Black Orchids (10 page)

“Want it for your album?” I asked him.

He ignored that too. “There is nothing in the world,” he said, glaring at me as if I had sent him an anonymous letter, “as indestructible as human dignity. That woman makes money killing time for fools. With it she pays me for rooting around in mud. Half of my share goes for taxes which are used to make bombs to blow people to pieces. Yet I am not without dignity. Ask Fritz, my cook. Ask Theodore, my gardener. Ask you, my-“

“Right hand.”

“No.”

“Prime minister.”

“No.”

“Pal.”

“No!”

“Accomplice, flunkey, Secretary of War, hireling, comrade& ” He was on his way out to the elevator. I tossed the snapshot onto my desk and went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.

CORDIALLY INVITED TO MEET DEATH. Chapter 1

You’re late,” I told the girls reproachfully as I showed them into the office. “Mr. Wolfe supposed you would be here at six o’clock, when he comes down from the plant rooms, and it’s twenty after. Now he’s gone to the kitchen and started operations on some corned beef hash.”

They were sitting down and I was looking them over.

“You mean he’s eating corned beef hash?” Maryella Timms asked.

“No. That comes later. He’s concocting it.”

“It’s my fault,” Janet Nichols said. “I didn’t get back until after five, and I was in riding clothes and had to change. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t look much like a horseback rider. Not that she was built wrong, she had a fairly nice little body, with good hips, but her face was more of a subway face than a bridle-path face. Naturally I had been expecting something out of the ordinary, one way or another, since according to Bess Huddleston she was an anonymous letter writer and had thought up the Stryker dwarf and giant party, and to tell the truth I was disappointed. She looked more like a school teacher-or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she looked like what a school teacher looks like before the time comes that she absolutely looks like a school teacher and nothing else.

Maryella Timms, on the other hand, was in no way disappointing, but she was irritating. Her hair started far back above the slant of her brow, and that made her brow look even higher and broader than it was, and noble and spiritual. But her eyes were very demure, which didn’t fit. If you’re noble and spiritual you don’t have to be demure. There’s no point in being demure unless there’s something on your mind to be demure about. Besides, there was her accent. Cawned beef ha-a-sh. I am not still fighting the Civil War, and anyway my side won, but these Southern belles-if it sounds like a deliberate come-on to me then it does. I was bawn and braht up in the Nawth.

“I’ll see if I can pry him loose,” I said, and went to the hall and through to the kitchen.

The outlook was promising for getting Wolfe to come and attend to business, because he had not yet got his hands in the hash. The mixture, or the start of it, was there in a bowl on the long table, and Fritz, at one side of the table, and Wolfe, at the other, were standing there discussing it. They looked around at me as I would expect to be looked at if I busted into a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

“They’re here,” I announced. “Janet and Maryella.”

From the expression on his face as his mouth opened it was a safe bet that Wolfe was going to instruct me to tell them to come back tomorrow, but he didn’t get it out. I heard a door open behind me and a voice floated past:

“Ah heah yawl makin’ cawned beef ha-a-sh& “

That’s the last time I try to reproduce it.

The owner of the voice floated past me too, right up beside Wolfe. She leaned over to peer into the bowl.

“Excuse me,” she said, which I couldn’t spell the way

she said it anyhow, “but corned beef hash is one of my specialties. Nothing in there but meat, is there?”

“As you see,” Wolfe grunted.

“It’s ground too fine,” Maryella asserted.

Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz’s cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life’s toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone. To tone down the corned flavor and yet preserve its unique quality, to remove the curse of its dryness without making it greasy- the theories and experiments had gone on for years. He scowled at her, but he didn’t order her out.

“This is Miss Timms,” I said. “Mr. Wolfe. Mr. Brenner. Miss Nichols is in-“

“Ground too fine for what?” Wolfe demanded truculently. “This is not a tender fresh meat, with juices to lose-“

“Now you just calm down.” Maryella’s hand was on his arm. “It’s not ruined, only it’s better if it’s coarser. That’s far too much potatoes for that meat. But if you don’t have chitlins you can’t-“

“Chitlins!” Wolfe bellowed.

