The locksmith soaked me $8.80 for eleven keys. That was about double the market, but I didn’t bother to squawk because I knew why: he was still collecting for a kind of a lie he had told a homicide dick six years ago at my suggestion. I think he figured that he and I were fellow crooks and therefore should divvy.
Even with keys it might have taken a little maneuvering if Louis Rony had lived in an apartment house with a doorman and elevator man, but as it was there was nothing to it. The address on East Thirty-seventh Street was an old five-story building that had been done over in good style, and in the downstairs vestibule was a row of mailboxes, push buttons, and perforated circles for reception on the speaking tube. Rony’s name was at the right end, which meant the top floor. The first key I tried was the right one, and Saul and I entered, went to the self-service elevator, and pushed the button marked 5. It was the best kind of setup for an able young man with a future like Rony, who had probably had visitors of all kinds at all hours.
Upstairs it was the second key I tried that worked. Feeling that I was the host, in a way, I held the door open for Saul to precede me and then followed him in. We were at the center of a hall, not wide and not very long. Turning right, toward the street front, we stepped into a fairly large room with modern furniture that matched, bright-colored rugs that had been cleaned not long ago, splashy colored pictures on the walls, a good supply of books, and a fireplace.
“Pretty nice,” Saul remarked, sending his eyes around. One difference between Saul and me is that I sometimes have to look twice at a thing to be sure I’ll never lose it, but once will always do for him.
“Yeah,” I agreed, putting my briefcase on a chair. “I understand the tenant has given it up, so maybe you could rent it.” I got the rubber gloves from the briefcase and handed him a pair. He started putting them on.
“It’s too bad,” he said, “you didn’t keep that membership card Sunday night when you had your hands on it. It would have saved trouble. That’s what we want, is it?”
“It’s our favorite,” I began on the second glove. “We would buy anything that looks interesting, but we’d love a souvenir of the American Communist party. The best bet is a safe of some kind, but we won’t hop around.” I motioned to the left. “You take that side.”
It’s a pleasure to work with Saul because I can concentrate completely on my part and pay no attention to him. We both like a searching job, when it’s not the kind where you have to turn couches upside down or use a magnifying glass, because when you’re through you’ve got a plain final answer, yes or no. For that room, on which we spent a good hour, it was no. Not only was there no membership certificate, there was nothing at all that was worth taking home to Wolfe. The only thing resembling a safe was a locked bond box, which one of the keys fitted, in a drawer of the desk, and all that it contained was a bottle of fine liqueur Scotch, McCrae’s, half full. Apparently that was the one item he didn’t care to share with the cleaning woman. We left the most tedious part, flipping through the books, to the last, and did it together. There was nothing in any of them but pages.
“This bird trusted nobody,” Saul complained.
In our next objective, the bedroom, which was about half the size of the front room, Saul darted a glance around and said, “Thank God, no books.”
I agreed heartily. “We ought to always bring a boy along for it. Flipping through books is a hell of a way to earn a living for grownups.”
The bedroom didn’t take as long, but it produced as little. The further we went the more convinced I got that Rony had either never had a secret of any kind, or had had so many dangerous ones that no cut and dried precautions would do, and in view of what had happened to the plant rooms the choice was easy. By the time we finished with the kitchenette, which was about the size of Wolfe’s elevator, and the bathroom, which was much larger and spick-and-span, the bottle of Scotch locked in the bond box, hidden from the cleaning woman, struck me as pathetic — the one secret innocent enough to let into his home.
Thinking that that notion showed how broad-minded I was, having that kind of a feeling even for a grade A bastard like Rony, I thought I should tell Saul about it. The gloves were back in the briefcase and the briefcase under my arm, and we were in the hall, headed for the door, ready to leave. I never got the notion fully explained to Saul on account of an interruption. I was just reaching for the doorknob, using my handkerchief, when the sound of the elevator came, stopping at that floor, and then its door opening. There was no question as to which apartment someone was headed for because there was only one to a floor. There were steps outside, and the sound of a key being inserted in the lock, but by the time it was turned and the door opened Saul and I were in the bathroom, with its door closed to leave no crack, but unlatched.
A voice said, not too loud, “Anybody here?” It was Jimmy Sperling.
Another voice said, lower but with no sign of a tremble in it, “Are you sure this is it?” It was Jimmy’s mother.
