it. No witnesses to the accident had been found, but the post-mortem report, plus laboratory examination of various particles clinging to the tires and fender of the stolen car, had satisfied everybody as to what had happened. It was filed as a routine hit-and-run and was still open. After the phone call Purley went through a door, and came back in a couple of minutes and told me that Homicide still had it and was working on it.

  “Yeah,” I grinned at him, “I can imagine it—conferences, minute clues subjected to severe scrutiny, ten of your best men turning over stones all the way—” Purley pronounced a word. Having granted my slightest wish, he sneered, “Come and take my desk and do it. Now give. Who’s your client?” I shook my head. “About that noise you use for a voice, I know how you got it.

  Your mother had a longing for nutmeg graters when she was carrying you. It might be, say, an insurance company.” “Nuts. No insurance company pays Nero Wolfe prices. Who invited you in?” “Nothing for now.” I got erect. “Somebody had a dream, that’s all. If and when anything for the teeth is brought on, we’ll see that you get a bite. Much obliged, and give my love to your boss.” But I had a chance to do my own love-giving. On my way out there he was, striding in from the entrance, Inspector Cramer himself, concentrated and in a hurry.

  He saw me, stopped short, and demanded, “What do you want?” “Well, sir,” I said pleadingly, “I thought with my experience if you had a vacancy anywhere, I’d be willing to start as a patrolman and work my way—” “Natural-born clown,” he said personally. “Is it the Meredith case? Has Wolfe crashed the gate—” “No, sir, Mr. Wolfe would regard that as impertinent. As he was saying only yesterday, if ever Mr. Cramer—” He was on his way. I looked reproachfully at his broad manly back and then headed for the street.

  CHAPTER Five

  Seated at my desk in the office, I put the phone back in the cradle and told Nero Wolfe, “The bank says that Naylor-Kerr is good for anything up to twenty million.” Wolfe, seated behind his own desk, heaved a sigh and then was silent. I had given him the story complete, in a dry factual manner with no flavor or coloring on account of the coolness previously mentioned. His inclination, naturally, was to turn it down, since he was always annoyed at any hint of a prospect that he might have to use his bra
in, but I doubted if I would have to ride him hard on this because it looked like easy money and we could always use it.

  He sighed again.

  I spoke, still dry. “I suppose the best bet is that Pine killed Waldo Wilmot Moore himself and is keeping up appearances. What for being unknown to us, but surely not to everybody. Anyway, we would be paid by the corporation, not him.

  His suggestion that you get a job in the stock department under another name shows that he has given the problem a great deal of thought. You could call yourself Clarence Camembert, for instance, or Percy Pickerel. If they gave you too much to do you could bring things home and I’d be glad to help. They could pay you by weight—say, a dollar a pound a week. As you stand now, or at least sit, close to three hundred and forty pounds, it would come to an annual salary—” “Archie. Your notebook.” “Yes, sir.” I got it and flipped to a new page.

  “A letter to Mr. Pine, president and so on. Mr. Goodwin has reported his conversation this morning with you. I accept the job of investigating, on behalf of your company, the death of your former employee, Waldo Wilmot Moore. It is understood that the purpose of the investigation is to establish, with satisfactory evidence, the manner of his death—whether by accident or by the deliberate action, with intent, of some person or persons. The job does not, as I understand it, extend to the disclosure of the identity of the murderer—if there was a murder—nor to procurement of proof of guilt. Should such extension be desired, you may notify me. Paragraph.

  “The procedure promising quickest results, I think, will be for you to put Mr.

  Goodwin on the company payroll as a personnel expert. You can plausibly explain his presence as a part of your campaign to reduce your employee turnover. Thus he can spend his days there, moving freely about and conversing with anyone whomever, without causing comment or increasing the gossip you deplore. I suggest that you make his salary two hundred dollars weekly. Paragraph.