Maryella nodded. “Fresh pig chitlins. That’s the secret of it. Fried shallow in olive oil with onion juice-“

“Good heavens!” Wolfe was staring at Fritz. “I never heard of it. It has never occurred to me. Fritz? Well?”

Fritz was frowning thoughtfully. “It might go,” he conceded. “We can try it. As an experiment.”

Wolfe turned to me in swift decision. “Archie, call up Kretzmeyer and ask if he has pig chitlins. Two pounds.”

“You’d better let me help,” Maryella said. “It’s sort of tricky& “

That was how I came to get so well acquainted with Janet that first day. I thought I might as well have company driving down to the market for chitlins, and Maryella was glued to Wolfe, and as far as that’s concerned Wolfe was glued to her for the duration of the experiment, so I took Janet along. By the time we got back to the house I had decided she was innocent in more ways than one, though I admit that didn’t mean much, because it’s hard for me to believe that anyone not obviously a hyena could pull a trick like anonymous letters. I also admit there wasn’t much sparkle to her, and she seemed to be a little absent-minded when it came to conversation, but under the circumstances that wasn’t surprising, if she knew why she had been told to go to Nero Wolfe’s office, as she probably did.

I delivered the chitlins to the hash artists in the kitchen and then joined Janet in the office. I had been telling her about orchid hybridizing on the way back uptown, and when I went to my desk to get a stack of breeding cards I was going to show her, I noticed something was missing. So I gave her the cards to look at and excused myself and returned to the kitchen, and asked Wolfe if anyone had been in the office during my absence. He was standing beside Maryella, watching Fritz arrange the chitlins on a cutting board, and all I got was a growl.

“None of you left the kitchen?” I insisted.

“No,” he said shortly. “Why?”

“Someone ate my lollipop,” I told him, and left him with his playmates and returned to the office. Janet was sitting with the cards in her lap, going through them. I stood in front of her and inquired amiably:

“What did you do with it?”

She looked up at me. That way, with her head tilted up, from that angle, she looked kind of pretty.

“What did I-what?”

“That snapshot you took from my desk. It’s the only picture I’ve got of you. Where did you put it?”

“I didn’t-” Her mouth closed. “I didn’t!” she said defiantly.

I sat down and shook my head at her. “Now listen,” I said pleasantly. “Don’t lie to me. We’re comrades. Side by side we have sought the chitlin in its lair. The wild boar chitlin. That picture is my property and I want it. Let’s say it fluttered into your bag. Look in your bag.”

“It isn’t there.” With a new note of spunk in her voice, and a new touch of color on her cheeks, she was more of a person. Her bag was beside her on the chair, and her left hand was clutching it.

“Then I’ll look in your bag.” I started for her.

“No!” she said. “It isn’t there!” She put a palm to her stomach. “It’s here.”

I stopped short, thinking for a second she had swallowed it. Then I returned to my chair and told her, “Okay. You will now return it. You have three alternatives. Either dig it out yourself, or I will, or I’ll call in Maryella and hold you while she does. The first is the most ladylike. I’ll turn my back.”

“Please.” She kept her palm against her stomach. “Please! It’s my picture!”

“It’s a picture of you, but it’s not your picture.”

“Miss Huddleston gave it to you.”

I saw no point in denying the obvious. “Say she did.”

“And she told you& she& she thinks I sent those awful letters! I know she does!”

“That,” I said firmly, “is another matter which the boss is handling. I am handling the picture. It is probably of no importance except as a picture of the girl who thought up the Stryker dwarf and giant party. If you ask Mr. Wolfe for it he’ll probably give it to you. It may even be that Miss Huddleston stole it; I don’t know. She didn’t say where she got it. I do know that you copped it from my desk and I want it back. You can get another one, but I can’t. Shall I call Maryella?” I turned my head and looked like a man about to let out a yell.

“No!” she said, and got out of her chair and turned her back and went through some contortions. When she handed me the snapshot I tucked it under a paperweight on Wolfe’s desk and then went to help her collect the breeding cards from the floor where they had tumbled from her lap.

