but I'm not saying you didn't. An alibi, good or bad, isn't the kind of fact I want from you. You say you never saw or spoke with Maria Perez. Last night her mother phoned me to come, and I went, and searched her room, and hidden under a false bottom in a drawer I found a collection of items. Among them were three photographs of you. Also there was some money, five-dollar bills, that she hadn't wanted her parents to know about. I'm being frank with you, Miss Duncan; I've told you that Mr. Wolfe would prefer to close it up without the police ever learning about
II I that room and the people who went there. But if they do learn about it, not from us, then look out. Not only that you walked in on Mr. and Mrs. Perez |h I and me, and your cigarette case, but what if they find your fingerprints on those five-dollar bills?' That was pure dumb luck. I would like to say that I had had a hunch and was playing it, but if I once started dolling up these reports there's no telling where I'd stop. I was merely letting my tongue go. If there was anything more in Meg Duncan than the fact (according to her) that she had gone straight home from the theater last night, I wanted to talk it out of her if possible. It was just luck that I didn't mention that the photographs were magazine and newspaper reproductions and that I tossed in the question about the bills. Luck or not, it hit. She gripped my knee with one of the hands she used so well and said, 'My God, the bills. Do they show fingerprints?' 'Certainly.' 'Where are they?' 'In the safe in Mr. Wolfe's office. Also the photographs.' 'I only gave her one. You said three.' 'The other two are from magazines. When did you give it to her?' 'I--I don't remember. There are so many . . .' My left hand moved to rest on the coverlet where her leg was, above her knee, the fingers bending, naturally, to the curve of the surface they were touching. Of course it would have been a mistake if I had given the hand a definite order to do that, but I hadn't. I'm not blaming the hand; it was merely taking advantage of an opportunity that no alert hand could be expected to ignore; but -N ' 1 -l--^l J Too Many Clients 163 it got a quicker and bigger reaction than it had counted on. When that woman had an impulse she wasted no time. As she came up from the pillow I met her, I guess on the theory that she was going to claw, but her arms clamped around my neck and she took me back with her, and there I was, on top of her from the waist up, my face into the pillow. She was biting the side of my neck, not to hurt, just cordial. The time, the place, and the girl is a splendid combination, but it takes all three. The place was okay, but the time wasn't, since I had other errands, and I doubted if the girl's motives were pure. She was more interested in a cigarette case, a photograph, and some five-dollar bills than in me. Also I don't like to be bullied. So I brought my hand up, slipped it between her face and my neck, shoved her head into the pillow while raising mine, folded the ends of the pillow over, and had her smothered. She squirmed and kicked for ten seconds and then stopped. I got my feet on the floor and my weight on them, removed my hands from the pillow, and stepped back. I spoke. 'When did you give her the photograph?' She was panting, gasping, to catch up on oxygen. When she could she said, 'Damn you, you put your hand on me.' 'Yeah. Do you expect me to apologize? Patting a place on the bed for me to sit and you in that gauzy thing? You know darned well your nipples show through it. That wasn't very smart, trying to take my mind off of my work when you've got as much at stake as I have.' I sat on the chair. 'Look, Miss Duncan. The only way you can possibly get clear is by helping Nero Wolfe wrap it up, and we haven't
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164 Rex Stout got all summer. We may not even have all day. I want to know about the photograph and the fivedollar bills.' She had got her breath back and pulled the coverlet up to her chin. 'You did put your hand on me,' she said. 'Conditional reflex. The wonder is it wasn't both hands. When did you give her the photograph?' 'A long time ago. Nearly a year ago. She sent a note to my dressing room at a Saturday matinee. The note said she had seen me at her house and she would like to have three tickets for next Saturday so she could bring two friends. At the bottom below her name was her address. That address ... I had her sent in. She was incredible. I have never seen a girl as beautiful. I thought she was?that she had been . . .' I nodded. 'A guest in that room. I don't think so.' 'Neither did I after I talked with her. She said she had seen me in the hall?twice, she said? and she had recognized me from pictures she had seen. She said she had never told anyone, and she wouldn't, and I gave her an autographed picture and the three tickets. That was in June, and in July we closed for a month for summer vacation, and in August she came to see me again. She was even more beautiful, she was incredible. She wanted three more tickets, and I said I'd mail them to her, and then she said she had decided she ought to have hush money. That's what she said, hush money. Five dollars a month. I was to mail it to her the first of each month, to a branch post office on Eighty-third Street, the Planetarium Station. Have you ever seen her?' 