Too Many Clients

' t was 1:40 when I left that house. It was 6:10, four and a half hours later, when I said to I . Austin Hough, "You know damn well you can't. Come on." During the four and a half hours I had accomplished a good deal. I had learned that in a large university a lot of people know where an assistant professor ought to be or might be, but no one knows where he is. I had avoided getting trampled in corridors twice, once by diving into an alcove and once by fighting my way along the wall. I had sat in an anteroom and read a magazine article entitled "Experiments in Secondary Education in Japan." I had sweated for fifteen minutes in a phone booth, reporting to Wolfe on the latest developments, including the acquisition of a house by Cesar and Felita Perez. I had taken time out to find a lunch counter on University Place and take in a comedbeef sandwich, edible, a piece of cherry pie, not bad, and two glasses of milk. I had been stopped in a hall by three coeds, one of them as pretty as a picture (no reference to the pictures on the top floor of the Perez house), who asked for my autograph. They 120 Rex Stout curb in front. Mounting the stoop and finding the chain bolt was on, I had to ring for Fritz to let us in. Wolfe was at his desk, scowling at a crossword puzzle in the Observer. He didn't look up as we entered. I put Hough in the red leather chair and went to mine, saying nothing. When a master brain is working on a major problem you don't butt in. In twenty seconds he muttered, "Confound it," slammed his pencil on the desk, swiveled, focused on the guest, and growled, "So Mr. Goodwin rooted you out. What have you to say for yourself?" "Where's my wife?" Hough blurted. He had been holding it in. "Wait a second," I put in. "I've told him I talked with his wife this afternoon and got his name and address from items in her bag. That's all." "Where is she?" Hough demanded. Wolfe regarded him. "Mr. Hough. When I learned Monday evening that a man named Thomas G. Yeager had been murdered, it would have been proper and natural for me to give the police a description of the man who had been here that afternoon impersonating him. For reasons of my own, I didn't. If I tell them about it now I'll give them not a description, but your name and address. Whether I do or not will depend on your explanation of that strange imposture. What is it?" "I want to know where Goodwin saw my wife and why, and where she is. Until I know that, I'm explaining nothing." Wolfe closed his eyes. In a moment he opened them. He nodded. "That's understandable. If your wife was a factor, you can't explain without involving her, and you won't do that unless she is already involved. Very well, she is. Monday afternoon, EToo Many Clients 121 posing as Yeager, you told Mr. Goodwin that you expected to be followed to One-fifty-six West Eighty-second Street. When your wife entered a room in the house at that address at noon today, she found a man there who is in my employ. He notified Mr. Goodwin, and he went there and talked with her. She had keys to the house and the room. That's all I intend to tell you. Now your explanation." I seldom feel sorry for people Wolfe has got in a corner . Usually they have asked for it one way or another, and anyhow if you can't stand the sight of a fish flopping on the gaff you shouldn't go fishing. But I had to move my eyes away from Austin Hough. His long bony face was so distorted he looked more like a gargoyle than a man. I moved my eyes away, and when I forced them back he had hunched forward and buried his face in his hands. Wolfe spoke. "Your position is hopeless, Mr. Hough. You knew that address. You knew Yeager's unlisted telephone number. You knew that he frequented that address. You knew that your wife also went there. What did you hope to accomplish by coming here to send Mr. Goodwin on a pointless errand?" Hough's head raised enough for his eyes to come to me. "Where is she, Goodwin?" It was an appeal, not a demand. "I don't know. I left her in that room at that address at twenty minutes to two. She was drinking champagne but not enjoying it. The only other person there was the man in Mr. Wolfe's employ. He wasn't keeping her; she was free to go. I left because I wanted to have a look a^ you, but she didn't know that. I don't know when she left or where she went." 122 Rex Stout "You talked with her? She talked?" "Right. Twenty minutes or so." "What did she say?" I sent a glance at Wolfe, but he didn't turn his head to meet it, so I was supposed to use my discretion and sagacity. I did so. "She told me a lie, not a very good one. She said she had been there only once and hadn't stayed long. She had left her umbrella there and had gone today to get it. The part about the umbrella was okay; it was there in a drawer and still is. She invited me to take her to lunch. She invited me to take her to the Flamingo tonight and dance till they close." "How do you know it was a lie, that she had been there only once?" I shook my head. "You want too much for nothing. Just file it that I don't think she lied; I know she did. And I know you know it too." "You do not." "Oh, nuts. Go climb a rope." Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. "Mr. Hough. We have humored you, but our indulgence isn't boundless. Your explanation." "What if I don't give you one? What if I get up and walk out?" "That would be a misfortune for both of us. Now that I know who you are I would be obliged to tell the police of your performance Monday afternoon, and I'd rather not, for reasons of my own. In that respect your interest runs with mine--and your wife's. Her umbrella is still there." He was licked and he knew it. His face didn't go gargoyle again, but his mouth twisted and the skin FR1;Too Many Clients 123 around his eyes was squeezed in as if the light was too strong. "Circumstances," he said. "Men are the sport of circumstances. Good God, as I sat in this chair talking to Goodwin, Yeager was dead, had been dead for hours. When I read it in the paper yesterday morning I knew how it would be if you found me, and I decided what to say; I was going to deny it, but now that won't do." He nodded, slowly. "So. Circumstances. Of course my wife shouldn't have married me. It was a circumstance that she met me at a moment when she was--but I won't go into that. I'll try to keep to the point. I was a fool to think that I might still save our marriage, but I did. She wanted things that I couldn't supply, and she wanted to do things that I am not inclined to and not equipped for. She couldn't do them with me, so she did them without me." "The point," Wolfe said. "Yes. This is the first time I have ever said a word about my relations with my wife to anyone. About a year ago she suddenly had a watch that must have cost a thousand dollars or more. Then other things--jewelry, clothes, a fur coat. She had frequently spent evenings out without me, but it became more than evenings; occasionally she came home after dawn. You realize that now that I've started it's difficult to confine myself to the essentials."