“Look what you did,” I told her, “mixed them all up. Now you can help me put them in order again& “

It looked for a minute as if tears were going to flow, but they didn’t. We spent an hour together, not exactly jolly, but quite friendly. I avoided the letter question, because I didn’t know what line Wolfe intended to take.

When he finally got at it there was no line to it. That was after nine o’clock, when we assembled in the office after the hash and trimmings had been disposed of. The hash was okay. It was good hash. Wolfe had three helpings, and when he conversed with Maryella, as he did through most of the meal, he was not only sociable but positively respectful. There was an unpleasant moment at the beginning, when Janet didn’t take any hash and Fritz was told to slice some ham for her, and Maryella told her resentfully:

“You won’t eat it because I cooked it.”

Janet protested that that wasn’t so, she just didn’t like corned beef.

In the office, afterwards, it became apparent that there was no love lost between the secretary and the assistant party-arranger. Not that either accused the other of writing the poison-pen letters; there were no open hostilities, but a few glances I observed when I looked up from my notebook, and tones of voice when they addressed each other, sounded as if there might be quite a blaze if somebody touched a match to it. Wolfe didn’t get anything, as far as I could see, except a collection of unimportant facts. Both the girls were being discreet, to put it mildly. Bess Huddleston, according to them, was a very satisfactory employer. They admitted that her celebrated eccentricities made things difficult sometimes, but they had no kick coming. Janet had worked for her three years, and Maryella two, and they hadn’t the slightest idea who could have sent those dreadful letters, and Bess Huddleston had no enemies that they knew of& oh, of course, she had hurt some people’s feelings, but what did that amount to, and there were scores of people who could have got at Janet’s stationery during the past months but they couldn’t imagine who, and so forth and so on. Yes, they had known Mrs. Jervis Horrocks’ daughter, Helen; she had been a close friend of Maryella’s. Her death had been a shock. And yes, they knew Dr. Alan Brady quite well. He was fashionable and successful and had a wonderful reputation for his age. He often went horseback riding with one of them or with Bess Huddleston. Riding academy? No, Bess Huddleston kept horses in her stable at her place at Riverdale, and Dr. Brady would come up from the Medical Center when he got through in the afternoon-it was only a ten-minute drive.

And Bess Huddleston had never been married, and her brother Daniel was some kind of a chemist, not in society, very much not, who showed up at the house for dinner about once a week; and her nephew, Larry, well, there he was, that was all, a young man living there and getting paid for helping his aunt in her business; and there were no other known relatives and no real intimates, except that Bess Huddleston had hundreds of intimates of both sexes and all ages&

It went on for nearly two hours.

After seeing them out to their car-I noticed Maryella was driving-I returned to the office and stood and watched Wolfe down a glass of beer and pour another one.

“That picture of the culprit,” I said, “is there under your paperweight if you want it. She did. I mean she wanted it. In my absence she swiped it and hid it in a spot too intimate to mention in your presence. I got it back-no matter how. I expected her to ask you for it, but she didn’t. And if you think you’re going to solve this case by-“

“Confound the case.” Wolfe sighed clear to the beer he had swallowed. “I might have known better. Tomorrow go up there and look around. The servants, I suppose. Make sure of the typewriter. The nephew. Talk with him and decide if I must see him; if so, bring him. And get Dr. Brady here. After lunch would be best.”

“Sure,” I said sarcastically.

“Around two o’clock. Please get your notebook and take a letter. Get it off tonight, special delivery. To Professor Martingale of Harvard. Dear Joseph. I have made a remarkable discovery, comma, or rather, comma, have had one communicated to me. You may remember our discussion last winter regarding the possibility of using pig chitlins in connection with& “

Ever since an incident that occurred when Wolfe sent me on an errand in February, 1935,1 automatically ask myself, when leaving the office on a business chore, do I take a gun? I seldom do; but if I had done so that Tuesday afternoon I swear I would have found use for it. As sure as my name is Archie and not Archibald, I would have shot that goddamn orangutan dead in his tracks.

