Archie Meets Nero Wolfe Read online

  I hit what seemed like dozens of places on the big east-west thoroughfares like Fourteenth and Twenty-Third Streets. Most of them were small operations, one or two employees grinning and eager behind the counters. At a few minutes after noon, I stopped at a little café on Lexington near Thirty-Seventh and sat at the counter with a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. I pulled out the telephone book pages and unfolded them, noting the shops I had visited and crossing them out. I was maybe 25 percent of the way through the Manhattan camera establishments. A long afternoon awaited, and very likely another day, or two, or three.

  After lunch and a six-block sweep of both sides of Lexington, I walked north along Madison Avenue, which I learned was the heart of the city’s advertising business. It also had numerous places selling cameras, including three in a two-block stretch. At the third of these, Devereaux Cameras & Film, I saw him through the window, showing a Kodak to a matronly woman wearing a flowery hat and one of those hideous fox fur wraps complete with the animal’s head and sightless eyes.

  I walked in and pretended to study the array of cameras in the display cases. A second salesman asked if he could help me, but I replied that I was just looking.

  Much of my looking, at least surreptitiously, focused on the man I knew to be Clarence Chapman—no question. His dress was immaculate: a blue, pin-striped, double-breasted suit that looked new and a blue-and-yellow-striped silk tie.

  His spiel went with his clothes: smooth, sharp, crisp, and the woman clearly was drinking it in. I contemplated waiting until after he had closed the inevitable sale and then approaching him, but decided to learn more about the man first. I left the shop, noting that its closing time was five p.m.

  I had an hour to kill, so I parked at the counter of a little coffee shop just off Madison. By my second cup, I found myself on friendly terms with the counterman, a talkative little hunchback named Kevin. “I’ve been looking at camera shops around here,” I told him. “I want to get one for my uncle; his birthday’s coming up. You know anything about this Devereaux place up the street?”

  “A little. ’Course their help don’t come in here much. Too snooty for the likes of us,” he sneered. “Rich dame owns the place.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Surprised you ain’t heard of her, Alicia Devereaux. She’s one of them society types who hasta have a cause.”

  “What kind of cause do you call running a camera store?”

  “Ah, I can give you an answer to that,” Kevin said with a grin as he ran a rag over the surface of the counter. “She bought the store half a dozen years ago or so, and she makes a big deal out of giving a percentage of its profits to some charity; I think it has to do with kids’ orphanages.”

  “Sounds generous to me.”

  “I s’pose, but seems like her picture’s on the society pages every couple weeks or so. I think she’s in it to puff herself up.”

  “Married?” I asked.

  “Divorced, twice. Good-looking stuff, if you like ’em middle-aged.”

  “Interesting. She ever work in the place?”

  Kevin cut loose with a rasping laugh that caused the only other guy at the counter to look our way. “Nah, she wouldn’t think of lowering herself. She likes to be seen as a benefactor, but she draws the line at anything resembling common labor, and that includes sales.”

  “Hmm. Any idea where she lives?”

  “Park Avenue, where else? Reason I know is that the Times did a piece on her mansion in the sky a while back, with a batch of pictures. Looked like a palace. She gives lots of parties. All in the name of charity, so she says.”

  “Pretty fancy place, eh?”

  “I’d say. It takes a whole damned floor of the Winchester, which is up around Sixtieth Street. Just about the toniest address on the avenue.”

  “A woman like that would be a good catch for someone,” I observed.

  “Talk is, she does the catching,” he said. “Now I’m not suggesting that she’s exactly a man-eater, but she likes to have male company close at hand.”

  “You seem to know a lot about her.”

  Kevin grinned. “Funny thing, the stuck-up society types give me a pain, but somehow years back I got into the habit of reading about ’em. Do you think I’ve got some crazy sort of love-hate relationship?”

  “Maybe, although in a strange way I suppose these people are fascinating. See, now you’ve got me interested. In my case, maybe it’s envy. This Devereaux woman have any current gentleman friends you know of?”

  “There I have to say you’ve got me, pal. That’s not exactly my crowd. From photographs I’ve seen in the papers, though, she seems to prefer the dapper type, smooth, you know. The kind with those thin little mustaches you see on actors like John Gilbert in the moving pictures.”

  “Well, thanks for the coffee and the conversation,” I said, leaving a dime tip on the counter and stepping out into the sunny afternoon.

  At a few minutes before five, I stationed myself across the street from Devereaux Cameras & Film. I could see through its plateglass window that there were no shoppers in the store now and that both Chapman and the other salesman looked to be getting ready to leave. My watch read 5:02 when Chapman walked out, popped a black homburg on his head, and walked north on Madison Avenue while the other man locked up.

  I had never tailed anyone before but figured in this case it was a snap because the gent had no reason to think he was being followed. I stayed on the opposite side of the street as he turned east at Fifty-Sixth, going one block to Park Avenue.

