I reached for it. “Hello, this is the office of Nero Wolfe.” “Archie? Fred. I’m talking from Brewster. Better put Mr. Wolfe on.” I told him to hold it and turned to Wolfe. “Fred calling from Brewster. Fifteen cents a minute.” At that, he stopped to put in his bookmark. Then he got his receiver up, and I told Fred to proceed, and opened my notebook.
“Mr. Wolfe? Fred Durkin. Saul sent me to the village to phone. We haven’t found any red box, but there’s been a little surprise at that place. We finished with the house, covered every inch, and started outdoors. It’s the worst time of year for it, because when it thaws in the spring it’s the muddiest time of the year.
After it got dark we were working with flashlights, and we saw the lights of a car coming down the road and Saul had us put our lights out. It’s a narrow dirt road and you can’t go fast. The car turned in at the gate and stopped on the driveway. We had put the sedan in the garage. The lights went out and the engine stopped and a man got out. There was only one of him, so we kept still, behind some bushes. He went to a window and turned a flashlight on it and started trying to open it, and Orrie and I stepped out between him and the car, and Saul went toward him and asked him why he didn’t go in the door. He took it cool, he said he forgot his key, then he said he didn’t know he’d be interrupting anyone and started off. Saul stopped him and said he’d better come in first and have a drink and a little talk. The guy laughed and said he would and they went in, and Orrie and I went in after them, and we turned on the lights and sat down. The guy’s name is Gebert, G-E-B-E-R-T, a tall slender dark guy with a thin nose—” “Yeah, I know him. What did he say?” “Not a hell of a lot of anything. He talks but he don’t say anything. He says this McNair was a friend of his, and there’s some things belonging to him in the place, and he thought he might as well drive out and get them. He ain’t scared and he ain’t easy. He’s a great smiler.” “Yeah, I know. Where is he now?” “Why, he’s out there. Saul and Orrie have got him. Saul sent me to ask what you want us to do with him—” “Turn him loose. What else can you do? Unless you’re hungry and want to make soup of him. Saul won’t get anywhere with that bird. You can’t keep him—” “The hell we can’t keep him. I ain’t through, wait till I tell you. We had been in there with that Gebert ten or fifteen minutes, when there was a noise out front and I hopped out to take a look. It was two cars, and they stopped by the gate. They piled out and came in the yard after me, and by God if they didn’t pull guns. You might have thought I was Dillinger. I saw state troopers’ uniforms. I let out a yell to warn Saul to lock the door and then I met the attack. I was surrounded by who do you think? Rowcliff, that mutt of a lieutenant from the Homicide Squad, and three other dicks, and two troopers, and a little runt with spectacles that told me he was an assistant district attorney of Putnam County. Huh? Was I surrounded?” “Yes. At last. Did they shoot you?” “Sure, but I caught the bullets and tossed them back. Well, it seems that what they came for was to look for that red box. They went to the door and wanted in.
Saul left Orrie there inside the door and went to a window and talked to them through the glass. Of course he asked to see a search warrant and they didn’t have any. There was some gab back and forth, and then the troopers announced they were going in after Saul because he was trespassing, and he held the paper that Mr. Wolfe signed up against the window and they put a flashlight on it.
There was more talk, and then Saul told me to drive to the village and phone you, and Rowcliff said nothing doing until he searched me for the red box, and I told him if he touched me I’d skin him and hang him up to dry. But I couldn’t get the sedan out because Gebert’s car was in the driveway and the others blocked the road at the gate, so we declared a truce and Rowcliff took his car and we both came to Brewster in it. It’s only about three miles. We left the rest of the gang sitting there on the porch. I’m in a booth in a restaurant and Rowcliff’s down the street in a drug store phoning headquarters. I’ve got a notion to grab his car and go back without him.” “Okay. Damn good idea. Does he know Gebert’s there?” “No. If Gebert’s shy about cops, of course he don’t want to leave. What do we do? Toss him out? Let the cops in? We can’t go out and dig, all we can do is sit there and watch Gebert smile, and it’s as cold as an Englishman’s heart and we haven’t got a fire. Good God, you ought to hear those troopers talk, I guess out there in the wilds they catch bears and lions with their hands and eat ’em raw.”
“Hold it.” I turned to Wolfe. “I suppose I go for a drive?” He shuddered. I presume he calculated that there must be at least a thousand jolts between 35th Street and Brewster, and ten thousand cars to meet and pass.
The lurking dangers of the night. He nodded at me.
I told Fred, “Go on back. Keep Gebert, and don’t let them in. I’ll be there as soon as I can make it.”
CHAPTER Thirteen
It was a quarter to ten by the time I got away and around the corner to the garage on Tenth Avenue and was sailing down the ramp in the roadster, and it was 11:13 when I rolled into the village of Brewster and turned left—following the directions I had heard Helen Frost give Saul Panzer. An hour and twenty-eight minutes wasn’t bad, counting the curves on the Pines Bridge Road and the bum stretch between Muscoot and Croton Falls.
I followed the pavement a little over a mile and then turned left again onto a dirt road. It was as narrow as a bigot’s mind, and I got in the ruts and stayed there. My lights showed me nothing but the still bare branches of trees and shrubbery close on both sides, and I began to think that Fred’s jabber about the wilds hadn’t been so dumb. There was an occasional house, but they were dark and silent, and I went on bumping so long, a sharp curve to the left and one to the right and then to the left again, that I began wondering if I was on the wrong road. Then, finally, I saw a light ahead, stuck to the ruts around another curve, and there I was.
Besides a few rapid comments from Wolfe before I started, I had trotted the brain around for a survey of the situation during the drive, and there didn’t seem to be anything very critical about it except that it would be nice to keep the news of Gebert’s expedition to ourselves for a while. They were welcome to go in and look for the red box all they wanted to, since Saul, with the whole afternoon to work undisturbed, hadn’t found it. But Gebert was worth a little effort, not to mention the item that we had our reputation to consider. So I stopped the roadster alongside the two cars that were parked at the edge of the road and leaned out and yelled: “Come and move this bus! It’s blocking the gate and I want to turn in!” A gruff shout came from the porch: “Who the hell are you?” I called back: “Haile Selassie. Okay, I’ll move it myself. If it makes a ditch, don’t blame me.” I got out and climbed into the other car, open with the top down, a state police chariot. I heard, and saw dimly in the dark, a couple of guys leave the porch and come down the short path. They jumped the low palings. The front one was in uniform and I made out the other one for my old friend Lieutenant Rowcliff. The trooper was stern enough to scare me silly: “Come out of that, buddie. Move that car and I’ll tie you in a knot.” I said, “You will not. Get it? It’s a pun. My name is Archie Goodwin, I represent Mr. Nero Wolfe, I belong in there and you don’t. If a man finds a car blocking his own gate he has plenty of right to move it, which is what I’m going to do, and if you try to stop me it will be too bad because I’m mad as hell and I mean it.” Rowcliff growled, “All right, get out, we’ll move the damn thing.” He muttered at the cossack, “You might as well. This bird’s never been tamed yet.” The trooper opened the door. “Get out.” “You going to move it?” “Why the hell shouldn’t I move it? Get out.” I descended and climbed back in the roadster. The trooper started his car and eased it ahead, into the road, and off again beyond the entrance. My lights were on him. I put my gear in, circled through the gate onto the driveway, stopped back of a car there which I recognized for the convertible Gebert had parked in front of Wolfe’s house the day before, and got out and started for the porch.