Too Many Women. A Nero Wolfe Mystery
by Rex Stout
CHAPTER One
It was the same old rigmarole. Sometimes I found it amusing; sometimes it only bored me; sometimes it gave me a pronounced pain, especially when I had had more of Wolfe than was good for either of us.
This time it was fairly funny at first, but it developed along regrettable lines. Mr. Jasper Pine, president of Naylor-Kerr, Inc., 914 William Street, down where a thirty-story building is a shanty, wanted Nero Wolfe to come to see him about something. I explained patiently, all about Wolfe being too lazy, too big and fat, and too much of a genius, to let himself be evoked. When Mr. Pine phoned again, in the afternoon, he insisted on speaking to Wolfe himself, and Wolfe made it short, sour, and final. An hour later, after Wolfe had gone up to the plant rooms, just to pass the time I dialed the number of Naylor-Kerr, Inc., managed to get through to Mr. Pine, and asked him why he didn’t come to see us.
He snapped that he was too busy, and then he wanted to know, “Who are you?” I told him I was Archie Goodwin, the heart, liver, lungs, and gizzard of the private detective business of Nero Wolfe, Wolfe being merely the brains. He asked sarcastically if I was a genius too, and I told him no indeed, I was comparatively human.
“I could run down now,” I said.
“No.” He was curt but not discourteous. “I’m filled up for today. Come tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Better make it ten-fifteen.”
CHAPTER Two
Those pyramids of profit down in the Wall Street section, sticking straight up nine hundred feet and more, are tenanted by everything from one-room midgets to ten-floor super-giants. Though the name of Naylor-Kerr, Inc., was vaguely familiar to me, it was not a household word, and I lifted the brows when I learned from the lobby directory that it paid the rent for three whole floors.
The executive offices were on the thirty-sixth, so up I went. The atmosphere up there was of thick carpets, wood panels, and plenty of space, but as for the receptionist, though she was not really miscast she was way past the deadline, having reached the age when it is more blessed to receive than to give.
She received me at ten-fourteen, and at ten-nineteen I was escorted down a corridor to the office of the president. Naturally he had a corner room with batteries of big windows, but I had to admit that in spite of more panels and carpets and the kind of office furniture you see in Sloane’s window, it gave me the impression of a place where somebody got some work done.
Mr. Jasper Pine was about the same age as the receptionist, a little short of fifty maybe, but on him it looked good. Except for his clothes, with the coat obviously cut for the stoop of his shoulders, he had more the appearance of a foreman or a job boss than a top executive of a big corporation. In the middle of the room he shook hands as if he were comparatively human too, and, instead of fencing himself off behind his desk, assigned us to a couple of comfortable chairs between two windows.
“My morning’s a little crowded,” he told me in a deep voice that sounded as if all it needed was more breath to reach to Central Park, and he could furnish the breath when necessary. I was sizing him up, not knowing then whether the job was a lead pencil leak in the supply room, which would have been beneath our notice, or wife-tailing, which was out of bounds for Nero Wolfe. On the phone he had refused to specify.
“So,” he was going on, “I’ll sketch it briefly. Looking over some reports recently, I noticed that our employee turnover here in the home office, exclusive of the technical staff, was over twenty-eight per cent for the year nineteen forty-six. That was excessive. I decided to look into it. As a first step I had a form drawn up and two thousand copies of it multigraphed, and sent a supply of it to all heads of departments, with instructions that one be filled out for each person who had left our employ during nineteen forty-six. The forms were to be returned direct to me. Here’s one that came from the head of the stock department.” He extended a hand with a paper in it. “Take a look at it.
Read it through.” It was a single sheet, letter size, with a neat job of multigraphing on one side. At the top it said: RETURN TO THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT BY MARCH TENTH
The blank spaces had been filled in with a typewriter. First came the name of the ex-employee, which in this case was Waldo Wilmot Moore. Age: 30. Unmarried.
Home address: Hotel Churchill. Employment began: April 8,1946. Hired through: Applied personally. Job: Correspondence checker. Salary: $100 weekly. Rises: To $150 weekly September 30, 1946. Employment ended: December 5, 1946.
Other spaces had been filled in, about how well he had done his job, and his relations with other employees and his immediate superiors, and so forth, and then at the bottom came what was of course the key question: Reason for ending of employment (give details). There was three inches of space after it, plenty of room for details, but for Waldo Wilmot Moore only one word had been thought necessary and there it was: Murdered.
