CHAPTER Five
All day Sunday was a nightmare. It rained off and on all day. I dragged myself out of bed at ten o’clock with a head as big as a barrel stuffed with wet feathers, and five hours later it was still the size of a keg and the inside was still swampy. Gwenn was keeping after me to take interiors with flashbulbs, and I had to deliver. Strong black coffee didn’t seem to help, and food was my worst enemy. Sperling thought I had a hangover, and he certainly didn’t smile when I returned the master key and refused to report events if any. Madeline thought there was something funny about it, but the word funny has different meanings at different times. There was one thing, when I got roped in for bridge I seemed to be clairvoyant and there was no stopping me. Jimmy suspected I was a shark but tried to conceal it. About the worst was when Webster Kane decided I was in exactly the right condition to start a course in economics and devoted an hour to the first lesson.
I was certainly in no shape to make any headway in simple fractions, let alone economics or establishing a relationship with a girl like Gwenn. Or Madeline either. Sometime during the afternoon Madeline got me alone and started to open me up for a look at my intentions and plans—or rather, Wolfe’s—regarding her sister, and I did my best to keep from snarling under the strain. She was willing to reciprocate, and I collected a few items about the family and guests without really caring a damn. The only one who was dead set against Rony was Sperling himself. Mrs Sperling and Jimmy, the brother, had liked him at first, then had switched more or less to Sperling’s viewpoint, and later, about a month ago, had switched again and taken the attitude that it was up to Gwenn. That was when Rony had been allowed to darken the door again. As for the guests, Connie Emerson had apparently decided to solve the problem by getting Rony’s mind off Gwenn and on to someone else, namely her; Emerson seemed to be neither more nor less sour on Rony than on most of his other fellow creatures; and Webster Kane was judicious. Kane’s attitude, of some importance because of his position as a friend of the family, was that he didn’t care for Rony personally but that a mere suspicion didn’t condemn him. He had had a hot argument with Sperling about it.
Some of the stuff Madeline told me might have been useful in trying to figure who had doped Rony’s drink if I had been in any condition to use it, but I wasn’t. I would have made myself scarce long before the day was done but for one thing. I intended to get even, or at least make a stab at it.
As for the doping, I had entered a plea of not guilty, held the trial, and acquitted myself. The possibility that I had taken my own dope was ruled out; I had made that switch clean. And Rony had not seen the switch or been told of it; I was standing pat on that. Therefore Rony’s drink had been doped by someone else, and he had either known it or suspected it. It would have been interesting to know who had done it, but there were too many nominations. Webster Kane had been mixing, helped by Connie and Madeline, and Jimmy had delivered Rony’s drink to him. Not only that, after Rony had put it down on the table I had by no means had my eyes fixed on it while I was making my way across. So while Rony might have a name for the supplier of the dose I had guzzled, to me he was just X.
That, however, was not what had me hanging on. To hell with X, at least for the present. What had me setting my jaw and bidding four spades, or trotting around after Gwenn with two cameras and my pockets bulging with flashbulbs, when I should have been home in bed, was a picture I would never forget: Louis Rony pouring into a bucket the drink I had doped for him, while I stood and gulped the last drop of the drink someone else had doped for him. He would pay for that or I would never look Nero Wolfe in the face again.
Circumstances seemed favourable. I collected the information cautiously and without jostling. Rony had come by train on Friday evening and been met at the station by Gwenn, and had to return to town this evening, Sunday; and no one was driving in. Paul and Connie Emerson were house guests at Stony Acres for a week; Webster Kane was there for an indefinite period, Preparing some economic something for the corporation; Mom and the girls were there for the summer; and Sperling Senior and Junior would certainly not go to town on Sunday evening. But I would, waiting until late to miss the worst of the traffic, and surely Rony would prefer a comfortable roomy car to a crowded train.
I didn’t ask him. Instead, I made the suggestion, casually, to Gwenn. Later I made it pointedly to Madeline, and she agreed to drop a word in if the occasion offered. Then I got into the library alone with Sperling, suggested it to him even more pointedly, and asked him which phone I could use for a New York call, and told him the call was not for him to hear. He was a little difficult about it, which I admit he had a right to be, but by that time I could make whole sentences again and I managed to sell him. He left and closed the door behind him, and I got Saul Panzer at his home in Brooklyn and talked to him all of twenty minutes. With my head still soggy, I had to go over it twice to be sure not to leave any gaps.
That was around six o’clock, which meant I had four more hours to suffer, since I had picked ten for the time of departure and was now committed to it, but it wasn’t so bad. A little later the clouds began to sail around and you could tell them apart, and the sun even took a look as us just before it dropped over the edge; and what was more important, I risked a couple of nibbles at a chicken sandwich and before I was through the sandwich was too, and also a piece of cherry pie and a glass of milk. Mrs Sperling patted me on the back and Madeline said that now she would be able to get some sleep.
It was six minutes past ten when I slid behind the wheel of the convertible, asked Rony if he had remembered his toothbrush, and rolled along the plaza into the curve of the drive.
“What’s this,” he asked, “a forty-eight?” “No,” I said, “forty-nine.” He let his head go back to the cushion and shut his eyes.
There were enough openings among the clouds to show some stars but no moon. We wound along the drive, reached the stone pillars, and eased out on to the public road. It was narrow, with an asphalt surface that wouldn’t have been hurt by a little dressing, and for the first mile we had it to ourselves, which suited me fine. Just beyond a sharp turn the shoulder widened at a spot where there was an old shed at the edge of thick woods, and there at the roadside, headed the way we were going, a car was parked. I was going slow on account of the turn, and a woman darted nut and blinked a flashlight, and I braked to a stop. As I did so the woman called, “Got a jack mister?” and a man’s voice came, “My Jack broke, you got one?” I twisted in the seat to back off the road on to the grass. Rony muttered at me, “What the hell,” and I muttered back, “Brotherhood of man.” As the man and woman came toward us I got out and told Rony, “Sorry, but I guess you’ll have to move; the jack’s under the seat.” The woman, saying something about what nice people we were, was on his side and opened the door for him, and he climbed out. He went out backwards, facing me, and just as he was clear something slammed against the side of my head and I sank to the ground, but the grass was thick and soft. I stayed down and listened. It was only a few seconds before I heard my name.
“Okay, Archie.” I got to my feet, reached in the car to turn off the engine and lights, and circled around the hood to the other side, away from the road. Louis Rony was stretched out flat on his back. I didn’t waste time checking on him, knowing that Ruth Bradv could give lectures on the scientific use of a persuader, and anyhow she was kneeling at his head with her flashlight.