Formerly it took a good three-quarters of an hour to drive from 35th Street to Riverdale, but now, with the West Side Highway and the Henry Hudson Bridge, twenty minutes was ample. I had never seen the Huddleston place before, but since I read newspapers and magazines the trick fence was no surprise to me. I parked the roadster at a wide space on the drive which ran parallel with the fence, got a gate open and went through, and started up a path across the lawn towards the house. There were trees and bushes around, and off to the right an egg-shaped pool.

About twenty paces short of the house I suddenly stopped. I don’t know where he had appeared from, but there he was straddling the path, big and black, his teeth flashing in a grin if you want to call it that. I stood and looked at him. He didn’t move. I thought to myself, nuts, and moved forward, but when I got closer he made a certain kind of a noise and I stopped again. Okay, I thought, if this is your private path why didn’t you say so, and I sashayed off to the right, seeing there was another path the other side of the pool. I didn’t actually turn but went sort of sidewise because I was curious to see what he was going to do, and what he did was stalk me, on all fours. So it happened that my head was twisted to keep an eye on him when I backed into a log there on the grass at the edge of the pool and went down flat, nearly tumbling into the water, and when I sprang to my feet again the log was crawling along the ground length-wise towards me. It was one of the alligators. The orangutan was sitting down laughing. I don’t mean he was making a laughing noise, but by his face he was laughing. That’s when I would have shot him. I circled around the pool and got to the other path and headed for the house, but there he was, straddling the path ten yards ahead of me, making the noise again, so I stopped.

A man’s voice said, “He wants to play tag.”

I had been too preoccupied to see the man, and anyway he had just stepped from behind a shrub at the end of a terrace. With a glance I saw that he was clad in a green shirt and brick-colored slacks, was about my age or a little younger, and seemed to be assuming a supercilious attitude.

He said, “He wants to play tag.”

I said, “I don’t.”

He said, “If you offend him he’ll bite you. Start past him on the grass and dodge when he goes to touch you. Dodge three times and then let him tag you, and say ‘Mister’ in an admiring voice. That’s all. His name is Mister.”

“I could turn around and go home.”

“I wouldn’t try that. He would resent it.”

“I could sock him one.”

“You might. I doubt it. If you hurt him and my aunt ever catches you& I suppose you’re Archie Goodwin? I’m Larry Huddleston. I didn’t send those letters and don’t know who did or who might. My aunt will be down later, she’s upstairs arguing with Brother Daniel. I can’t invite you in until you get past Mister.”

“Does everyone who comes here have to play tag with this damn overgrown orangutan?”

“He’s not an orangutan; he’s a chimpanzee. He doesn’t often play with strangers. It means he likes you.”

I had to go through with it. I took to the grass, was intercepted, dodged three times, said ‘Mister’ in as admiring a tone of voice as I could manage, and was by. Mister emitted a little squeal and scampered off to a tree and bounded up to a limb. I looked at the back of my hand and saw blood. The nephew asked, not with great concern:

“Did he bite you?”

“No, I fell down and must have scratched it. It’s just a scratch.”

“Yeah, I saw you trip over Moses. I’ll get you some iodine.”

I said it wasn’t worth bothering about, but he took me across the terrace into the house, into a large living room, twice as long as it was broad, with big windows and a big fireplace, and enough chairs and divans and cushions for a good-sized party right there. When he opened a cupboard door in the wall near the fireplace a shelf was disclosed with a neat array of sterilized gauze, band-aids, adhesive tape, and salve&

As I dabbed iodine on the scratch I said, for something to say, “Handy place for a first-aid outfit.”

He nodded. “On account of Mister. He never bites deep, but he often breaks somebody’s skin. Then Logo and Lulu, sometimes they take a little nip-“

“Logo and Lulu?”

“The bears.”

“Oh, sure. The bears.” I looked around and then put the iodine bottle on the shelf and he closed the door. “Where are they now?”

“Having a nap somewhere. They always nap in the afternoon. They’ll be around later. Shall we go out to the terrace? What’ll you have, scotch, rye, bourbon?”