“Of course it is,” Jimmy said rudely. It was the rudeness of a guy scared absolutely stiff. “It’s the fifth floor. Come on, we can’t just stand here.”
Steps went to the front, to the living room. I whispered to Saul to tell him who they were, and added, “If they came after something they’re welcome to anything they find.”
I opened the door to a half-inch crack, and we stood and listened. They were talking and, judging from other sounds, they weren’t anything like as methodical and efficient as Saul and I had been. One of them dropped a drawer on the floor, and a little later something else hit that sounded more like a picture. Still later it must have been a book, and that was too much for me. If Saul and I hadn’t been so thorough it might have been worth while to wait it out, on the chance that they might find what they were after and we could ask them to show us before they left; but to stand there and let them waste their time going through those books when we had just flipped every one of them — it was too damn silly. So I opened the bathroom door, walked down the hall into the living room, and greeted them.
“Hello there!”
Some day I’ll learn. I thought I had Jimmy pretty well tagged. I have a rule never to travel around on homicide business without a shoulder holster, but my opinion of Jimmy was such that I didn’t bother to transfer the gun to my pocket or hand. However, I have read about mothers protecting their young, and have also run across it now and then, and I might at least have been more alert. Not that a gun in my hand would have helped any unless I had been willing to slam it against her skull. Happening to be near the arch when I entered, she had only a couple of yards to come, just what she needed to get momentum.
She came at me like a hurricane, her hands straight for my face, screeching at the top of her voice, “Run run run!”
It didn’t make any sense, but a woman in that condition never does. Even if I had been alone, and she had been able to keep me busy enough long enough for her son to make a getaway, what of it? Since I was neither a killer nor a con, my only threat was the discovery that Jimmy was there, and since I had already seen him she couldn’t peel that off of me no matter how long her fingernails were. However, she tried, and her first wild rush got her in so close that she actually reached my face. Feeling the stinging little streak of one of her nails, I stiff-armed her out of range, and would merely have kept her off that way if it hadn’t been for Jimmy, who had been at the other side of the room when I entered. Instead of dashing in to support Mom’s attack, he was standing there by the table pointing a gun. At the sight of the gun, Saul, following me in, had stopped just inside the arch to think it over, and I didn’t blame him, for Jimmy’s right hand, which held the gun, was anything but steady, which meant there was no way of telling what might happen next.
I lunged at Mom, and before she knew it she was hugged tight against me. She couldn’t even wriggle, though she tried. With my chin dug into her shoulder, I spoke to Jimmy.
“I can snap her in two, and don’t think I won’t. Do you want to hear her spine crack? Drop it. Just open your fingers and let it fall.”
“Run run run!” Mom was screeching as well as she could with me squeezing the breath out of her.
“Here we go,” I said. “It’ll hurt but it won’t last long.”
Saul walked over and tapped Jimmy’s wrist underneath, and the gun fell to the floor. Saul picked it up and backed off. Jimmy started for me. When the distance was right I threw his mother at him. Then she was in his arms instead of mine, and for the first time she saw Saul. The damn fool actually hadn’t known I wasn’t alone until then.
“Go look at your face,” Saul told me.
I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, and was sorry I had let her off so easy. It started just below my left eye and went straight down a good three inches. I dabbed cold water on it, looked for a styptic and found none, and took a damp towel back to the living room with me. Jimmy and Mom were at bay over by the table, and Saul, with Jimmy’s gun, was at ease near the arch.
I complained, “What for?” I demanded. “All I said was hello. Why the scratching and shooting?”
“He didn’t shoot,” Mrs. Sperling said indignantly.
I waved it aside. “Well, you sure scratched. Now we’ve got a problem. We can search your son all right, that’s easy, but how are we going to search you?”
“Try searching me,” Jimmy said. His voice was mean and his face was mean. I had tagged him as the one member of the family who didn’t count one way or another, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“Nuts,” I told him. “You’re sore because you didn’t have the guts to shoot, which shows how thick you are. Sit down on that couch, both of you.” I used the damp towel on my face. They didn’t move. “Will I have to come and sit you?”
Mom pulled at his arm and they went to the couch, sidewise, and sat. Saul dropped the gun in his pocket and took a chair.
“You startled us, Andy,” Mom said. “That was all. I was so startled I didn’t recognize you.”
