Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 27 Read Online Free Page A

you will pay, don’t try to guff me. Say we doubt if Ashe is guilty, but we think he may get tagged because we know Mandelbaum wouldn’t go to trial without a good case. Say also our bank account needs a shot in the arm, which is true. So we decide to see if we can find something that will push Mandelbaum’s nose in, thinking that if Ashe is properly grateful a measly little fine will be nothing. The way to proceed would be for you to think up a batch of errands for me, and you go on home and read a book andhave a good lunch, but that’s out because they’d come and get you. Therefore we must both do errands. If that’s how it stands, it’s a fine day and I admit that woman was smelly, but I have a good nose and I think it was Tissot’s Passion Flower, which is eighty bucks an ounce. What are we going to do at Sixty-ninth Street?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Good. Neither do I.”
II
    It was a dump, an old five-story walk-up, brick that had been painted yellow about the time I had started working for Nero Wolfe. In the vestibule I pushed the button that was labeled
Bagby Answers, Inc.
, and when the click came I opened the door and led the way across the crummy little hall to the stairs and up one flight. Mr. Bagby wasn’t wasting it on rent. At the front end of the hall a door stood open. As we approached it I stepped aside to let Wolfe go first, since I didn’t know whether we were disguised as brush peddlers or as plumbers.
    As Wolfe went to speak to a girl at a desk I sent my eyes on a quick survey. It was the scene of the murder. In the front wall of the room three windows overlooked the street. Against the opposite wall were ranged the three switchboards, with three females with headphones seated at them. They had turned their heads for a look at the company.
    The girl at the desk, which was near the end window, had only an ordinary desk phone, in addition to a typewriter and other accessories. Wolfe was telling her, “My name is Wolfe and I’ve just come from thecourtroom where Leonard Ashe is being tried.” He indicated me with a jerk of his head. “This is my assistant, Mr. Goodwin. We’re checking on subpoenas that have been served on witnesses, for both the prosecution and the defense. Have you been served?”
    With his air and presence and tone, only one woman in a hundred would have called him, and she wasn’t it. Her long, narrow face tilted up to him, she shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”
    “Your name, please?”
    “Pearl Fleming.”
    “Then you weren’t working here on July fifteenth.”
    “No, I was at another office. There was no office desk here then. One of the boards took office calls.”
    “I see.” His tone implied that it was damned lucky for her that he saw. “Are Miss Hart and Miss Velardi and Miss Weltz here?”
    My brows wanted to lift, but I kept them down, and anyway there was nothing startling about it. True, it had been weeks since those names had appeared in the papers, but Wolfe never missed a word of an account of a murder, and his skull’s filing system was even better than Saul Panzer’s.
    Pearl Fleming pointed to the switchboards. “That’s Miss Hart at the end. Miss Velardi is next to her. Next to Miss Velardi is Miss Yerkes. She came after—she replaced Miss Willis. Miss Weltz isn’t here; it’s her day off. They’ve had subpoenas, but—”
    She stopped and turned her head. The woman at the end board had removed her headphone, left her seat, and was marching over to us. She was about my age, with sharp brown eyes and flat cheeks and a chin she could have used for an icebreaker if she had been a walrus.
    “Aren’t you Nero Wolfe, the detective?” she demanded.
    “Yes,” he assented. “You are Alice Hart?”
    She skipped it. “What do you want?”
    Wolfe backed up a step. He doesn’t like anyone so close to him, especially a woman. “I want information, madam. I want you and Bella Velardi and Helen Weltz to answer some questions.”
    “We