  As I expected, Chapman then went north, walking with a jaunty gait and looking like a man without a care in the world. We both were on the west side of Park now, with me a discreet distance behind him. Just north of Sixty-Second Street, he turned in at the green-canopied entry to a handsome brick-and-stone structure, where he and the splendidly uniformed doorman exchanged pleasantries before he stepped into the building.

  I walked on by, looking at the gleaming brass plate next to the entrance that proclaimed the edifice to be the Winchester. That, I felt, was enough work for one day, and I headed in the direction of my rooming house.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next morning, I got to the office of the Bascom Detective Agency at nine o’clock sharp, greeting Wilda, who answered with her usual sniff. “He in?” I asked, gesturing toward the closed door.

  “Yes. Knock first.”

  I did, heard “Come on in,” and went on in, dropping into the guest chair without being invited. Del Bascom put down a sheet of paper he’d been reading, took a puff on his cigar, and favored me with a smile. “Well, Goodwin, I suppose you didn’t have any luck trying to find that missing husband, eh?”

  “You suppose wrong. I’ve got the whole business figured out.”

  “Yeah, and I suppose you’ve seen this Chapman, too, huh?”

  “This time you suppose right. How about I bring him by here for a chat around lunchtime?”

  He took the stogie out of his mouth and gaped at me. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, I am not. I’ve never been much of a kidder. I’ll see you in a few hours.” I got up and walked out, assuming he was staring at my back with his mouth still open.

  At 11:45, I stepped into the Devereaux shop, where the only customer was talking to the other salesman. “May I help you?” Clarence Chapman asked with an ingratiating smile as he rubbed his palms together.

  “Yes, I think you can. I have something here that I would like you to look at.” I took a folded sheet of paper from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. He opened it, read it, then swallowed hard, looking at me wide-eyed. His expression lay somewhere between pain and panic.

  He leaned across the counter and whispered, “Who are you?”

  “I thought you would find this an interesting challenge,” I responded in a normal tone. “I’ve heard many good things about this store and felt sure you’d be able to help me. I have to run off on some other business now, but would it b
e possible to discuss this further during your lunch break?”

  “Yes, yes, that would be at, er ... twelve.” Beads of perspiration had formed above his eyebrows and on his upper lip. All of a sudden, he didn’t look the least bit suave and debonair.

  “Excellent; I will be back then, and we can go somewhere to talk,” I said in a voice meant to ooze conviviality and good humor.

  Exactly at noon by my watch and the chimes at St. Patrick’s over on Fifth Avenue, I popped back into the store, but got nudged right back out by Chapman, who had seen me coming. “Not in here,” he whispered as he steered me onto the sidewalk “Let’s ... let’s walk.”

  When we got a few yards away from the store, he grabbed my arm. “What is this all about?”

  “You read my note. I don’t see how it can be any clearer.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. We’re going to visit my boss,” I said, this time taking hold of his arm gently but firmly.

  “Are you some sort of hoodlum?” he said in a choked voice, trying to look irate.

  I laughed. “Not in the least. But you are in some sort of trouble, Mr. Chapman, and you need to have a few things explained to you. It won’t take long, and then you can be back in your store—if you will even want to go back.”

  He didn’t say another word as we walked toward Bascom’s building, or even when we rode up in the open-cage elevator and stepped into the office. “We’re going in,” I told Wilda, who looked so surprised she didn’t even sniff.

  “This is Clarence Chapman. You may recognize him from his photograph,” I told Bascom, whose eyebrows went halfway up his forehead. I steered our quarry to the chair and stood with my back against the wall.

  “Well, well,” Bascom said, recovering his aplomb and folding thick arms across his chest. “We knew we’d find you for your wife. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  I almost felt sorry for the guy as he put his hands over his face and sniffled. “Muriel ... she came to you?”

  “That’s right, pal. She thought something terrible must have happened to you. But you look like you haven’t exactly been suffering.”

  With that, it all came out. A blubbering Chapman told us how Alicia Devereaux had gone into Macy’s, checking out their camera department to get ideas on how to better display her own store’s wares—or so she said. She and Chapman hit it off from the first—or so he said. He described it as “magic.” They went to lunch, and before they’d finished the meal, he said he realized this was the woman he had been waiting for his whole life.

  Under Bascom’s questioning, Chapman told us he didn’t return to Macy’s after lunch but went straight back to the Winchester with the Devereaux woman. She bought him fine clothes, put him on the payroll at her store, and gave him a place to live that was far more luxurious than anything he had known or even imagined. And she seemed not to care anything about his past.

  “So you lived a fantasy life for a while—now what?” Bascom barked.

  “I ... I guess it’s over, isn’t it?” Chapman said between sobs. “What am I going to say to Muriel?”

  “That is your problem, buddy,” Bascom said, clearly disgusted with the man sitting across the desk from him. “But if I was you, I’d cook up a story about amnesia, or maybe kidnapping, although I don’t know why anybody would kidnap you. You ain’t exactly rich.”

  “Are you going to say anything about this to Muriel?”

  “Of course I am! She hired me to find you, and I did ... with my associate’s help.” He dipped his head in my direction.