It was a nice spot, the terrace, on the shady side of the house with large irregular flagstones separated by ribbons of turf. I sat there for an hour with him, but about all I got out of it was three highballs. I didn’t cotton to him much. He talked like an actor; he had a green handkerchief in the breast pocket of his shirt, to match the shirt; he mentioned the Social Register three times in less than an hour; and he wore an hexagonal wrist watch, whereas there’s no excuse for a watch to be anything but round. He struck me as barely bright enough for life’s simplest demands, but I admit he might have been a darb at a party. I must say he didn’t turn loose any secrets. He was pretty indignant about the letters, but about all I learned from him was that he knew how to use a typewriter, that Maryella had gone downtown on some errands, and that Janet was out horseback riding with Dr. Brady. He seemed to be a little cynical about Dr. Brady, but I couldn’t get the slant.

When it got five o’clock and his aunt hadn’t come down, he went to inquire, and in a moment returned and said I was to go up. He led me upstairs and showed me a door and beat it. I entered and found I was in an office, but there was no one there. It was a mess. Phone books were heaped on a chair. The blotters had been used since the Declaration of Independence. The typewriter wasn’t covered. I was frowning around when I heard steps, and Bess Huddleston trotted in, with a skinny specimen behind her. His eyes were as black as hers, but everything else about him was shrunk and faded. As she breezed past me she said:

“Sorry. How are you. My brother. Mr. Goldwyn.”

“Goodwin,” I said firmly, and shook brother’s hand. I was surprised to find he had a good shake. Sister was sitting at a desk, opening a drawer. She got out a checkbook, took a pen from a socket, made out a check, tried to blot it and made a smudge, and handed it to brother Daniel. He took one look at it and said:

“No.”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“I tell you, Bess, it won’t-“

“It will have to, Dan. At least for this week. That’s all there is to it. I’ve told you a thousand times-“

She stopped, looked at me, and looked at him.

“All right,” he said, and stuck the check in his pocket, and sat down on a chair, shaking his head and looking thoughtful.

“Now,” Bess turned to me, “what about it?”

“Nothing to brag about,” I told her. “There’s a slew of fingerprints on that letter and envelope, but since you discussed it with your brother and nephew and the girls and Dr. Brady, I suppose they all handled it. Did they?”

“Yes.”

I shrugged. “So. Maryella showed Mr. Wolfe how to make corned beef hash. The secret is chitlins. Aside from that, nothing to report. Except that Janet knows that you think she’s it. Also she wanted that picture.”

“What picture?”

“The snapshot of her you told me to throw in the wastebasket. It caught her eye and she wanted it. Is there any objection to her having it?”

“Certainly not.”

“Is there anything you want to say about it? That might help?”

“No, that picture has nothing to do with it. I mean that wouldn’t help you any.”

“Dr. Brady was requested to call at our office at two o’clock today but was too busy.”

Bess Huddleston went to a window and looked out and came back. “He wasn’t too busy to come and ride one of my horses,” she said tartly. “They ought to be back soon-I thought I heard them at the stable& “

“Will he come to the house?”

“He will. For cocktails.”

“Good. Mr. Wolfe told me to say that there is a remote chance there might be prints on the other letter. The one the rich man got.”

“It isn’t available.”

“Couldn’t you get it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Has he turned it over to the police?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“Okay. I’ve played tag with Mister and had a talk with your nephew. Now if I could see where Janet keeps her stationery, and take a sample from that typewriter. Is that the one?”

“Yes. But first come to Janet’s room. I’ll show you.”

I followed her. It was at the other end of the house, on that floor, one flight up, a pleasant little room and nice and neat. But the stationery was a washout. It wasn’t in a box. It was in a drawer of a writing table with no lock on it, and all you had to do was open the drawer with a metal ring for a puller, which couldn’t possibly have had a print, and reach in and take what you wanted, paper and envelopes both. Bess Huddleston left me there, and after a look around where there was nothing to look for, I went back to the office. Daniel was still there on the chair where we had left him. I ran off some sample lines on the typewriter, using a sheet of Janet’s paper, and was putting it in my pocket when Daniel spoke:

“You’re a detective.”

I nodded. “That’s what they tell me.”

