Death Times Three SSC (5 page)

"I've been after him to get a detective, and he wouldn't do it. This thing has got to be stopped. It's awful. I've been here all my life--been in charge of the factory for twenty years--and now--" She squared her jaw. "Come along."

I followed her. We left by another door than the one I had entered by, traversed a hall, passed through a door at the end, and there we were, in the Tidbits maternity ward. Two hundred women and girls, maybe more, in white smocks, were working at tables and benches and various kinds of vats and machines. Miss Yates led me down an aisle and she stopped beside a large vat. A woman about my age who had been peering into the vat turned to face us.

"This is Miss Murphy, my assistant," Miss Yates said brusquely. "Carrie, this is Mr. Goodwin, a detective. Answer any questions he wants to ask, except about our formulas, and show him anything he wants to see." She turned to me. "I'll talk with you later, after I get some mixes through."

I caught a flicker of something, hesitation or maybe apprehension, in Miss Murphy's eyes, but it went as fast as it came, and she said quietly, "Very well, Miss Yates."

Wolfe was sticking to his accustomed daily schedule, in a sort of stubborn desperation in spite of the catastrophe of Fritz's grippe. Mornings from 9 to 11 and afternoons from 4 to 6 he spent up in the plant rooms. When he came down at six that afternoon I was in the office waiting for him.

He stopped in the middle of the room, glanced around, frowned at me, and said, "Dr. Vollmer states that Fritz can get up in the morning. Not today. Not for dinner. Where is Mr. Tingley?"

"I don't know."

"I told you to bring him here."

He was using his most provocative tone. I could have put quinine in his food. I said, "It's a good thing Fritz will be up tomorrow. This couldn't go on much longer. Tingley is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He went out soon after I got there. Miss Yates, whose name is Gwendolyn, the factory superintendent, and her assistant, Miss Carrie Murphy, showed me around. I have just finished typing a detailed report, but there's nothing in it but facts. Tingley returned about four-thirty, but when I tried to see him he was having a talk with his son and I was thrown out on my ear. I'm going back in the morning if I'm still working for you. Those in favor of my resigning, raise their hand." I stuck my hand up high.

"Pfui!" Wolfe said. "A man sells poisoned food--" "Quinine is not poison."

"A man sells poisoned food and you leave him sitting comfortably in conversation with his son. Now I'm going to the kitchen and try to prepare something to eat. If you care to join--"

"No, thanks. I've got a date. Don't wait up for me."

I went to the hall and got my hat and coat and beat it. From the garage on Tenth Avenue I took the sedan instead of the roadster, drove to Pietro's on 39th Street, and operated on a dish of spaghetti and half a bushel of salad. That made me feel better. When I reached the sidewalk again it was raining, with cold November gusts whipping it around, so I skedaddled around the corner into a newsreel theater. But I was not at peace. There had been enough justification for Wolfe's crack--say one percent--to make it rankle.

My watch said a quarter to eight. I went to the lobby and got out my memo book and turned to the page where, following habit, I had entered the names and addresses of persons connected with the current proceeding. Tingley lived at 691 Sullivan Street. There was no point in phoning, since the idea was to get him and deliver him. I went to the sedan and headed downtown in the rain.

It was an old brick house, painted blue, probably the residence of his father and grandfather before him. A colored maid told me that he wasn't home, hadn't shown up for dinner, and might be at his office. It began to look like no soap, but it was only a little out of the way, so when I got to 26th Street I turned west. Rolling
to the curb directly in front of the Tingley Building, it looked promising; lights showed at a couple of the upstairs windows. I dived through the rain across the sidewalk, found the door unlocked, and entered.

A light was on there in the hall, and I started for the stairs. But with my foot on the first step I stopped; for I had glanced up, and saw something so unexpected that I goggled like a fish. Standing there halfway up, facing me, was Amy Duncan. Her face was white, her eyes were glassy, and she was clinging to the rail with both hands and swaying from side to side.