  “Do you have to tell her ... where you found me?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know why I should save your skin,” Bascom said, “but I don’t have to tell her anything other than that we’ve found you. That fulfills my commission from her.”

  “What is she paying you?” Chapman asked as he dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.

  “That is strictly between me and my client,” Bascom snapped. “I’m going to call her now and tell her you’re coming home. And by God, if you don’t go straight home, one, we will find you again, and two, your wife will learn all about you and the exotic and exciting Mrs. Devereaux of Park Avenue.”

  As we learned later, Chapman did go straight home, although what he told his wife remained between them. After he had left us, Bascom closed his office door and told me to sit down.

  “Okay, Goodwin, you did one helluva job; I take my hat off to you. Now fill me in on just how you did it.”

  “Well, as you know, I started checking out camera stores, and—”

  “Yeah, and I admit up front that I thought it was a lousy idea at the time. If the guy was trying to lose himself, why would he go right back to the same kind of job he had before? To say nothing of the risk he was taking by being recognized by somebody who remembered him from Macy’s.”

  “People aren’t always logical, particularly when it comes to love. I figured something made him disappear, and there was a good chance a woman was involved in the story. I felt he was susceptible to feminine—what do you call them?—wiles, from the way his wife said he never, ever looked at another woman. Sounds like a guy who’s trying too hard not to seem interested.”

  “So you found him at this camera shop the Devereaux dame owned?”

  “Yeah, I did get lucky there. He could have been off that day, or in the back room and out of sight when I walked by.” I went on to tell Bascom how I learned about Alicia Devereaux’s man-eating tendencies from Kevin the café counterman.

  “I’d read something about her before all right, but I’ve never paid much attention to that social world,” Bascom said. “One thing seems sure: we did that poor sap Chapman a favor by smoking him out. That woman would have chewed him up and spit him out within six months, a year at most.”

  I nodded. “And he never even thanked us, the ingrate.”

  “Here’s another question for you,” Bascom said, leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head. “How did you get Chapman to come over here with you?”

  “Showed him this,” I said, handing across the note that had shaken the guy up so much in the camera shop.

  Your wife misses you, Clarence, and she is worried sick. Do you want me to tell her where you are working and where you are living, or would you prefer discussing this with me on your lunch hour? The choice is yours.

  Bascom looked at the hand-printed note and shook his head, grinning. “For a kid, you act like you know what you’re doing.”

  “Put it down that I’m old beyond my years. And as I said when I first walked in here, I can use a job.”

  “I got still another question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I noticed that you recited all your conversations to me without looking at any notes and they sounded like they were word for word.”

  “They were word for word,” I told him. “I didn’t take any notes, none at all.”

  “No baloney?”

  “No baloney whatever. Back when I was in high school, I got a perfect score on this history test. The teacher—Mr. Mason, it was—asked me how I did so well when I never seemed to write down any notes when he was talking. I told him that I never took any notes in any classes or when I read my textbooks, either, and I only went through the books once.

  “That’s when he told me I must have something they were starting to call ‘total recall.’ I felt like some kind of freak.”

  “Freak, hell, that’s one great asset you got, especially in our game. Tell you what, Goodwin,” he said, lighting a cigar. “I’ll give you fifty bucks for the work you did on the Chapman business. That is a one-half of what the guy’s wife paid me to find him. And I’ll show you the woman’s check so that you can see I’m not stiffing you. I haven’t cashed it yet, but I called a friend at her bank. That money and more is in their joint account.”

  “Good, but what about—”

  “I’m not done yet,” Bascom said, holding up a han
d like a traffic cop. “I can’t afford much, as I told you before, but I’ll put you on at a sawbuck a week to start with, and you can have the vacant office, which has a telephone in it. Also, if you crack a case the way you did today, you’ll get twenty-five percent of the fee.”

  “Not fifty?”

  “Not fifty,” Bascom snapped. “That was a one-shot. Call me a softy. Remember, I’m supplying you with office space.”

  “Of course, I would like more than that, but, okay,” I told him. “You just got yourself a deal.”

  “You’re learning your way around town fast, Goodwin,” the grizzled detective said, standing and pumping my hand. “I like that. And by the way, we’re going to get you licensed in the State of New York as a private investigator. I’ll help you get the paperwork going.”

  “I think that I’m liking this burg,” I responded with a grin. “I might just stay around here awhile.”

  CHAPTER 5

  So I became a detective. I even had an office, albeit small and shabby. And Wilda started treating me like I wasn’t some lower form of life. She even stopped sniffing when I walked in off the elevator.

  My payment from the Chapman case and my regular check, small as it was, allowed me to get out of the dump I was living in and move into a modest but clean apartment hotel on the West Side in the Sixties. I still ate at places like the Automat and hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, although I wasn’t complaining.

  I liked Bascom. He seemed honest. He wouldn’t touch divorce cases and all the spying on one spouse or the other that usually went with them, even when he was hard up for business, which was much of the time.

  “A lot of people look down on our so-called profession, Goodwin,” he told me, “and Lord knows there’s plenty of joes around who give it a bad name. I try not to be one of ’em.”