“You’re finding out who sent those anonymous letters.”

“Right.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.”

“Anyone who sends letters like that deserves to be immersed to the chin in a ten percent solution of hydrofluoric acid.”

“Why, would that be painful?”

Daniel shuddered. “It would. I stayed here because I thought you might want to ask me something.”

“Much obliged. What shall I ask you?”

“That’s the trouble.” He looked dismal. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I wish to God there was. I have no information to offer, even no suspicions. But I would like to offer a comment. Without prejudice. Two comments.”

I sat down and looked interested. “Number one?” I said receptively.

“You can pass them on to Nero Wolfe.”

“I can and will.”

Daniel eyed me, screwing up his lips. “You mentioned five people to my sister just now. Her nephew, Larry- mine too-Miss Nichols and Miss Timms, Dr. Brady, and me. It is worth considering that four of us would be injured by anything that injured my sister. I am her brother and I have a deep and strong affection for her. The young ladies are employed by her and they are well paid. Larry is also well paid. Frankly-I am his uncle-too well. But for his aunt, he might earn four dollars a day as a helper on a coal barge. I know of no other occupation that would not strain his faculties beyond their limit. But the point is, his prosperity depends entirely on hers. So it is conceivable-I offer this merely as a comment-that we four may properly be eliminated from suspicion.”

“Okay,” I said. “That leaves one.”

“One?”

“Sure, Doc Brady. Of the five I mentioned, you rule out four. Pointing straight at him.”

“By no means.” Daniel looked distressed. “You misunderstand me. I know very little about Dr. Brady, though it so happens that my second comment concerns him. I insist it is merely a comment. You have read the letter received by Mrs. Horrocks? Then you have probably realized that while it purports to be an attack on Dr. Brady, it is so manifestly absurd that it couldn’t possibly damage him. Mrs. Horrocks’ daughter died of tetanus. There is no such thing as a wrong medicine for tetanus, nor a right one either, once the toxin has reached the nerve centers. The antitoxin will prevent, but never, or very rarely, will it cure. So the attack on Dr. Brady was no attack at all.”

“That’s interesting,” I admitted. “Are you a doctor?”

“No, sir. I’m a research chemist. But any standard medical treatise-“

“Sure. I’ll look it up. What reason do you suppose Doc Brady might have for putting your sister on the skids?”

“So far as I know, none. None whatever.”

“Then that lets him out. With everyone else out, there’s no one left but your sister.”

“My sister?”

I nodded. “She must have sent the letters herself.”

That made him mad. In fact he rather blew up, chiefly because it was too serious a matter to be facetious about, and I had to turn on the suavity to calm him down. Then he went into a sulk. After fooling around with him for another ten minutes and getting nothing for my trouble, I decided to move on and he accompanied me downstairs and out to the terrace, where we heard voices.

If that was a sample of a merry gathering arranged by Bess Huddleston, I’ll roll my own, though I admit that isn’t fair, since she hadn’t done any special arranging. She was lying on a porch swing with her dress curled above her knees by the breeze, displaying a pair of bare legs that were merely something to walk with, the feet being shod with high-heeled red slippers, and I don’t like shoes without stockings, no matter whose legs they are. Two medium-sized black bears were sitting on the flagstones with their backs propped against the frame of the swing, licking sticks of candy and growling at each other. Maryella Timms was perched on the arm of a chair with her hand happening to rest on the shoulder of Larry Huddleston, who was sitting at careless ease in the chair the way John Barrymore would. Janet Nichols, in riding clothes, was in another chair, her face hot and flushed, which made her look better instead of worse as it does most people, and standing at the other end of the swing, also in riding clothes, was a wiry-looking guy with a muscular face.

When Bess Huddleston introduced us, Dr. Brady and me, I started to meet him halfway for the handshake, but I had taken only two and a half steps when the bears suddenly started for me as if I was the meal of their dreams. I leaped sideways half a mile in one bound and their momentum carried them straight on by, but as I whirled to faced them another big black object shot past me from behind like a bat out of hell and I jumped again, just at random. Laughter came from two directions, and from a third Bess Huddleston’s voice: