Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02 by The League of Frightened Men Read Free Book Online

report here Monday evening at eight-thirty. Durkin likewise. Find out if Gore and Cather and two others—your selection—will be available for Tuesday morning.”
    I grinned. “How about the Sixty-first Regiment?”
    “They will be our reserve. As soon as you have sent the telegrams, phone Miss Hibbard at her home. Try until you get her. Employ your charm. Make an appointment to call on her this evening. If you get to see her, tell her that you regret that I refused her commission, and that you have my leave to offer her your assistance if she wishes it. It will save time. It will afford you an opportunity to amass a collection offacts from her, and possibly even a glance through the papers and effects of Mr. Hibbard. Chiefly for any indication of an awareness on his part that he would not soon return. We are of course in agreement with some of the tendencies of the law; for instance, its reluctance to believe a man dead merely because he is not visible on the spot he is accustomed to occupy.”
    “Yes, sir. Take my own line with her?”
    “Any that suggests itself.”
    “If I go up there I could take the list along.”
    “No, mail it.” Wolfe was getting up from his chair. I watched him; it was always something to see. Before he got started for the door, I asked:
    “Maybe I should know this, I didn’t get it. What was the idea asking her about the life insurance?”
    “That? Merely the possibility that we were encountering a degree of vindictive finesse never before reached in our experience. Chapin’s hatred, diluted of course, extended from the uncle to the niece. He learned of the large sum she would receive in insurance, and in planning Hibbard’s murder planned also that the body would not be discovered; and the insurance money would not be paid her.”
    “It would some day.”
    “But even a delay in an enemy’s good fortune is at least a minor pleasure. Worth such a finesse if you have it in you. That was the possibility. And another one: let us say Chapin himself was the beneficiary. Miss Hibbard was sure he would kill her uncle, would evade discovery, and would collect a huge fortune for his pains. The thought was intolerable. So she killed her uncle herself—he was about to die in any event—and disposed of the body so that it could not be found. You might go into that with her this evening.”
    I said, “You think I won’t? I’ll get her alibi.”

Chapter 4
    T here was plenty doing Saturday evening and Sunday. I saw Evelyn Hibbard and had three hours with her, and got Saul and Fred and the other boys lined up, and had a lot of fun on the telephone, and finally got hold of Higgam the bank guy late Sunday evening after he returned from a Long Island week-end. The phone calls were from members of the league who had got the telegrams. There were five or six that phoned, various kinds; some scared, some sore, and one that was apparently just curious. I had made several copies of the list, and as the phone calls came I checked them off on one and made notes. The original, Hibbard’s, had a date at the top, February 16, 1931, and was typewritten. Some of the addresses had been changed later with a pen, so evidently it had been kept up-to-date. Four of the names had no addresses at all, and of course I didn’t know which ones were dead. The list was like this, leaving out the addresses and putting in the business or profession as we got it Monday from the bank:
    Andrew Hibbard, psychologist
Ferdinand Bowen, stockbroker
Loring A. Burton, doctor
Eugene Dreyer, art dealer
Alexander Drummond, florist
George R. Pratt, politician
Nicholas Cabot, lawyer
Augustus Farrell, architect
Wm. R. Harrison, judge
Fillmore Collard, textile-mill owner
Edwin Robert Byron, magazine editor
L. M. Irving, social worker
Lewis Palmer, Federal Housing Administration
Julius Adler, lawyer
Theodore Gaines, banker
Pitney Scott, taxi-driver
Michael Ayers, newspaperman
Arthur Kommers, sales manager
Wallace McKenna, congressman from