It was a nice little touch that no man would ever have thought of. She was putting us back on our original basis, when I had been merely a welcome guest at her home.
I refused to revert. “My name’s Archie now, remember? And you’ve fixed me so that no one will recognize me. You certainly react strong to being startled.” I moved a chair and sat. “How did you get in here?”
“Why, with a key!”
“Where did you get it?”
“Why, we — we had one—”
“How did you get in?” Jimmy demanded.
I shook my head at him. “That won’t get you anywhere. I suppose you know that your father fired Mr. Wolfe. We now have another client, one of Rony’s associates. Do you want to make a point of this? Like calling a cop? I thought not. Where did you get the key?”
“None of your damn business!”
“I just told you,” Mom said reproachfully, “we had one.”
Having quit using logic on women the day I graduated from high school, I skipped that. “We have a choice,” I informed them. “I can phone the precinct and get a pair of city detectives here, a male and a female, to go over you and see what you came after, which would take time and make a stink, or you can tell us — by the way, I believe you haven’t met my friend and colleague, Mr. Saul Panzer. That’s him on the chair. Also by the way, don’t you ever go to the movies? Why don’t you wear gloves? You’ve left ten thousand prints all over the place. Or you can tell us where you got the key and what you came for — only it will have to be good. One reason you might prefer us is that we don’t really have to search you, because you were still looking, so you haven’t found it.”
They looked at each other.
“May I make a suggestion?” Saul inquired.
“Yes indeed.”
“Maybe they’d rather have us phone Mr. Sperling to ask—”
“No!” Mom cried.
“Much obliged,” I thanked Saul. “You remind me of Mr. Wolfe.” I returned to them. “Now it will have to be even better. Where did you get the key?”
“From Rony,” Jimmy muttered sullenly.
“When did he give it to you?”
“A long while ago. I’ve had it—”
“That’s a swell start,” I said encouragingly. “He had something here, or you thought he had, which you wanted so much that you two came here to get it the first possible chance after he died, but he gave you a key long ago so you could drop in for it someday while he was at his office. Mr. Panzer and I don’t care for that. Try another one.”
They exchanged glances.
“Why don’t you try this?” I suggested. “That you borrowed it from your younger sister, and—”
“You sonofabitch,” Jimmy growled, rising and taking a step. “No, I didn’t shoot, but by God—”
“You shouldn’t get nasty, Andy,” Mom protested.
“Then give us something better.” I had drawn my feet back for leverage in case Jimmy kept coming, but he didn’t. “Whatever it is, remember we can always check it with Mr. Sperling.”
“No you can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because he knows nothing about it! I’m just going to tell you the truth! We persuaded the janitor to lend us a key.”
“How much did it take to persuade him?”
“I offered — I gave him a hundred dollars. He’ll be downstairs in the hall when we go out, to see that we don’t take anything.”
“You got a bargain,” I declared, “unless he intends to frisk you. Don’t you think we ought to meet him, Saul?”
“Yes.”
“Then get him. Bring him up here.”
Saul went. As the three of us sat and waited Mom suddenly asked, “Does your face hurt, Andy?”
I thought of three replies, all good, but settled for a fourth because it was shortest.
“Yes,” I said.
When the outside door opened again I stood up, thinking that the janitor’s arrival would make it two to two, even not counting Mom, and he might be an athlete. But as soon as I saw him I sat down again. He was a welterweight, his expansion would have been not more than half of Madeline’s, and his eyes refused to lift higher than a man’s knees.
“His name’s Tom Fenner,” Saul informed me. “I had to take hold of him.”
I eyed him. He eyed my ankles. “Look,” I told him, “this can be short and simple. I represent an associate of Mr. Rony. As far as I know these people have done no harm here, and I’ll see that they don’t. I don’t like to get people into trouble if I don’t have to. Just show me the hundred bucks they gave you.”
“Jeez, I never saw a hundred bucks,” Fenner squeaked. “Why would they give me a hundred bucks?”
“To get a key to this apartment. Come on, let’s see it.”
“They never got a key from me. I’m in charge here. I’m responsible.”
“Quit lying,” Jimmy snapped.
“Here’s the key,” Mom said, displaying it. “You see, that proves it!”
“Give it here,” Fenner took a step. “Let me take a look at it.”
