Too Many Clients by Rex Stout Read Free Book Online

have decided the same. When I had been trying to account for the tarp the simplest explanation had never occurred to me, that long ago people covered dead men to hide them from vultures, and it got to be a habit.
    “That was decent,” I said. “Too bad you didn’t wear gloves. Okay, that’s all for now. I have work to do. You heard me give that woman Nero Wolfe’s address, Six-eighteen West Thirty-fifth Street. Be there at six o’clock this afternoon, both of you. I’m your detective temporarily, but he’s the boss. You certainly need help, and after you tell him about it we’ll see. Where are Yeager’s keys'Don’t say ‘We don’t know.’ You said you took them. Where are they?”
    “I have them safe,” Mrs. Perez said.
    “Where?”
    “In a cake. I made a cake and put them in. There are twelve keys in a thing.”
    “Including the keys to the door and the elevator?”
    “Yes.”
    I considered. I was already on thin ice, and if I took possession of something that had been taken from Yeager’s body there would be no ice at all between me and suppression of evidence. No. “Don’t cut the cake,” I said, “and be darned sure nobody else does. Are you going anywhere today'Either of you?”
    “We don’t have to,” she said.
    “Then don’t. Nero Wolfe’s office at six o’clock, but I’ll see you when I come down, probably in an hour or so.” “You take things?”
    “I don’t know. If I do I’ll show them to you, including the cigarette case. If I take anything you think I shouldn’t, you can call in that cop from out front.”
    “We couldn’t,” Perez said.
    “He makes a joke,” she told him. She pushed the button to bring the elevator up. “This is a bad day, Cesar. There will be many bad days, and he makes a joke.” The elevator clicked at the top, she pushed another button, the door opened, and they entered and were gone.
    I moved my eyes around. At the edge of a panel of red silk at the left was a rectangular brass plate, if it wasn’t gold. I went and pushed on it, and it gave. The panel was a door. I pushed it open and stepped through, and was in the kitchen. The walls were red tile, the cupboards and shelves were yellow plastic, and the sink and appliances, including the refrigerator and electric range, were stainless steel. I opened the refrigerator door, saw a collection of various items, and closed it. I slid a cupboard door back and saw nine bottles of Dom Perignon champagne on their sides in a plastic rack. That would do for the kitchen for now. I emerged and walked the length of the yellow carpet, surrounded by silk and skin, to the other end, where there was another brass plate, or gold, at the edge of a panel. I pushed it open and was in the bathroom. I don’t know what your taste is, but I liked it. It was all mirrors and marble, red marble with yellow streaks and splotches. The tub, big enough for two, was the same marble. Two of the mirrors were doors to cabinets, and they contained enough different cosmetic items to supply a harem.
    I returned to the silk and skin. There were no drawers anywhere, no piece of furniture that might contain pieces of paper on which someone had written something. There was nothing at the telephone stand but the phone, which was yellow, and the directory, which was in a red leather holder. But along one wall, the one across from the bed, there was no furniture for about thirty feet of its length, and the silk along the bottom, for three feet up from the floor, was in little folds like a curtain, not flat as it was everywhere else. I went and gave the silk a tug and it parted and slid along the top, and behind it were drawer fronts, of wood something like mahogany, but redder. I pulled one open. Female slippers, a dozen pairs in two neat rows, various colors and shapes and sizes. The sizes ranged from quite small to fairly large.
    I looked into only five more drawers before I went to the phone. That was enough to make it plain that Meg