Part 13 (1/2)

Can I tell Wolfe when you're coming back, in case he wants you?”

He said probably tomorrow, he had to Iprepare drawings to submit to Mr.

Allenby, and I thanked him for nothing and went out to seek the air and a streetcar to North Philadelphia.

The train ride back to New York, in a smoker filled with the discard from a hundred pairs of a.s.sorted lungs, was not what I needed to cheer me up. I couldn't think up anything to keep me awake, and I couldn't go to sleep. We pulled in at the Pennsylvania Station at midnight, and I walked home.

The office was dark; Wolfe had gone to bed. There was no note for me on my desk, so nothing startling had happened. I got a pitcher of milk from the refrigerator I and went upstairs. Wolfe's room was on * the same floor as mine; mine overlooking Thirty-fifth Street, and his in the rear. I thought possibly he was still awake and

would like to hear the joyous news, so I I went towards the back of the hall to see if there was light under his door not going close, for when he went to bed there was a switch he turned on, and if anyone stepped within eight feet of his door or touched any of his windows a gong went f off in my room that was enough to paralyze you. The slit under his door was * , I .J^l dark, so I went on with my milk, and drank it while I was getting ready for bed.

Friday morning, after breakfast, I was still sitting in the office at eight-thirty. I sat there, first because I was sour on the Hibbard search anyway, and second because I was going to wait until nine o'clock and see Wolfe as soon as he got to the plant-rooms. But at eight-thirty the inside phone buzzed and I got on. It was Wolfe from his bedroom. He asked me if I had had a pleasant journey. I told him that all it would have needed to make it perfect was Dora Chapin for company. He asked if Mr. Farrell had remembered what typewriter he had used.

I told him. ”A thing at the Harvard Club, in a little room off the smokingroom.

It seems that the members all play tunes on it whenever the spirit moves them. The good thing about this is that it narrows it down, it rules out all Yale men and other roughnecks. You can see Chapin wanted to make it as simple as Possible.”

I Wolfe's low murmur was in my ear: ”Excellent.”

”Yeah. One of the facts you wanted.

Swell.”

”No, Archie. I mean it. This will do

nicely. I told you, proof will not be needed in this case, facts will do for us.

But we must be sure beyond peradventure I of the facts. Please find someone willing to favor us who is a member of the Harvard Club not one of our present clients. Perhaps Albert Wright would do; if not him, find someone. Ask him to go to the club this morning and take you as a

guest. On that typewriter make a copy no. Not that. There must be no hole for Mr. Chapin to squirm through, should he prove more difficult than I antic.i.p.ate. In spite of his infirmity, he is probably capable of carrying a typewriter. Do this: after making arrangements for a host,

purchase a new typewriter any good one, follow your fancy and take it with you to the club. Bring away the one that is there and leave the new one; manage it as you please, by arrangement with the steward, by prestidigitation, whatever suggests itself. With, however, the knowledge of your host, for he must be qualified to furnish corroboration, at any future time, as to the ident.i.ty of the machine you remove. Bring it here.” ^A new typewriter costs one hundred dollars.” I know that. It is not necessary to speak of it.” ^Okay.”

I hung up and reached for the telephone book. N That was how it happened that at ten o'clock that Friday morning I sat in the smoking-room of the Harvard Club with Albert Wright, a vice-president of Eastern Electric, drinking vermouth, with a typewriter under a s.h.i.+ny rubberized cover on the floor at my feet. Wright had been very nice, as he should have been, since about all he owed to Wolfe was his wife and family. That was one of the neatest blackmailing cases... but let it rest. It was true that he had paid Wolfe's bill, which hadn't been modest, but what I've seen of wives and families has convinced ”^ that they can't be paid for in cash; I either they're way above any money price ^hat could be imagined or they're clear out of sight in the other direction. Anyway, Wright had been nice about it. I was saying: ”This is it. It's that typewriter in there that I showed you the number of and had you put a scratch under it. Mr. Wolfe wants it.”

Wright raised his brows. I went on: ”Of course you don't care why, but if you do maybe he'll tell you some day. The real reason is that he's fond of culture and he don't like to see the members of a swell organization like the Harvard Club using a piece of junk like that in there. I've got a brand new Underwood.” I touched it with my toe. I just brought it, it's a new standard machine. I take it in there and leave it, and bring away the junk, that's _ all. If anyone sees me I am unconcerned.

It's just a playful lark; the club gets what it needs and Mr. Wolfe gets what he wants.”

Wright, smiling, sipped his vermouth. (I hesitate chiefly because you had me mark the junk for identification. I would do about anything for Nero Wolfe, but I would dislike getting in a mess and having ^L the club dragged in too, perhaps. I suppose you couldn't offer any guarantees on that score?”