I reached for his arm and swiveled him. “Why drag it out? No matter how brave and strong you are, three of us could probably hold you while the lady goes through your pockets. Save time and energy, Mac. Maybe they planted it on you when you weren’t looking.”
He was so stubborn and game that his eyes got nearly as high as my knees before he surrendered. Then they dropped again, and his hand went into his pants pocket and emerged with a tight little roll between his fingers. I took it and unrolled it enough to see a fifty, two twenties, and a ten, and offered it back. That was the only time his eyes got higher; they came clear up to mine, wildly astonished.
“Take it and beat it,” I told him. “I just wanted a look. Wait a minute.” I went to get the key from Mom and handed that to him too. “Don’t lend it again without phoning me first. I’ll lock up when I leave.”
He was speechless. The poor goof didn’t have enough wits left even to ask my name.
When he had gone Saul and I sat down again. “You see,” I said genially, “we’re easily satisfied as long as we get the truth. Now we know how you got in. What did you come for?”
Mom had it ready and waiting, having been warned it was going to be required. “You remember,” she said, “that my husband thought Louis was a Communist.”
I said I did.
“Well, we still thought so — I mean, after what Mr. Wolfe told us Monday afternoon. We still thought so.”
“Who is we?”
“My son and I. We talked it over and we still thought so. Today when my husband told us that Mr. Wolfe didn’t believe what Webster said in his statement and it might mean more trouble about it, we thought if we came here and found something to prove that Louis was a Communist and showed it to Mr. Wolfe, then it would be all right.”
“It would be all right,” I asked, “because if he was a Communist Mr. Wolfe wouldn’t care who or what killed him? Is that it?”
“Of course, don’t you see?”
I asked Saul, “Do you want it?”
“Not even as a gift,” he said emphatically.
I nodded. I switched to Jimmy. “Why don’t you take a stab at it? The way your mother’s mind works makes it hard for her. What have you got to offer?”
Jimmy’s eyes still looked mean. They were straight at mine. “I think,” he said glumly, “that I was a boob to stumble in here like this.”
“Okay. And?”
“I think you’ve got us, damn you.”
“And?”
“I think we’ve got to tell you the truth. If we don’t—”
“Jimmy!” Mom gripped his arm. “ Jimmy!”
He ignored her. “If we don’t you’ll only think it’s something worse. You brought my sister’s name into this, insinuating she had a key to this apartment. I’d like to push that down your throat, and maybe I will some day, but I think we’ve got to tell you the truth, and I can’t help it if it concerns her. She wrote him some letters — not the kind you might think — but anyhow my mother and I knew about them and we didn’t want them around. So we came here to get them.”
Mom let go of his arm and beamed at me. “That was it!” she said eagerly. “They weren’t really bad letters, but they were — personal. You know?”
If I had been Jimmy I would have strangled her. The way he had told it, at least it wasn’t incredible, but her gasping at him when he said he was going to tell the truth, and then reacting that way when he went on to tell it, was enough to make you wonder how she ever got across a street. However, I met her beam with a deadpan. From the expression of Jimmy’s eyes I doubted if another squeeze would produce more juice, and if not, it ought to be left that their truth was mine. So my deadpan was replaced with a sympathetic grin.
“About how many letters?” I asked Jimmy, just curious.
“I don’t know exactly. About a dozen.”
I nodded. “I can see why you wouldn’t want them kicking around, no matter how innocent they were. But either he destroyed them or they’re some place else. You won’t find them here. Mr. Panzer and I have been looking for some papers — nothing to do with your sister or you — and we know how to look. We had just finished when you arrived, and you can take it from me that there’s no letter from your sister here — let alone a dozen. If you want me to sign a statement on that I’d be glad to.”
“You might have missed them,” Jimmy objected.
“ You might,” I corrected him. “Not us.”
“The papers you were looking for — did you find them?”
“No.”
“What are they?”
“Oh, just something needed for settling his affairs.”
“You say they don’t concern — my family?”
“Nothing to do with your family as far as I know.” I stood up. “So I guess that ends it. You leave empty-handed and so do we. I might add that there will be no point in my reporting this to Mr. Sperling, since he’s no longer our client and since you seem to think it might disturb him.”
“That’s very nice of you, Andy,” Mom said appreciatively. She arose to come to inspect me. “I’m so sorry about your face!”
