Free Too Many Clients by Rex Stout Page B

to that room and wanted me to go with him, and that’s where I am now, in Nero Wolfe’s office. . . . Yes. . . . No, I don’t think so, they’re both right here, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. … I don’t know. . . . Yes, of course, but I don’t know. . . . Wait, I’ll ask.”
    She turned to me. “What’s this address?” I told her, and she went back to the phone. “Six-eighteen West Thirty-fifth Street. . . . That’s right. . . . Yes, I will.” She hung up, swiveled, told Wolfe, “Mr. Aiken will be here in twenty minutes,” and wriggled her coat off.
    Wolfe asked, “Who is Mr. Aiken?”
    Her look was what you would get from the Yankee batboy if you asked him who is Mr. Stengel. “Mr. Benedict Aiken. The president of Continental Plastic Products.”
    That changed my mind. Wanting my own chair, I had been about to move her to the red leather one, but she would only have to move again when the president came, so I brought one of the yellow ones for her, facing Wolfe’s desk, and put her coat on the couch. As she changed to it Wolfe lifted his head to sniff. His opinion of perfume may be only a part of his opinion of women. He always thinks he smells it when there’s a woman in the room. I had been closer to Julia McGee than he had, and she wasn’t scented.
    He eyed her. “You told Mr. Goodwin that you went to that room this evening to get a notebook you had left there. When did you leave it?”
    She was meeting his eyes. “I’ll wait until Mr. Aiken gets here.”
    Wolfe shook his head. “That won’t do. I can’t prevent his coming, but he’ll enter only if it suits me. I want some facts before he arrives. When did you leave the notebook?”
    She opened her mouth and closed it again. In a moment she spoke. “I didn’t. That was a�that wasn’t true. I went there this evening because Mr. Aiken asked me to.”
    “Indeed. To get something he had left?”
    “No. I’d rather wait until he’s here, but it doesn’t matter. You know that place was Mr. Yeager’s, so it doesn’t matter. Mr. Aiken sent me there to see if there was anything there that would connect Mr. Yeager with it, that would show it was his place.”
    “Mr. Aiken gave you keys?”
    “No, I had keys. I had been there a few times to take dictation from Mr. Yeager. I was his secretary.”
    Wolfe grunted. “I haven’t seen that room, but Mr. Goodwin has described it. Did you think it a suitable milieu for business dictation?”
    “It wasn’t my place to think it was suitable or wasn’t. If he thought it was�he was my boss.”
    Wolfe looked at me. I raised my brows. One brow up meant no, even money. Two brows up meant no, five to one. He returned to her.
    “If you had found something that showed it was Mr. Yeager’s place, what were you going to do with it?” “I was going to take it. Take it away.” “As instructed by Mr. Aiken?” “Yes.” “Why?”
    “Mr. Aiken can tell you that better than I can.”
    “You must have a notion. You didn’t think that he was merely indulging a whim.”
    “Of course not. The obvious reason was that he wanted to protect the reputation of Continental Plastic Products. It was bad enough, the executive vice-president being murdered. Mr. Aiken didn’t want it to be known that he had been�that he had had a� a place like that.”
    “Do you know how Mr. Aiken found out that Mr. Yeager had that place?”
    “Yes. I told him.”
    “When?”
    “About two months ago. Mr. Yeager had had me go there twice �no, three times�to take dictation in the evening. He said he could think better, do better work, away from the office. Of course you’re right, what you said about that room. I thought it was very �well, vulgar for him to ask me to go there. I worried about it, and I decided my loyalty shouldn’t be to Mr. Yeager, it should be to the corporation. It paid my salary. So I told Mr. Aiken.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He thanked me for telling him.”
    “What did he do?”
    “I