Prisoner’s Base by Rex Stout

“I’ll bet it’s not. The damn fool—I mean the father. What about the guy she married? I hear she ran away with him. Who was she running from? Her father was dead.”

“I don’t know—maybe the trustee; he was her guardian. That wasn’t here. She met him somewhere on a trip, down South I think. There’s very little on it in New York. What do you mean, Wolfe is neither involved nor interested?”

“Just that. He isn’t.”

“Ha-ha. I suppose you’re calling for a friend. Give him my regards. Have you got your dime’s worth?”

“For now, yes. I’ll buy you a steak at Pierre’s at seven-thirty.”

He made a smacking noise. “That’s the best offer I’ve had today. I hope I can make it. Ring me at seven?”

“Right. Much obliged.”

I hung up, pulled the door open, and got out a handkerchief and wiped my brow and behind my ears. The booth was hot. I stepped out, found the Manhattan phone book, looked up an address, went out and crossed Thirty-fourth Street, and got a taxi going east.

Chapter V

The headquarters of Softdown, Incorporated, at 192 Collins Street, in the middle of the ancient jungle between City Hall Park and Greenwich Village, was not an office or a floor, it was a building. Its four-storied front may once have been cream-colored brick, but you would have had to use a chisel or a sand-blaster to find out. However, the two enormous street-floor windows, one on either side of the entrance, were so bright and clean they sparkled. Behind one was a vast geometrical array of bathtowels, in a dozen colors and twice that many sizes, and behind the other was a crazy old contraption with a placard resting on one of its crosspieces which said:

HARGREAVES’ SPINNING JENNY

1768

Both sides of the double door were standing open, and I entered. The left half of the wide and deep room was partitioned off all the way back, with a string of doors, but the right half was open, with an army of tables, piled with merchandise. Only four or five people were in sight, scattered around. An opening in the first eight feet of partition had the word INFORMATION above it, but the old war mare inside, seated at a switchboard, looked too damn skeptical, and I went on by, to the right, to where a rotund and ruddy type stood scratching the top of his ear. I showed him my case, open to display my license card with its photograph, and snapped, “Goodwin. Detective. Where’s the boss?”

He barely glanced at it. “Which boss?” he squeaked. “What do you want?”

Another skeptic. “Relax,” I told him in an official tone. “I’m on an errand connected with the death of Priscilla Eads. I want to talk with everyone here who will own part of this business because she died, preferably starting at the top. Would it be better to start with you? Your name, please?”

He didn’t bat an eye. “You want to see Mr Brucker,” he squeaked.

“I agree. Where is he?”

“His office is down at the end, but right now he’s upstairs in the conference room.”

“And the stairs?”

He jerked a thumb. “Over there.”

I went in the direction indicated and through a door. Everything about the stairs was contemporary with the building except the treads and risers, which were up-to-date rough-top plastic. The second floor was visibly a busier place than the first. There were row after row of desks with typewriters and other machines, cabinets and shelves, and of course the girls, easily a hundred of them. There is no more agreeable form of research than the study of animated contour, color, and motion in a large business office, but that day I was preoccupied. I crossed to a dark-eyed smooth-skinned creature manipulating a machine bigger than her, and asked where the conference room was, and she pointed to the far end of the room, away from the street. I went there, found a door in a partition, opened it and passed through, and closed the door behind me.

The partition was well soundproofed, for as soon as I shut the door the clatter and hum of the big room’s activity became just a murmur. This room was of medium size, square, with a fine old mahogany table in the middle, and chairs to match all the way around it. At the far side was a stairhead. One of the five people seated in a cluster at the end of the table could have been Hargreaves of the 1768 spinning jenny, or anyhow his son, with his pure white hair and his wrinkled old skin trying to find room enough for itself with the face meat gone. He still had sharp blue-gray eyes, and they drew me in his direction as I displayed my case and said, “Goodwin. Detective. About the murder of Priscilla Eads. Mr Brucker?”

Whitey was not Brucker. Brucker was the one across from him, about half Whitey’s age and with half as much hair, light brown, and a long pale face and a long thin nose. He spoke. “I’m Brucker. What do you want?”

None of them was reaching for the case, so I returned it to my pocket, got onto a chair, and took out my notebook and pencil. I was thinking that if I didn’t overplay my self-assurance I might get away with it. I opened the notebook and flipped to a fresh page, in no hurry, and ran my eyes over them, ending at Brucker. “This is only a preliminary,” I told him. “Full name, please.”

“J. Luther Brucker.”

“What does the J. stand for?”

“It’s J-a-y, Jay.”

I was writing. “You’re an officer of the corporation?”

“President. I have been for seven years.”

“When and how did you learn of the murder of Miss Eads?”

“On the radio this morning. The seven-forty-five newscast.”

“That was the first you heard of it?”

“Yes.”

“How did you spend your time last night between ten-thirty and two o’clock? Briefly. As fast as you please. I do shorthand.”

“I was in bed. I was tired after a hard day’s work and went to bed early, shortly after ten, and stayed there.”

“Where do you live?”

“I have a suite at the Prince Henry Hotel, Brooklyn.”

I looked at him. I always look again at people who live in Brooklyn. “Is that where you were last night?”

“Certainly. That’s where my bed is, and I was in it.”

“Alone?”

“I’m unmarried.”

“Were you alone in your suite throughout the period from ten-thirty to two o’clock last night?”

“I was.”

“Can you furnish any corroboration? Phone calls? Anything at all?”

His jaw moved spasmodically. He was controlling himself. “How can I? I was asleep.”

I looked at him without bias but with reserve. “You understand the situation, Mr Brucker. A lot of people stand to profit from Miss Eads’ death, some of them substantially. These things have to be asked about. How much of this business will you now inherit?”

“That’s a matter of public record.”

“Yeah. But you know, don’t you?”

“Of course I know.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, how much?”

“Under the provisions of the will of the late Nathan Eads, son of the founder of the business, I suppose that nineteen thousand three hundred and sixty-two shares of the common stock of the corporation will come to me. The same amount will go to four other people—Miss Duday, Mr Quest, Mr Pitkin, and Mr Helmar. Smaller amounts go to others.”

Whitey spoke, his sharp blue-gray eyes straight at me. “I am Bernard Quest.” His voice was firm and strong, with no sign of wrinkles. “I have been with this business sixty-two years, and have been sales manager for thirty-four years and vice-president for twenty-nine.”

“Right.” I wrote. “I’ll get names down.” I looked at the woman next to Bernard Quest on his left. She was middle-aged, with a scrawny neck and dominating ears, and was unquestionably a rugged individualist, since no lipstick had been allowed anywhere near her. I asked her, “Yours, please?”

“Viola Duday,” she said in a clear voice so surprisingly pleasant that I raised my brows at my notebook. “I was Mr Eads’ secretary, and in nineteen thirty-nine he made me assistant to the president. He was, of course, president. During his last illness, the last fourteen months of his life, I ran the business.”

“We helped all we could,” Brucker said pointedly.

She ignored him. “My present title,” she told me, “is assistant secretary of the corporation.”

I moved my eyes. “You, sir?”

That one, on Viola Duday’s left, was a neat little squirt; with a suspicious twist to his lips, who had been fifty years old all his life and would be for the rest of it. Apparently he had a cold, since he kept sniffing and dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief.

“Oliver Pitkin,” he said, and was a little hoarse. “Secretary and treasurer of the corporation since nineteen thirty-seven, when my predecessor died at the age of eighty-two.”

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