Everybody in the place regards your six men as dirty lowdown snoops, and you’re the Master Snoop.” It didn’t feeze him. He merely nodded back at me. “How do you propose to change that?” “Oh, I don’t. But it certainly ties it in with personnel difficulties. For instance, the man that got killed. Don’t you know there has been talk around that his death wasn’t an accident?” “Nonsense! Talk!” He tapped on his desk blotter. “Look here, young man, are you intimating that the functioning of this section has been the cause, directly or indirectly, of the commission of a crime?” “Yes.” His jaw trembled, and then came open and hung open. I was restraining myself from taking my handkerchief and wiping his eyes.
“That’s not the way to put it,” I said with emphasis, “but it was you who put it that way. I would say it more like this, that the talk about that man’s death is certainly one of the personnel problems around here, and Mr. Naylor himself suggested that I might use it as one of my starting points. Do you mind my asking a few questions about him? About Moore?” “I resent any insinuation that the operation of this section has resulted in any injustice or has been the cause of any legitimate desire to retaliate.” His jaw was back under control.
“Okay. Who said anything about legitimate? Desires to retaliate come in all flavors. But about this Moore, how did he rate with you? Was he a good worker?” “No.” “No?” I was matter-of-fact. “What was wrong with him?” The old man’s jaw trembled again, but it didn’t come open. When he had it in hand he spoke. “I have been in charge of this section ever since it started, over twenty years ago. Last April I had five men under me, and I regarded that as adequate. But a new man was hired and I was told to put him to work. He was incompetent, and I so reported, but my report was ignored. We had to put up with him. On several occasions his mistakes would have discredited the section if we had not been alert. It made it harder for all of us.” I thought to myself, my God, here we go again. I was trying to get started narrowing it down, and here were six more added to the list, Dickerson himself and five loyal checkers, who might have been irritated into killing Moore for the honor of the section. Now everybody was in except Kerr Naylor himself.
“But,” I objected, “what about the hiring regulations? I understand there is no overall personnel control and each department head rolls his own in theory, but in practice the section heads have the say. Who hired Moore and saddled you with him?” “I don’t know.” “How could you help knowing?” Dickerson used his own handkerchief on his eyes, which relieved the tension a lot for me. I hoped he would keep the handkerchief in his hand, but he deliberately and neatly returned it to his pocket.
“This,” he said, “is a very large concern, the largest in the world in its field, and beyond all comparison the best. Naturally the authority is tightly organized. No one on this floor is my superior except the head of the department, Mr. Kerr Naylor, the son of one of the founders. Therefore any exercise of authority can be brought to bear on me only through Mr. Naylor.” “Then it was Naylor who hired Moore?” “I don’t know.” “But it was Naylor who said you needed another man and wished Moore on you?” “Certainly. The line of authority is as I have described it.” “What else can you tell me about Moore besides his incompetence?” “Why, nothing.” Dickerson’s look and tone indicated that he regarded my question as silly. Obviously, if a man was incompetent that settled it; nothing else about him mattered one way or another. But it appeared that he was willing to concede that even a competent man must eat. He pulled a watch from his vest pocket, looked at it, and stated, “My lunch hour starts at twelve, Mr. Truett.”
CHAPTER Eight
Outside Dickerson’s office I turned left, toward the far end of the arena, and then was struck by an idea and came to a halt. Turning the idea over, and seeing that it had no visible defects on either side, I faced around and headed in the other direction. When I got to Rosenbaum’s door I found it closed again, but since he had said no knocking I turned the knob and entered. My intention was to ask him where his secretary’s room was, but I didn’t carry it out because she was there in a chair at the end of his desk with her notebook.
She didn’t turn her head at my entrance. Rosenbaum gave me a glance and said unemotionally, “Hello again.” “I just had a logical train of thought,” I told them, “and I wanted to find out what Miss Livsey thinks of it.” She looked at me. Nothing had changed in her in the hour that had passed. It was still obvious that no one on earth but me could understand her or help her.