I shook my head. ”No guarantees, but knowing how Mr. Wolfe is arranging this charade I'd take you on a thousand to one.” ^ Wright sat a minute and looked at me, and then smiled again. ”Well, I have to get back to the office. Go on with your lark. I'll wait here.”

There was nothing to it. I picked up the Underwood and walked into the alcove with it and set it down on the desk. The public stenographer was there only ten feet away, brus.h.i.+ng up his machine, but I merely got too nonchalant even to glance at him. I pulled the junk aside and transferred the s.h.i.+ny cover to it, put the new one in its place, and picked up the Junk and walked out. Wright got up from his chair and walked beside me to the elevator.

On the sidewalk, at the street entrance, Bright shook hands with me. He wasn't smiling; I guessed from the look on his face that his mind had gone back four years to another time we shook hands. He said, ”Give Nero Wolfe my warmest regards, and tell him they will still be warm even if I get kicked out of the Harvard Club for helping to steal a typewriter.”

I grinned. ”Steal my eye, it nearly broke my heart to leave that new Underwood there.”

I carried my loot to where I had parked the roadster on Forty-fifth Street, put it on the seat beside me, and headed downtown. Having it there made me feel like we were getting somewhere. Not that I knew where, but Wolfe either did or thought he did. I didn't very often get really squeamish about Wolfe's calculations; I worried, all right, and worked myself into a stew when it seemed to me that he was overlooking a point that was apt to trip us up, but down in my heart I nearly always knew that anything he was missing would turn out in the end to be something we didn't need. In this case I wasn't so sure, and what made me not so sure was that d.a.m.n cripple. There was something in the way the others spoke about him, in the way he looked and acted that Monday night, in the way those warnings sounded, that gave me an uneasy idea that for once Wolfe might be underrating a guy. That wasn't like him, for he usually had a pretty high opinion of the people whose fate he was interfering with. I was thinking that maybe the mistake he had made in this case was in reading Chapin's books. He had definite opinions about literary merit, and possibly having rated the books pretty low, he had done the same for the man who wrote them. If he was rating Chapin low, I was all ready to fall in on the other side. For instance, here beside me was the typewriter on which the warnings had been written, all three of them, no doubt about it, and it was a typewriter to which Paul Chapin had had easy and constant access, but there was no way in the world of proving that he had done it. Not only that, it was a typewriter to which most of the other Persons connected with the business had *had access too. No, I thought, as far as Writing those warnings went, nearly -anything you might say about Chapin would be underrating him.

When I got to the house it wasn't eleven o'clock yet. I carried the typewriter to the hall and put it down on the stand while I removed my hat and coat. There was another hat and coat there; I looked at 1 them; they weren't FarrelPs; I didn't recognize them. I went to the kitchen to ask Fritz who the visitor was, but he wasn't there, upstairs probably, so I went back and got the typewriter and took it to the office. But I didn't get more than six feet inside the door before I stopped.

Sitting there turning over the pages of a book, with his stick leaning against the arm of his chair, was Paul Chapin.

Something I don't often do, I went tongue-tied. I suppose it was because I * had under my arm the typewriter he had * written his poems on, though certainly he couldn't recognize it under the cover. But he could tell it was a typewriter. I stood and stared at him. He glanced up and informed me politely: ^I'm waiting for Mr. Wolfe.” He turned another page in the book, and I saw it was Devil Take the Hindmost, A.

the one Wolfe had marked things in. I said: ”Does he know you're here?”

”Oh yes. His man told him some time ago. I've been here,” he glanced at his wrist, ”half an hour.”

There hadn't been any sign of his noticing what I was carrying. I went over and put it down on my desk and shoved it to the back edge. I went to Wolfe's desk and glanced through the envelopes of the morning mail, the corner of my eye telling me that Chapin was enjoying his book. I brushed off Wolfe's blotter and twisted his fountain pen around. Then I got sore, because I realized that I wasn't inclined to go and sit at my desk, and the reason was that it would put me with my back to Paul Chapin. So I went there and got into my chair and got some plant records from the drawer and began looking at them. It was a d.a.m.n funny experience; I don't know what it was about that cripple that got under my skin so. Maybe he was magnetic. I actually had to clamp my jaw ^ keep from turning around to look at him, and while I was trying to laugh it off ^eas kept flas.h.i.+ng through my mind such as whether he had a gun and if so was it the one with the hammer nose filed down.

I had a good deal stronger feeling of Paul Chapin, behind me, than I've had of lots of people under my eyes and sometimes under my hands too.

I flipped the pages of the record book, and I didn't turn around until Wolfe came I in.

