I moved away. "Right. Bill Stern. WNBC."
"It was Bill Stern on the phone?"
"No, but it was WNBC. 'The Life of Riley.' Bill Stern goes on at ten-thirty."
"The Yankees look good, don't they?"
I'm a Giant fan, but I wanted to get inside and had to be tactful. So I said, "They sure do. I hope Mantle comes through."
He did too, but he was skeptical. He thought these wonder boys seldom live up to their billing. He thought various other things, and was telling about them when the elevator returned and its door opened, and we had company. One was his colleague and the other was a little runt with very few teeth and a limp, wearing an old overcoat for a dressing gown. The cop, surprised at sight of me, asked his brother, "Who's this, not precinct?"
"No. Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin."
"Oh, him. How come?"
"Save it. Hey, get away from that door! Gimme that key!"
The runt surrendered it and backed off. The cop in command inserted the key and turned it, used his handkerchief to turn the knob, which made me suppress a snicker, pushed the door, and entered, with his colleague at his heels. I was right behind. We were in a narrow hall with a door at either end and one in the middle. The one at the right was open, and the cop headed for that and on through. Two steps inside he stopped, so I just made the sill.
It was a fairly big living room, furnished comfortably by a man for a man. That was merely the verdict of one sweeping glance, for any real survey of the furniture, if required, would have to wait. On a table at the far side, between two windows, was the phone, with the receiver off, lying on the floor. Also on the floor, six inches from the receiver, was the head of James A. Corrigan, with the rest of him stretched out toward a window. A third item on the floor, a couple of feet from Corrigan's hip, was a gun - from where I stood I would have said a Marley.32. The lights were on. Also on was a radio at the end of the table, with Bill Stern telling what he thought of the basketball stink. There was a big dark spot, nearly black at that distance, on Corrigan's right temple.
The cop crossed to him and squatted. In ten seconds, which wasn't long enough, he got upright and spoke. "DOA." There seemed to be a little shake in his voice, and he raised it. "We can't use this phone. Go down and call in. Don't break your neck."
The colleague went. The cop kept his voice up. "Can you see him from there, Goodwin? Come closer, but keep your hands off."
I approached. "That's him. The guy that phoned. James A. Corrigan."
"Then you heard him shoot himself."
"I guess I did," I put one hand on my belly and the other on my throat. "I didn't get any sleep last night and I'm feeling sick. I'm going to the bathroom."
"Don't touch anything."
"I won't."
I wouldn't have been able to get away with it if the radio hadn't been going. It was plenty loud enough to cover my toe steps through the outer door, which was standing open, and in the hall to the door to the stairs. Descending the four flights, I listened a moment behind the door to the ground-floor hall, heard nothing, opened it, and passed through. The runt was standing by the elevator door, looking scared. He said nothing, and neither did I, as I crossed to the entrance. Outside I turned right, walked the half a short block to Lexington Avenue and stopped a taxi, and in seven minutes was climbing out in front of Wolfe's house.
When I entered the office I had to grin. Wolfe's current book was lying on his desk, and he was fussing with the germination slips. It was comical. He had been reading the book, and, when the sound came of me opening the front door, he had hastily ditched the book and got busy with the germination slips, just to show me how difficult things were for him because I hadn't made the entries from the slips on the permanent record cards. It was so childish I couldn't help grinning.
"May I interrupt?" I asked politely.
He looked up. "Since you're back so soon I assume you found nothing of interest."
"Sometimes you assume wrong. I'm back so soon because a flock of scientists would be coming and I might have been kept all night. I saw Corrigan. Dead. Bullet through his temple."
He let the slips in his hand drop to the desk. "Please report."
I did so, in full, including even the cop's thoughts about the Yankees. Wolfe was scowling some when I started and a lot more by the time I finished. He asked a few questions, sat a while tapping with a forefinger on the arm of his chair, and suddenly blurted at me, "Was the man a nincompoop?"
"Who, the cop?"
"No. Mr. Corrigan."
I lifted my shoulders and dropped them. "In California he wasn't exactly brilliant, but I wouldn't say a nincompoop. Why?"
"It's absurd. Totally. If you had stayed there you might have got something that would give some light."
"If I had stayed there I would have been corralled in a corner for an hour or so until someone decided to start in on me."
He nodded grudgingly. "I suppose so." He looked up at the clock and put his thumbs at the edge of his desk to shove his chair back. "Confound it. An exasperating piece of nonsense to go to bed on."
"Yeah. Especially knowing that around midnight or later we'll get either a ring or a personal appearance."
But we didn't. I slept like a log for nine hours.
19
SATURDAY morning I never did finish the newspaper accounts of the violent death of James A. Corrigan, the prominent attorney. Phone calls interrupted my breakfast four times. One was from Lon Cohen of the Gazette, wanting an interview with Wolfe about the call he had got from Corrigan, and two were from other journalists, wanting the same. I stalled them. The fourth was from Mrs. Abrams. She had read the morning paper and wanted to know if the Mr. Corrigan who had shot himself was the man who had killed her Rachel, though she didn't put it as direct as that. I stalled her too.
My prolonged breakfast was ruining Fritz's schedule, so when the morning mail came I took my second cup of coffee to the office. I flipped through the envelopes, tossed all but one on my desk, glanced at the clock and saw 8:55. Wolfe invariably started for the plant rooms at nine sharp. I went and ran up the flight of stairs to his room and knocked, entered without waiting for an invitation, and announced, "Here it is. The firm's envelope. Postmarked Grand Central Station yesterday, twelve midnight. It's fat."
"Open it." He was standing, dressed, ready to leave.
I did so and removed the contents. "Typewritten, single-spaced, dated yesterday, headed at the top 'To Nero Wolfe.' Nine pages. Unsigned."
"Read it."
"Aloud?"
"No. It's nine o'clock. You can ring me or come up if necessary."
"Nuts. This is just swagger."
"It is not. A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries." He strode from the room.
My eye went to the opening sentence.
I have decided to write this but not sign it. I think I want to write it mainly for its cathartic value, but my motives are confused. The events of the past year have made me unsure about everything. It may be that deep in me much is left of the deep regard for truth and justice that I acquired in my youth, through both religious and secular teaching, and that accounts for my feeling that I must write this. Whatever the motive
The phone rang downstairs. Wolfe's extension wasn't on, so I had to go down to get it. It was Sergeant Purley Stebbins. Purley would always just as soon talk to me as Wolfe, and maybe rather. He's not dumb by any means, and he has never forgotten the prize boner that Wolfe bluffed him into on the Longren case.
He was brusque but not thorny. He said they wanted to know firsthand about two things, Corrigan's phone call the night before, and my performance in California, especially my contacts with Corrigan. When I told him I would be glad to oblige and come down, he said that wouldn't be necessary because Inspector Cramer wanted to see Wolfe and would drop in at eleven or shortly after. I said that as far as I knew we would let him in, and Purley hung up without saying good-by.