"Hold it!" I said sharply, and started up. Before I could reach her she lost it. Down she came, rolling right into me. I gathered her up and went back down and stretched her out on the floor. She was out cold, but when I felt her pulse it was pretty good. Routine faint, I thought, and then took it back when I saw a large lump on the side of her head above her right ear.

That made it different. I straightened up. She had unquestionably been conked.

I ascended the steps one at a time, looking for the birdie. There was a light in the upper hall, also in the anteroom. I called out, and got no reply. The door leading within was standing open, and I marched through and kept going through more open doors and down the inside hall to the entrance to Tingley's office. That door too stood open and the room was lit, but from the threshold no one was in sight. It occurred to me that the screen, at right angles to the wall, would do nicely for an ambush, so I entered sideways, facing it, and circled around the end of it for a survey just in case.

A mouse ran up my backbone. Tingley was there on the floor alongside the screen, his head toward the marble washstand, and if the head was still connected with the body it must have been at the back, which I couldn't see. There was certainly no connection left in front.

I took a couple of breaths and swallowed saliva, as a sort of priming for my internal processes, which had momentarily stopped.

The blood from the gash in his throat had spread over the floor, running in red tongues along the depressions in the old warped boards, and I stepped wide of it to get around to the other end of him. Squatting beside him for an inspection, I ascertained two facts: He had a lump at the back of his skull and the skin had been broken there, and he was good and dead. I straightened up and collected a few more items with my eyes:

1. A bloody towel on the floor by the washstand, sixteen inches from the wall.

2. Another bloody towel on the rim of the basin, to the right.

3. A knife with a long, thin blade and a black composition handle on the floor between the body and the screen. In the factory that afternoon I had seen girls slicing meat loaves with knives like it.

4. On the floor between the two front legs of the washstand, a cylinder of metal with a "2" on it. It was Tingley's paperweight.

5. Farther away, out beyond the edge of the screen, a woman's snakeskin handbag. I had seen that before, too, when Amy Duncan called at Wolfe's office.

Circling around the mess again, I picked up the handbag and stuffed it in my pocket, and took a look at the rest of the room. I didn't touch anything, but someone else had. A drawer of the roll-top desk had been jerked out onto the floor. The door of the enormous old safe was standing wide open. Things on the shelves had been pulled off and scattered. Tingley's felt hat was on the wall hook at the left of his desk, but his overcoat was in a heap on the floor.

I looked at my watch. It was 8:22. I would have liked to do a little more inspecting, but if Amy Duncan should come to and beat it
...

She hadn't. When I got back downstairs she was still there stretched out. I felt her pulse again, buttoned up her coat, made sure her hat was fastened on, and picked her up. I opened the door and got through without bumping her, navigated the steps, and crossed the sidewalk to the car, and stood there with her in my arms a moment, thinking the rain on her face might revive her. The next thing I knew I damn' near needed reviving myself. Something socked me on the side of the jaw from behind.

I went down, not from compulsion but from choice, to get rid of my burden. When I bobbed up again I left Amy on the sidewalk and leaped aside as a figure hurled itself at me. When I side-stepped he lost balance, but recovered and tore at me again. I feinted with my left and he grabbed for it, and my right took him on the button.

He went down and didn't bounce. I dashed back to the stone steps and closed the door, returned, and opened the rear door of the car and lifted Amy in, and wheeled as he regained his feet, started for me, and yelled for help and police, all at once. He obviously knew as much about physical combat as I did about pearl diving, so I turned him around and from behind locked his arms with my left one and choked his throat with my right, and barked into his ear, "One more squawk and out go the lights! You have one chance to live. Behave yourself and do what I tell you to." I made sure he had no gun before I loosened the hook on his neck. He didn't vocalize, so I released him. "Open that car door--"

I meant the front door, but before I could stop him he had the rear one open and most of himself inside and was bleating like a goat, "Amy! Good God, she's Amy--"

I reached in for a shoulder and yanked him out and banged the door and opened the front one. "She's alive," I said, "but you won't be in five seconds. Get in there and fold yourself under the dash. I'm taking her to a doctor and you're going along."

