Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

'Then it's simple. Bring her at nine-ten.'

'Like hell it's simple.' It clicked and he was gone.

I don't expect you to believe me when I report the first words I heard as I re-entered the office, but you have a right to know why we got about as little from Avery Ballou as Saul had got from Julie Jaquette. The words, uttered by Ballou, were, 'Rudyard Kipling.' As I crossed to my desk my head kept turning to have my eyes on him. As I sat, Wolfe asked him, 'The poems?'

'Mostly the poems,' Ballou said, 'but some of the stories too. And Robert Service and Jack London. A little of some others, but of those three, Kipling and Service and London, I had complete sets there, bound in leather. There's something I have wanted to ask about, but haven't, and you would know. Can they get my fingerprints from those bindings? The leather isn't smooth, it's rippled.'

Wolfe's head turned. 'Archie?'

'Probably not,' I told Ballou, 'from rippled leather, but your prints must be on other surfaces there. Are they on file anywhere?'

'I don't know. I simply don't know.'

Wolfe's shoulders went up a quarter of an inch and down. 'Then on that you can only abide. But this isn't easy to believe, Mr. Ballou, that you spent ten hours or more a week there, five hundred hours a year for three years, and Miss Kerr never spoke of how she spent the other – let's see – nearly twenty-five thousand hours. The places she went, the people she saw.'

'I have told you,' Ballou said, 'under coercion. Except for physical intimacy there was no sharing of experience. But I did not read those poems and stories just to hear myself. I did not impose them on her. She understood them and enjoyed them, and we discussed them. You realize that I am not enjoying this. This is the first time in my life that I have wanted to tell a man to go to hell and can't.'

'I still find it hard to believe. Did she never speak of her sister?'

'Yes. Speak of her, yes, but casually and rarely.'

'You didn't know that her sister strongly disapproved of her association with you?'

'No. I don't know it now.'

'She did and does. Did Miss Kerr ever mention this name: Julie Jaquette?'

'I don't think so. If she did it was only casual and I don't remember it.'

'Remarkable. You were with her, close, frequently, for a period of three years. I wanted and expected names, and you have supplied three: Jack London, Robert Service, and Rudyard Kipling.' Wolfe pushed his chair back. 'A question: why did you want to know when Mr. Cather first learned your name?'

'Oh… I was curious.'

'You said it may not be important now. When would it have been important, and why?'

'I meant important to me, not to you, not for what you are trying to do. What are you going to do? You say I can't hire you or pay you, but why not? There's no conflict between Cather's interest and mine, as you tell it. Ten thousand now as a retainer? Twenty thousand?'

'No.' Wolfe rose. 'I'm committed.' He walked out.

Chapter 8

At a quarter past nine we were back in the office and Fritz had taken the coffee things out; so, though I didn't know it yet, the stage was set for one of the most impressive floor shows the old brownstone has ever seen. After letting Ballou out I had gone to the kitchen and told Wolfe about Saul's phone call. Of course he would have enjoyed the onion soup and Kentucky burgoo more if I had waited, but it would have created an atmosphere if I had sprung it on him with the coffee. The question was which could stand it best, appetite or digestion, and it takes a lot to make a serious dent in his appetite.

It is true that digestion was getting it too. He had drunk more coffee than usual, emptying the pot, and now that it was gone, and I was there – I'm usually out on Tuesday evenings – he was making a stab at continuing the dinner conversation, which had been mostly about Viet Nam, but just then he wasn't really interested in Viet Nam. He was going to tackle not only a woman, which was bad enough, but also a night-club singer, which was preposterous. A hell of a way to spend an evening. When the doorbell rang he glared at me, though he should have saved it for Saul, and I told him so as I got up to go.

Even through the one-way glass, as I approached the door, she took the eye. She was two inches taller than Saul, and if the coat was real sable it must have taken at least a hundred sables. As she entered she gave me a dazzling three-inch smile, and another one when I turned after hanging her coat up. Saul was trying not to grin. She took my arm and asked, 'Where is he, Archie?' in a rich cuddly voice, and she kept the arm down the hall and into the office, but then she broke away, danced to the middle of the room and faced Wolfe's desk, let her handbag fall to the floor, and burst into song:

'Big man, go-go,

Big man, go big,

Talk big, act big,

Lo-o-o-o-o-o-ove big!