“It goes like this,” I explained to her. “My job here requires that I have talks with units of the personnel, as many as possible. I should do that with a minimum amount of interference with the work of the department. You are a unit.
If we eat lunch together and do our talking then,, there will be no interference with your work. I’ll pay for the lunch and put it on expense.” Rosenbaum chuckled. “That’s a good approach,” he said appreciatively. He spoke to his secretary. “Since he thought that all up just for you, Hester, the least you can do is let him buy you a sandwich.” She asked him, in a voice that could have been a pleasure to listen to if there had been any lift to it, “Do I owe it to anybody?” “Not to me,” he declared, “but maybe to yourself. Mr. Truett sounds as if he might be capable of making you smile. Even if only a wan and feeble smile, why not let him try?” She turned to me and said politely, “Thank you, I think not.” There was certainly something about her, and I frankly admit I was getting a good start at being jealous of Waldo Wilmot Moore, even dead. He had found some way of propagandizing this wren to the point of agreeing to marry him.
Her eyes were back on her notebook. Rosenbaum, his lips bunched, was gazing at her and shaking his head philosophically. I might as well not have been there, so I removed myself. My hand was on the knob, with my back to them, when her voice came: “Why did you ask one of the girls if she had heard any gossip about Mr. Moore?” Talk about grapevine. Less than two hours had gone by! I turned.
“There, see? Didn’t I say I didn’t want to interfere with your work? You could have asked me that over anything from roast duckling to a maple sundae.” “All right, I will. I go at one o’clock. We can meet in the lobby, William Street side, near the mailbox.” “That’s the girl. Save a smile for it.” I went.
So I had it all glued on, a lunch date with Hester Livsey, but it peeled off—though it wasn’t her fault or mine either. I returned to my own little room, put the folders back in the cabinet and locked it, and stood at the window to look at the river and sort things out. All I got out of that was the realization that so far there was nothing to sort. Of course, I thought sarcastically, if I was Nero Wolfe I would have finished up here by noon and gone home to drink beer, but as it is, about all I’ve accomplished is to start the grapevine rustling. That really got me. In short hours, and with no meal period for opportunity! Where it branches out from, I thought, is the restroom. If I could borrow a skirt and blouse and spend thirty minutes in the restroom I would have all I needed for a final report. Out on the river two tugboats nearly hit and one of them scooted off like a ripple skipper.
When the buzz sounded I jerked around, startled, it was so loud in the little room. I wasn’t sure what it was, but the best guess was the phone, so I went to the desk and took it up and said hello, and came within an ace of adding, “Archie Goodwin speaking.” I bit it off, and a tenor voice asked my ear: “Hello, Mr. Truett?” “Right. Speaking.” “This is Kerr Naylor. I’d like you to lunch with me if that’s convenient. Could you step down to my office?” I told him I’d be glad to, and hung up. A glance at my wrist showed me ten to one. I lifted the phone again, and when I got a voice I asked to be connected with Miss Hester Livsey, Stock Department, Structural Metals Section. In a second the voice said, “Extension six-eight-eight please ask by extension number whenever possible,” and after a short wait another voice said, “Miss Livsey speaking.” “Peter Truett,” I told her. “This is the unluckiest day I’ve had since my rich uncle changed doctors. Mr. Kerr Naylor just phoned me to have lunch with him. I can meet you as arranged and come back after lunch and quit my job.” “I don’t want you to quit your job,” she declared. “I’ve been thinking about you. Go with Mr. Naylor, of course. My room is next to Mr. Rosenbaum’s, the one on the left.” But it didn’t set me up any, on account of the motive, which I was fully aware of. I got my hat and coat and went along to the corner office, where Naylor met me at the door. I took my hat and coat because, although the assistant vice-president had told me I would rate eating lunch in the executives’ section of the Naylor-Kerr cafeteria on the thirty-sixth floor, my hunch was that the son of the founder didn’t patronize it. The hunch was right. He had his hat on and his topcoat over his arm. We went to an elevator, and from the lobby on the ground floor he steered us out the back way, down a block and around a corner, and to a door which had painted on it in green lettering, FOUNTAIN OF HEALTH.