Too Many Clients

to their ear. I don't. I am still way under. I couldn't possibly manage anything as complicated as 'Nero Wolfe's residence, Archie Goodwin speaking.' The best I can do is ' 'Lo.' A woman said, 'I want to talk to Mr. Archie Goodwin.' I was still fighting my way up. 'This is Goodwin. Who is this?' 'I am Mrs. Cesar Perez. You must come. Come now. Our daughter Maria is dead. She was killed with a gun. Will you come now?' I was out from under. 'Where are you?' I reached for the switch of the bed light and glanced at the clock. Twenty-five to three. 130 Rex Stout 'We are at home. They took us to look at her, and we are just come back. Will you come?' 'Is anybody there? Policemen?' 'No. One brought us home, but he is gone. Will you come?' 'Yes. Right away. As fast as I can make it. If you haven't already?' She hung up. I like to take my time dressing, but I am willing to make an exception when necessary. When my tie was tied and my jacket on, and my things were in my pockets, I tore a sheet from my notebook and wrote on it: Maria Perez is dead, murdered, shot?not at home, I don't know where. Mrs. P. phoned at 2:35. I'm on my way to 82nd Street. AG Down one flight I went to the door of Wolfe's room and slipped the note through the crack at the bottom. Then on down, and out. At that time of night Eighth Avenue would be the best bet for a taxi, so I headed east. SiL, Chapter 11 It was one minute after three when I used my key at the basement door at 156 and entered. Mrs. Perez was standing there. Saying nothing, she turned and walked down the hall, and I followed. Halfway along she turned into a room on the right, the door of which I had pushed open Tuesday evening when I felt an eye on me. It was a small room; a single bed, a chest of drawers, a little table with a mirror, and a couple of chairs didn't leave much space. Perez was on the chair by the table, and on the table was a glass and a bottle of rum. As I entered he slowly lifted his head to look at me. The eye that he half closed in emergencies was nearly shut. He spoke. 'My wife told you that day we sit down with friends. Are you a friend?' 'Don't mind him,' she said. 'He drinks rum, half a bottle. I tell him to.' She sat on the bed. 'I make him come to this room, our daughter's room, and I bring him rum. I sit on our daughter's bed. That chair is for you. We thank you for coming, but now we don't know why. You can't do anything, nobody can do anything, not even the good God Himself.' < tiSiiiiSiSeexX^ 132 Rex Stout Perez picked up the glass, took a swallow, put the glass down, and said something in Spanish. I sat on the chair. 'The trouble with a time like this,' I said, 'is that there is something to do, and the quicker the better. You have no room in you right now for anything except that she's dead, but I have. I want to know who killed her, and you will too when the shock eases up a little. And in order?' 'You're crazy,' Perez said. 'I'll kill him.' 'He's a man,' she told me. I thought for a second she meant that a man had killed Maria and then realized that she meant her husband. 'We'll have to find him first,' I said. 'Do you know who killed her?' 'You're crazy,' Perez said. 'Of course not.' 'They took you to look at her. Where? The morgue?' 'A big building,' she said. 'A big room with strong light. She was on a thing with a sheet on her. There was blood on her head but not on her face.' 'Did they tell you who found her and where?' 'Yes. A man found her at a dock by the river.' 'What time did she leave the house and where did she go and who with?' 'She left at eight o'clock to go to a movie with friends.' 'Boys or girls?' 'Girls. Two girls came for her. We saw them. We know them. We went with a policeman to see one of them, and she said Maria went with them to the movie but she left about nine o'clock. She didn't know where she went.' 'Have you any idea where she went?' 'No.' cToo Many Clients 133 'Have you any idea who killed her or why?' 'No. They asked us all these questions.' 'They'll ask a lot more. All right, this is how it stands. Either there is some connection between her death and Mr. Yeager's death or there isn't. If there isn't, it's up to the police and they'll probably nail him. Or her. If there is, the police can't even get started because they don't know this was Yeager's house--unless you've told them. Have you?' 'No,' she said. 'You're crazy,' he said. He took a swallow of rum. 'Then it's up to you. If you tell them about Yeager and that room, they may find out who killed Maria sooner than I would. Mr. Wolfe and I. If you don't tell them, we'll find him, but I don't know how long it will take us. I want to make it clear: If her death had nothing to do with Yeager, it won't hamper the police any not to know about him and that room, so it wouldn't help to tell them. That's that. So the question is, what do you want to do if it did have something to do with Yeager? Do you want to tell the police about him and the house, and probably be charged with killing Yeager? Or do you want to leave it to Mr. Wolfe and me?' 'If we had gone away last night,' Mrs. Perez said. 'She didn't want to. If I had been strong enough--' 'Don't say that,' he commanded her. 'Don't say that!' 'It's true, Cesar.' She got up and went and poured rum in his glass, and returned to the bed. She looked at me. 'She never had anything with Mr. Yeager. She never spoke to him. She never was in .^ 134 Rex Stout that room. She knew nothing about all that, about him and the people that came.' 'I don't believe it,' I declared. 