Free Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 41 by The Doorbell Rang

it doesn’t to you. I must see you—now if possible. It will—”
    “I am not seeing anybody.”
    “I know. You may have heard of Nero Wolfe. Have you?”
    “Yes.”
    “He has been told by a man he knows well that your son Morris was killed by an agent of the FBI. That’s why I am being followed. And that’s why I must see you. I can be there in ten minutes. Did you get my name? Archie Goodwin.”
    Silence. Finally: “You
know
who killed my son?”
    “Not his name. I don’t
know
anything. I only know what Mr. Wolfe has been told. That’s all I can say on thephone. If I may make a suggestion, we think Miss Marian Hinckley should know about this too. Perhaps you could phone her and ask her to come, and I can tell both of you. Could you?”
    “I could, yes. Are you a newspaper reporter? Is this a trick?”
    “No. If I were this would be pretty dumb, you’d only have me bounced. I’m Archie Goodwin.”
    “But I don’t …” Long pause. “Very well. The hallman will ask you for identification.”
    I told her of course, and hung up before she could change her mind.
    When leaving the house I had decided that I would completely ignore the tail question, but I couldn’t help it if my eyes, while scouting the street for an empty taxi, took notice of standing vehicles. However, when I was in and rolling, up Madison Avenue and then Park, I kept facing front. To hell with the rear.
    It was a regulation Park Avenue hive in the Eighties—marquee, doorman hopping out when the taxi stopped, rubber runner saving the rug in the lobby—but it was Grade A, because the doorman did not double as hallman. When I showed the hallman, who was expecting me, my private investigator license he gave it a good look, handed it back, and told me 10B, and I went to the elevator. On the tenth floor I was admitted by a uniformed female who took my hat and coat, put them in a closet, and conducted me through an arch into a room even bigger than Lily Rowan’s where twenty couples can dance. I have a test for people with rooms that big—not the rugs or the furniture or the drapes, but the pictures on the walls. If I can tell what they are, okay. If all I can do is guess, look out; these people will bear watching. That room passed the test fine. I was looking at a canvas showing three girls sitting on thegrass under a tree when footsteps came and I turned. She approached. She didn’t offer a hand, but she said in a low, soft voice, “Mr. Goodwin? I’m Ivana Althaus,” and moved to a chair.
    Even without the picture test I would have passed her—her small slender figure with its honest angles, her hair with its honest gray, her eyes with their honest doubt. As I turned a chair to sit facing her I decided to be as honest as possible. She was saying that Miss Hinckley would come soon, but she would prefer not to wait. She had understood me to say on the phone that her son had been killed by an agent of the FBI. Was that correct?
    Her eyes were straight at me, and I met them. “Not strictly,” I told her. “I said that someone told Mr. Wolfe that. I should explain about Mr. Wolfe. He is—uh—eccentric, and he has certain strong feelings about the New York Police Department. He resents their attitude toward him and his work, and he thinks they interfere too much. He reads the newspapers, and especially news about murders, and a couple of weeks ago he got the idea that the police and the District Attorney were letting go on the murder of your son, and when he learned that your son had been collecting material for an article about the FBI he suspected that the letting go might be deliberate. If so, it might be a chance to give the police a black eye, and nothing would please him better.”
    Her eyes were staying straight at me, hardly a blink. “So,” I said, “we had no case on our hands, and he started some inquiries. One thing we learned, a fact that hasn’t been published, was that nothing about the FBI, no notes or documents, was