“I won’t phone you. You’ll phone me.”
“Okay,” I said, and went.
Chapter 6
PASSING THE GANTLET OF the steely eyes of the lobby sentinel, mounting in the private elevator, and using my key in the tenth-floor vestibule, I found that the electronic security apparatus hadn’t been switched on yet. Steck appeared, of course, and said that Mr. Jarrell would like to see me in the library. The eye I gave him was a different eye from what it had been. It could even have been Steck who had worked the rug trick to get hold of a gun. He had his duties, but he might have managed to squeeze it in.
Hearing voices in the lounge, I crossed the reception hall to glance in, and saw Trella, Nora, and Roger Foote at a card table.
Roger looked up and called to me. “Pinochle! Come and take a hand!”
“Sorry, I can’t. Mr. Jarrell wants me.”
“Come when you’re through! Peach Fuzz ran a beautiful race! Beautiful! Five lengths back at the turn and only a head behind at the finish! Beautiful!”
A really fine loser, I was thinking as I headed for the corridor. You don’t often meet that kind of sporting spirit. Beautiful!
The door of the library was standing open. Entering, I closed it. Jarrell, over by the files with one of the drawers open, barked at me, “Be with you in a minute,” and I went to the chair at an end of his desk. A Portanaga with an inch of ash intact was there on a tray, and the smell told me it was still alive, so it couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds since he left his desk to go to the files. That’s the advantage of being a detective with a trained mind; you collect all kinds of useless facts without even trying.
He came and sat, picked up the cigar and tapped the ash off, and took a couple of puffs. He spoke. “Why did you go to see Wolfe?”
“He pays my salary. He likes to know what he’s getting for it. Also I had told him on the phone about your gun disappearing, and he wanted to ask me about it.”
“Did you have to tell him about that?”
“I thought I’d better. You’re his client, and he doesn’t like to have his clients shot, and if somebody used the gun to kill you with and I hadn’t told him about it he would have been annoyed. Besides, I thought he might want to make a suggestion.”
“Did he make one?”
“Not a suggestion exactly. He made a comment. He said you’re an ass. He said you should have corralled everybody and got the cops in to find the gun.”
“Did you tell him I’m convinced that my daughter-in-law took it?”
“Sure. But even if she did, and if she intends to use it on you, that would still be the best way to handle it. It would get the gun back, and it would notify her that you haven’t got a hole in your head and don’t intend to have one.”
He showed no reaction to my mentioning a hole in the head. “It was you who said we’d probably find it in a tub on the terrace.”
“I didn’t say probably, but what if I did? We’d have the gun. You said on the phone you’ve got instructions for me. About looking for it?”
“No, not that.” He took a pull on the cigar, removed it, and let the smoke float out. “I don’t remember just how much I’ve told you about Corey Brigham.”
“Not much. No details. That he’s an old friend of yours-no, you didn’t use the word friend-that he got in ahead of you on a deal, and that you think your daughter-in-law was responsible. I’ve been a little surprised to see him around.”
“I want him around. I want him to think I’ve accepted his explanation and I don’t suspect anything. The deal was about a shipping company. I found out about a claim that could be made against it, and I was all set to buy the claim and then put the screws on, and when I was ready to close in I found that Brigham was there ahead of me. He said he had got next to it through somebody else, that he didn’t know I was after it, but he’s a damn liar. There wasn’t anybody else. The only source was mine, and I had it clamped tight. He got it through information that was in this room, and he got it from my daughter-in-law.”
“That raises questions,” I told him. “I don’t have to ask why Susan gave it to him because I already know your answer to that. She gives things to men, including her-uh, favors, because that’s what she’s like. But how did she get it?”
“She got my gun yesterday, didn’t she?”
“I don’t know and neither do you. Anyhow, how many times has that rug walked in here?”
“Not any. That was a new one. But she knows how to find a way to get anything she wants. She could have got it from Jim Eber. Or from my son. Or she could have been in here with my son when Nora and I weren’t here, and sent him out for something, and got it herself. God only knows what else she got. Most of my operations are based on some kind of inside information, and a lot of it is on paper, it has to be, and I’m afraid to leave anything important in here anymore. Goddamn it, she has to go!”
He pulled at the cigar, found it was out, and dropped it in the tray. “There’s another aspect. I stood to