'It's conceivable that an intelligent girl her age wouldn't be curious about what was going on in the house she lived in, but I don't believe it. Where was she Sunday night when you took Yeager's body out and put it in the hole?' 'She was in her bed asleep. This bed I'm sitting on.' 'You thought she was. She had good ears. She heard me enter the house Tuesday evening. When I came down the hall the door to this room was open a crack and she was in here in the dark, looking at me through the crack.' 'You're crazy,' Perez said. 'Maria wouldn't do that,' she said. 'But she did. I opened the door and we spoke, just a few words. Why shouldn't she do it? A beautiful, intelligent girl, not interested in what was happening in her own house? That's absurd. The point is this: If you're not going to tell the police about Yeager, if you're going to leave it to Mr. Wolfe and me, I've got to find out what she knew, and what she did or said, that made someone want to kill her. Unless I can do that there's no hope of getting anywhere. Obviously I won't get it from you. Have the police done any searching here?' 'Yes. In this room. The first one that came.' 'Did he take anything?' 'No. He said he didn't.' 'I was here,' Perez said. 'He didn't.' 'Then if you're leaving it to us that comes first. I'll see if I can find something, first this room and then the others. Two can do it faster than one, so Too Many Clients 135 will you go up and tell that man to come--no. Better not. He already knows too much for his own good. What you two ought to do is go to bed, but I suppose you won't. Go to the kitchen and eat something. You don't want to be here while I'm looking. I'll have to take the bed apart. I'll have to go through all her things.' 'It's no good,' Mrs. Perez said. 'I know everything she had. We don't want you to do that.' 'Okay. Then Mr. Wolfe and I are out and the police are in. It won't be me looking, it will be a dozen of them, and they're very thorough, and you won't be here. You'll be under arrest.' 'That don't matter now,' Perez said. 'Maybe I ought to be.' He lifted the glass, and it nearly slipped from his fingers. Mrs. Perez rose, went to the head of the bed, and pulled the coverlet back. 'You'll see,' she said. 'Nothing.' An hour and a half later I had to admit she was right. I had inspected the mattress top and bottom, emptied the drawers, removing the items one by one, taken up the rug and examined every inch of the floor, removed everything from the closet and examined the walls with a flashlight, pulled the chest of drawers out and inspected the back, flipped through thirty books and a stack of magazines, removed the backing of four framed pictures--the complete routine. Nothing. I was much better acquainted with Maria than I had been when she was alive, but hadn't found the slightest hint that she knew or cared anything about Yeager, his guests, or the top floor. Perez was no longer present. He had been in the way when I wanted to take up the rug, and by that 136 Rex Stout time the rum had him nearly under. We had taken him to the next room and put him on the bed. Maria's bed was back in order, and her mother was sitting on it. I was standing by the door, rubbing my palms together, frowning around. 'I told you, nothing,' she said. 'Yeah. I heard you.' I went to the chest and pulled out the bottom drawer. 'Not again,' she said. 'You are like my husband. Too stubborn.' 'I wasn't stubborn enough with these drawers.' I put it on the bed and began removing the contents. 'I just looked at the bottoms underneath. I should have turned them over and tried them.' I put the empty drawer upside down on the floor, squatted, jiggled it up and down, and tried the edges of the bottom with the screwdriver blade of my knife. Saul Panzer had once found a valuable painting under a false bottom that had been fitted on the outside instead of the inside. This drawer didn't have one. When I put it back on the bed Mrs. Perez came and started replacing the contents, and I went and got the next drawer. That was it, and I darned near missed it again. Finding nothing on the outside of the bottom, as I put the drawer back on the bed I took another look at the inside with the flashlight, and saw a tiny hole, just a pinprick, near a corner. The drawer bottoms were lined with a plastic material with a pattern, pink with red flowers, and the hole was in the center of one of the flowers. I got a safety pin from the tray on the table and stuck the point in the hole and pried, and the corner came up, but it was stiffer than any plastic would have been. After lifting it enough to get a finger under, I brought it on up and Too Many Clients 137 had it. The plastic had been pasted to a piece of cardboard that precisely fitted the bottom of the drawer, and underneath was a collection of objects which had been carefully arranged so there would be no bulges. Not only had Maria been intelligent, she had also been neat-handed. Mrs. Perez, at my elbow, said something in Spanish and moved a hand, but I blocked it. 'I have a right,' she said, 'my daughter.' 'Nobody has a right,' I said. 'She was hiding it from you, wasn't she? The only right was hers, and she's dead. You can watch, but keep your hands off.' I carried the drawer to the table and sat in the chair Perez had vacated. Here's the inventory of Maria's private cache: 1. Five full-page advertisements of Continental Plastic Products taken from magazines. 2. Four labels from champagne bottles, Dom Perignon. 3. Three tear sheets from the financial pages of the Times, the stock-exchange price list of three different dates with a pencil mark at the Continental Plastic