“Don’t mention it,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have startled you. It’ll be okay in a couple of months.” I turned. “You don’t want that gun, do you, Saul?”
Saul took it from his pocket, shook the cartridges into his palm, and went to Jimmy and returned his property.
“I don’t see,” Mom said, “why we can’t stay and look around some more, just to make sure about those letters.”
“Oh, come on,” Jimmy said rudely.
They went.
Saul and I followed soon after. On our way down in the elevator he asked, “Did any of that stick at all?”
“Not on me. You?”
“Nope. It was hard to keep my face straight.”
“Do you think I should have kept on trying?”
He shook his head. “There was nothing to pry him loose with. You saw his eyes and his jaw.”
Before leaving I had gone to the bathroom for another look at my face, and it was a sight. But the blood had stopped coming, and I don’t mind people staring at me if they’re female, attractive, and between eighteen and thirty; and I had another errand in that part of town. Saul went with me because there was a bare possibility that he could help. It’s always fun to be on a sidewalk with him because you know you are among those present at a remarkable performance. Look at him and all you see is just a guy walking along, but I honestly believe that if you had shown him any one of those people a month later and asked him if he had ever seen that man before, it would have taken him not more than five seconds to reply, “Yes, just once, on Wednesday, June twenty-second, on Madison Avenue between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets.” He has got me beat a mile.
As it turned out he wasn’t needed for the errand. The building directory on the wall of the marble lobby told us that the offices of Murphy, Kearfot and Rony were on the twenty-eighth floor, and we took the express elevator. It was the suite overlooking the avenue, and everything was up to beehive standard. After one glance I had to reconsider my approach because I hadn’t expected that kind of a setup. I told the receptionist, who was past my age limit and looked good and tough, that I wanted to see a member of the firm, and gave my name, and went to sit beside Saul on a leather couch that had known a million fannies. Before long another one, a good match for the receptionist only older, appeared to escort me down a hall and into a corner room with four big double windows.
A big broad-shouldered guy with white hair and deep-set blue eyes, seated at a desk even bigger than Wolfe’s, got up to shake hands with me.
“Archie Goodwin?” he rumbled cordially, as if he had been waiting for this for years. “From Nero Wolfe’s office? A pleasure. Sit down. I’m Aloysius Murphy. What can I do for you?”
Not having mentioned any name but mine to the receptionist, I felt famous. “I don’t know,” I told him, sitting. “I guess you can’t do anything.”
“I could try.” He opened a drawer. “Have a cigar.”
“No, thanks. Mr. Wolfe has been interested in the death of your junior partner, Louis Rony.”
“So I understand.” His face switched instantly from smiling welcome to solemn sorrow. “A brilliant career brutally snipped as it was bursting into flower.”
That sounded to me like Confucius, but I skipped it. “A damn shame,” I agreed. “Mr. Wolfe has a theory that the truth may be holding out on us.”
“I know he has. A very interesting theory.”
“Yeah, he’s looking into it a little. I guess I might as well be frank. He thought there might be something around Rony’s office — some papers, anything — that might give us a hint. The idea was for me to go and look. For instance, if there were two rooms and a stenographer in one of them, I could fold her up — probably gag her and tie her — if there was a safe I could stick pins under her nails until she gave me the combination — and really do a job. I brought a man along to help, but even with two of us I don’t see how we can—”
I stopped because he was laughing so hard he couldn’t hear me. You might have thought I was Bob Hope and had finally found a new one. When I thought it would reach him I protested modestly, “I don’t deserve all that.”
He tapered off to a chuckle. “I should have met you long ago,” he declared. “I’ve been missing something. I want to tell you, Archie, and you can tell Wolfe, you can count on us here — all of us — for anything you want.” He waved a hand. “The place is yours. You won’t have to stick pins in us. Louis’s secretary will show you anything, tell you anything — all of us will. We’ll do everything we can to help you get at the truth. For a high-minded man truth is everything. Who scratched your face?”
He was getting on my nerves. He was so glad to have met me at last, and was so anxious to help, that it took me a full five minutes to break loose and get out of the room, but I finally made it.
I marched back to the reception room, beckoned to Saul, and, as soon as we were outside the suite, told him, “The wrong member of the firm got killed. Compared to Aloysius Murphy, Rony was the flower of truth.”