I had many times seen Wolfe enter the office when a visitor was there waiting for him, and I watched him to see if he would

vary his common habit for the sake of any effect on the cripple. He didn't. He stopped inside the door and said, ”Good morning, Archie.” Then he turned to Chapin and his trunk and head went forward an inch and a half from the * perpendicular, in a sort of mammoth

elegance. ”Good morning, sir.” He proceeded to his desk, fixed the orchids in the vase, sat down, and looked through the mail. He rang for Fritz, took out his pen and tried it on the scratch pad, and when Fritz came nodded for beer. He * looked at me: ”You saw Mr. Wright? Your errand fl was successful?”

”Yes, sir. In the bag.”

”Good. If you would please move a chair up for Mr. Chapin. If you would be so good, sir? For either amenities or hostilities, the distance is too great. Come closer.” He opened a bottle of beer.

Chapin got up, grasped his stick, and hobbled over to the desk. He paid no attention to the chair I placed for him, nor to me, but stood there leaning on his stick, his flat cheeks pale, his lips showing a faint movement like a race horse not quite steady at the barrier, his lightcolored eyes betraying neither life nor death neither the quickness of the one nor the gla.s.sy stare of the other. I got at my desk and shuffled my pad in among a pile of papers, ready to take my notes while pretending to do something else, but Wolfe shook his head at me. ”Thank you, Archie, it will not be necessary.”

The cripple said, ”There need be neither amenities nor hostilities. I've come for my box.”

”Ah! Of course. I might have known.” ^oife had turned on his gracious tone.

”If you wouldn't mind, Mr. Chapin, may I ask how you knew I had it?”

”You may ask.” Chapin smiled. ”Any man's vanity will stand a pat on the back, won't it, Mr. Wolfe? I inquired for my package where I had left it, and was told I it was not there, and learned of the ruse by which it had been stolen. I reflected, and it was obvious that the likeliest thief was you. You must believe me, this is not flattery, I really did come to you first.”

”Thank you. I do thank you.” Wolfe, having emptied a gla.s.s, leaned back and got comfortable. ”I am considering this shouldn't bore you, since words are the tools of your trade I am considering the comical and tragical scantiness of all vocabularies. Take, for example, the procedure by which you acquired the

contents of that box, and I got the box and all; both our actions were, by definition, stealing, and both of us are thieves; words implying condemnation and contempt, and yet neither of us would concede that he has earned them. So much ,r for words but of course you know that, since you are a professional.” fl ”You said contents. You haven't opened the box.”

”My dear sir! Could Pandora herself have resisted such a temptation?”

”You broke the lock.”

”No. It is intact. It is simple, and surrendered easily.”

”And... you opened it. You probably...” He stopped and stood silent. His voice had gone thin on him, but I couldn't see that his face displayed any feeling at all, not even resentment. He continued, ”In that case... I don't want it. I don't want to see it. But that's preposterous. Of course I want it. I must have it.” ” Wolfe, looking at him with half-closed eyes, motionless, said nothing. That lasted for seconds. All of a sudden Chapin demanded, suddenly hoa.r.s.e: I ”d.a.m.n you, where is it?”

Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. ”Mr.

Chapin. Sit down.”

”No.”

”Very well. You can't have the box. I intend to keep it.”

Still there was no change on the cripple's face. I didn't like him, but I was admiring him. His light-colored eyes had kept straight into Wolfe's, but now they moved; he glanced aside at the chair I had placed for him, firmed his hand on the crook of his stick, and limped three steps i and sat down. He looked at Wolfe again and said: ”For twenty years I lived on pity. I don't know if you are a sensitive man, I don't know if you can guess what a diet like that would do. I despised it, but I lived on it, because a hungry man takes what he can get. Then I found something else to sustain me. I got a measure of pride in achievement, I ate bread that I earned, I threw away the stick that I needed to walk with, one that had been * given me, and bought one of my own. Mr. * Wolfe, I was done with pity. I had swallowed it to the extreme of toleration. I was sure that, whatever gestures I might be brought, foolishly or desperately, to accept from my fellow creatures, it would never again be pity.” n j He stopped. Wolfe murmured, ”Not sure. Not sure unless you carried death ready at hand.”

”Right. I learn that today. I seem to have acquired a new and active antipathy to death.”

”And as regards pity...” I need it. I ask for it. I discovered an hour ago that you had got my box, and I have been considering ways and means. I can see no other way to get it than to plead with you. Force” he smiled the smile that his eyes ignored ”is not feasible. The force of law is of course, under the circ.u.mstances, out of the question. Cunning I have no cunning, except with words. There is no way but to call upon your pity. I do so, I plead with you. The box is mine by purchase. The contents are mine by... by sacrifice. By purchase I can say, though not with money. I ask you to give it back to me.” j ”Well. What plea have you to offer?”