CHAPTER Three
So apparently it wasn’t a lead pencil leak.
I looked at Jasper Pine. “An excellent idea,” I said enthusiastically. “These reports will show you where the weak spots are, and you can take steps. Though Moore’s case was probably an exception. I don’t suppose many of the twenty-eight per cent got murdered. Incidentally, I keep track of murders for business reasons, and I don’t remember this one. Was it local?” Pine was shaking his head. “Moore was run over by a car, a hit-and-run driver—here in New York somewhere uptown. I believe that is called manslaughter, not murder, which requires malice aforethought. I’m not a lawyer, but I looked it up when this report—when I saw this.” He made a gesture of impatience. “The hit-and-run driver was not found. I want Nero Wolfe to find out if there is any basis for the supposition that it was murder.” “Just curiosity?” “No. I took it up with the head of the stock department, who made that report, because I didn’t think it desirable to have it in our files, stating that one of our employees had been murdered, unless that was actually the case. Also I wanted to know what reason he had, if any, to make that statement. He refused to give any reason. He agreed with my definition of murder and manslaughter, but he refused to change the report or to make another report using a different word or phrase. He insisted that the report is correct as it stands. He refused to elaborate. He refused to discuss it.” “Goodness.” I was impressed. “That ought to be a record. Four refuses to a corporation president from a mere head of a department! Who is he? Mr. Naylor?
Or Mr. Kerr?” “His name is Kerr Naylor.” I thought for a second he was injecting comic relief, but the look on his face showed me quite the contrary. He was talking time out to light a cigarette, and it was easy to see that the purpose of the maneuver was to hide embarrassment.
The president was unquestionably embarrassed.
After a good puff he coughed explosively and explained, “Kerr Naylor is the son of one of the founders of this business. He was named Kerr after the other founder. He has had a—uh, varied career. Also he is my wife’s brother. He actually controls a large block of the corporation’s stock, but he no longer owns it because he gave it away. He refuses to be an officer of the company, and he refuses to serve on the Board of Directors.” “I see. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool refuser.” Pine made the gesture of impatience again. He did it with a little fling of a hand, and it was abrupt but not domineering. “As you see,” he said, “the situation is not simple. After Mr.
Naylor’s refusal either to justify the report or to change it, I was inclined just to let the matter drop and merely destroy the report, but I mentioned it to two of my brother executives and to a member of the Board, and they were all of the opinion that it should be followed up. Besides that, news of the report, with that word on it, has got around among the employees of the department, presumably through the stenographer who typed it, and there is a lot of unhealthy gossip. This man Moore was the type—I’ll put it this way—he was the type that stirs up gossip in the circle he lives in, and now, nearly four months after his death, here he is stirring it up again. We don’t like it and we want it stopped.” “Oh. You said you wanted Mr. Wolfe to find out if there was any basis for using the word murdered. Now you want the gossip stopped. You’d better pick which.” “It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?” “Not necessarily. If we find out he was murdered and the finding percolates, the gossip gauge will go right through the ceiling, not to mention other possible results.” Pine glanced at his wristwatch, reached to an ash tray to ditch his cigarette, and stood up. “Damn it,” he said, with more breath but not more noise, “do I have to explain that the situation is made more complicated by the fact that it was Mr. Kerr Naylor who signed that report? This is a damn nuisance and it’s taking my time that ought to be spent working! His father, old George Naylor, is still living and is Chairman of the Board, though he turned over his stock to his children long ago. This is the oldest and largest company in its field, the largest in the world, and it has built up a reputation and a tradition. It has also built up—oh, complexities. The directors and executives now managing its affairs—of whom I am one— want this thing looked into, and I want to hire Nero Wolfe to do the looking.” “You mean the corporation? Wants to hire him?” “Certainly!” “To do what? Wait a minute, can I put it this way? We’re either to make that word on that report good, or we’re to make this Mr. Kerr Naylor eat it. Is that the job?” “Roughly, yes.” “Do we get credentials for around here?” “You get all reasonable co-operation. The details will have to be arranged with me. More time gone. It will have to be handled with discretion—and delicately. I had an idea that a way to do it would be for Nero Wolfe to get a job in the stock department, under another name of course, and he could — what’s the matter?” “Nothing. Excuse me.” I stood up. The notion of Wolfe fighting his way down to William Street every morning, or even with me driving him, and punching a time clock, and working all day in the stock department, had been too much for my facial control.