Prisoner's Base by Rex Stout Read Free Book Online Page B

letting Cramer out I started to re-enter the office, but suddenly braked at the door, pivoted, and made for the stairs. Two flights up, I went into the south room, stood in its center, and looked around. Fritz hadn’t been in it yet, and the bed was turned down as Priscilla had left it, with the folded coverlet on the other bed. I went and lifted the coverlet to look under it and dropped it again. I raised the pillow on the turned-down bed and glanced under that. I crossed to the large bureau between the windows and started opening and closing drawers.
    I was not being completely cuckoo. I was a trained and experienced detective, there had been a murder that I was interested in and wanted to know more about, and the closest I could get to it at the moment was this room in which Priscilla had expected to sleep and eat her breakfast. I hadn’t the slightest expectation of finding anything helpful, and so wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t; and I did find something at that. On a shelf in the bathroom was a toothbrush and a soiled handkerchief. I took them to my room and put them on my dresser, and I still have them, in a drawer where I keep a collection of assorted professional relics.
    There was no point in going up to the plant rooms and starting a squabble, so I went down to the office and opened the morning mail and fiddled around with chores. Somewhat later, when I became aware that I was entering a germination date of
Cymbidium holfordianum
on the card of
Cymbidium pauwelsi
, I decided I wasn’t in the mood for clerical work, returned things to the files, and sat and stared at my toes. There were four thousand things I wanted to know, and there were people I might have started asking, like Sergeant Purley Stebbins or Lon Cohen of the
Gazette
, but after all this was Nero Wolfe’s office and phone.
    At eleven o’clock he came down, entered and crossed to his desk, got himself settled in his chair, and glanced through the little stack of mail I had put there under a paperweight. There was nothing of much interest and certainly nothing urgent. He cocked his head, focused on me, and stated, “It would have been like you to come up at ten o’clock for instructions as arranged.”
    I nodded. “I know, but Cramer didn’t leave until five after, and I knew how you would react. Do you care to hear the details?”
    “Go ahead.”
    I gave him what I had got from Cramer. When I had finished he sat frowning at me with his eyes half closed, through a long silence. Finally he spoke. “You reported in full to Mr. Cramer?”
    “I did. You said to unload.”
    “Yes. Then Mr. Helmar will soon know, if he doesn’t already, of our stratagem, and I doubt if it’s worth the trouble to communicate with him. He wanted his ward alive and well, so he said, and that’s out of the question.”
    I disagreed, not offensively. “But he’s our only contact, and, no matter how sore he is, we can start with him. We have to start somewhere with someone?”
    “Start?” He was peevish. “Start what? For whom? We have no client. There’s nothing to start.”
    The simple and direct thing to do would have been to blow my top, and it would have been a satisfaction—but then what? I refused to boil, and kept my voice even. “I don’t deny,” I told him, “that that’s one way to look at it, but only one, and there is at least one other. Like this. She was here and wanted to stay, and we kicked her out, and she got killed. I should think that would have some bearing on your self-esteem, which you were discussing last night. I should think that you do have something to start—a murder investigation. And you also have a client—your self-esteem.”
    “Nonsense!”
    “Maybe.” I stayed calm. “I would like to explain at length why I think it’s up to us to get the guy that killed Priscilla Eads, but I don’t want to waste your time or my breath just for the hell of it. Would it do any good?”
    “No.”
    “You won’t even