'Yes.' ?-J 1 Too Many Clients 165 'Then aren't you surprised?' 'No. I quit being surprised after two years of detective work, long ago.' 'I was. A girl as beautiful and proud as she was?my God, she was proud. And of course I?well, I supposed that would be only a start. Ever since then I have been expecting her to come again, to tell me she had decided five dollars a month wasn't enough, but she never did.' 'You never saw her again?' 'No, but she saw me. She had told me what she did; when she heard the street door open she put out the light in her room and opened the door a crack, and after that when I went there I saw it when I went down the hall, her door open a little. It gave me a feeling?I don't know why?it made it more exciting that she was there looking at me.' She patted the bed. 'Sit here.' I stood up. 'No, ma'am. It's even more of a strain when you have the cover up like that, because I know what's under it. I have chores to do. How many five-dollar bills did you send her?' 'I didn't count. It was in August, so the first one was September first, and then every month.' The coverlet slipped down. 'Including May? Twelve days ago?' 'Yes.' 'That makes nine. They're in Mr. Wolfe's safe. I told Mrs. Perez she'd get them back some day, but since they were hush money you have a valid claim.' I took a step, stretched an arm, curved my fingers around her leg, and gave it a gentle squeeze. 'See? Conditioned reflex. I'd better go.' I turned and walked out. Mike, the female sergeant, appeared from somewhere as I reached the foyer, but let me open the 166 Rex Stout door myself. Down in the lobby I took a moment to tell the hallman, 'You can relax. We found them in her jewel box. The maid thought they were earrings.' It pays to be on sociable terms with lobby sentries. As I emerged to the sidewalk my watch said 3:40, so Wolfe would be in the office, and I found a phone booth down the block and dialed. His voice came. 'Yes?' He will not answer the phone properly. 'Me. In a booth on Madison Avenue. Money paid to a blackmailer is recoverable, so those bills belong to Meg Duncan. Maria Perez spotted her in the hall a year ago and went to see her and bled her for nine months, five bucks per month. One of the biggest operations in the history of crime. Meg Duncan worked last night and went straight home from the theater and went to bed. I saw the bed and sat on it. Probably true, say twenty to one. From here it's only about eight minutes to the Yeager house. Shall I go there first?' 'No. Mrs. Yeager phoned, and I told her you would be there between five and six. She expects you to take her to see that room. Your problem.' 'Don't I know it. You said when I called in you might want to send me to Saul or Fred or Orrie.' 'I thought it possible, but no. Proceed.' As I went out to the curb to flag a taxi I was reflecting on Maria's practical horse sense and fine feeling. If you happen to have an autographed photograph of a person whom you are screwing for hush money, you don't keep it. The autographer had of course written something like 'Best regards' or 'All good wishes,' and now that she was your victim it wouldn't be right to hang on to it. FR1;Chapter 14 I had no appointment with Mr. or Mrs. Austin Hough, because, first, I hadn't known when I would finish with Meg Duncan, and second, I preferred to have one of them alone, it didn't matter which. So when I pushed the button in the vestibule at 64 Eden Street I didn't know if there would be anyone at home. There was. The click came; I opened the door and entered, and mounted the stairs. I wasn't awaited at the door of the apartment as before; he was standing at the top of the second flight. As I reached the landing he backed up a step. He wasn't glad to see me. 'Back again,' I said politely. 'Did you find your wife yesterday?' 'What do you want?' he demanded. 'Nothing startling. A couple of questions. There has been a development that complicates it a little. You probably know about it, the murder of a girl named Maria Perez.' 'No. I haven't been out today. I haven't seen a paper. Who is Maria Perez?' 'Not is, was. Then the radio?' 'I haven't turned it on. Who was she?' 168 Rex Stout 'The daughter of the man you saw when you went to that house on Eighty-second Street. Her body was found last night on a North River pier. She was killed, shot, between nine o'clock and midnight. Mr. Wolfe is wondering how you spent the evening. And your wife.' 'Balls,' he said. My brows went up in astonishment. He certainly hadn't got that from Robert Browning, though an Elizabethan dramatist might have used it that way. I wasn't up on Elizabethan dramatists. Wherever he had got it, this was a different Austin Hough from the one I had felt sorry for yesterday afternoon--not only that word so used, but his face and bearing. This Hough wasn't asking any favors. 'So,' he said, 'you want to know how my wife spent last evening? You'd better ask her. Come on.' He turned and headed down the hall, and I followed. The door was open. There was no foyer inside. The room, not large, had the furniture of a living room, but the walls were all books. He crossed to a door at the far end, opened