He got in. I pushed him down and forward, disregarding his sputtering, wriggled back of him to the driver's seat, pulled the door to, and started the car. In two minutes we were at 35th Street, and in another two we rolled to the curb in front of Wolfe's house. I let him come up for air.

"The program," I said, "is as follows: I'll carry her, and you precede me up those steps to that door. If you cut and run I'll drop her--"

He glared at me. His spirit was 'way ahead of his flesh. "I'm not going to cut and run--"

"Okay. Me out first."

He helped me get her out and he wanted to carry her, but I shooed him on ahead through the rain and told him to push the button. When the door opened Wolfe, himself, stood there. At sight of the stranger his colossal frame blocked the way, but when he saw me he fell back and made room for us to enter.

The stranger began, "Are you a doc--'

"Shut up!" I told him. I faced Wolfe, and observed that he was sustaining his reputation for being impervious to startlement. "I suppose you recognize Miss Duncan. She's been hit on the head. If you will please phone Doc Vollmer? I'll take her up to the south room." I made for the elevator, and when the stranger tagged along I let him. In the south room, two flights up, we got her onto the bed and covered up.

The stranger was still standing by the bed staring down at her when Doc Vollmer arrived. After feeling her pulse and glancing under her eyelid, Doc said he thought it would be a long time till the funeral and we wouldn't be needed for a while, so I told the stranger to come on. He left the room with me and kindly permitted me to close the door, but then announced that he was going to stay right there outside the door until the doctor had brought her to.

"You,"
I said, "might as well learn to face facts. You know damn' well I could throw you downstairs. If I do you'll have to go to bed, too. March!"

He marched, but he sure hated it. I followed him down, and into the office. Wolfe was there at his desk, looking imperturbable, but when he saw us he started rubbing his chin, which meant he was boiling inside.

"Sit down," I told the stranger. "This is Mr. Nero Wolfe. What's your name?"

"None of your damned business!" he informed me. "This is the most outrageous--!"

"You bet it is. When you rushed me from behind, you must have come from inside the building. Didn't you?"

"That's none of your business, either!"

"You're wrong, brother. But I'll try again. Why did you kill Arthur Tingley?"

He gawked at me. "Are you crazy?"

"Not a bit. Stop me if you've heard it before. I went there to get Tingley and bring him here to see Mr. Wolfe. Amy Duncan was there on the stairs looking doubtful. She fell and I caught her, and left her on the hall floor while I went up to investigate. Tingley was on the floor of his office with his throat cut. After a brief inspection I returned to Amy and carried her out, and was putting her in the car when you attacked me from behind. You must have come from somewhere. Why not from inside the building? The idea appeals to me."

The stranger had decided he could use a chair, and sank into one. "You say--" He swallowed. "Are you telling the truth?"

"Yes, sir."

"Tingley--with his throat cut? Dead?"

"Very dead." I turned to Wolfe: "He pretended to be going on the theory that I was kidnapping Amy. He's all for Amy. I brought him along because I thought you might need him."

Wolfe was glaring at me. "And why should I need him?"

"Well, he was there. He must have come out of that building. He probably murdered Tingley--"

"And what if he did?"

"Oh. So that's how you feel about it."

"It is. I am under no obligation to catch murderers indiscriminately. Phone the police. Tell them Miss Duncan and this gentleman are here and they can--"

"No!" the stranger blurted.

"No?" Wolfe lifted a brow at him. "Why not?"

"Because it's--Good God! And Amy-- You can't--"

"Hold it," I commanded him. "I'm doing this." I grinned at Wolfe. "Okay, boss; I'll call the cops. I merely thought you might like to chat with this bird first, since it seemed likely that whoever killed Tingley also put quinine in your food."