Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 12 - Too Many Women by Rex Stout

Author:Rex Stout [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76808-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

21.

Gwynne Ferris entered, not aware or not caring that a detective sergeant was right behind her elbow, halted a moment to survey the big room, and then approached us at the desk.

“Hello, Ben,” she said in her sweet musical voice. “Of ill the terrible things, but what are you here for?” Not waiting for a reply, her glance darted to Cramer and then to me. “Oh, then you are a policeman!”

She was, I admitted, equal to any situation, and that applied not only to her nerves but also to her appearance. Routed out by a cop at four in the morning, getting dressed while he waited, and brought down to headquarters in a police car, she looked as fresh and pure and beautiful as she had when she had raised her clear blue eyes to mine and told me she couldn’t spell.

“Sit down, Miss Ferris,” Cramer told her.

“Thank you,” she said sarcastically, and sat, on a chair a couple of paces from Frenkel’s. “You look terrible, Ben. Have you had any sleep at all?”

“Yes,” Frenkel rumbled from a mile down.

Gwynne spoke to Cramer and me. “The reason I asked him that, I saw him only a few hours ago. We were dancing. But I suppose he’s told you that already. It’s a good thing tomorrow isn’t a workday. Are you an inspector, Mr. Truett, or what?”

“This is unspeakable, utterly unspeakable,” Ben Frenkel declared with deep intensity. “I didn’t tell them who I went dancing with because I thought they’d be after you to verify it, and they did it anyway, for no reason on earth. Were they decent about it? Were they rough with you?”

Harry Anthony had been anxious about Rosa, and here was Frenkel, being anxious about Gwynne. I made a note to quit trying to understand women and start trying to understand men.

“No, he was really very courteous about it,” Gwynne testified generously.

Cramer had been glancing from one to the other. He opened up. “So you two were together all evening. Is that right, Frenkel?”

“Yes. Since Miss Ferris has told you so.”

“Not just since she has told me so. Were you?”

“Yes.”

“Did Mr. Frenkel take you home, Miss Ferris?”

“Certainly he did!”

“What time did you get home?”

“When was it, Ben, about—”

“I asked you.”

“Well, it was a quarter to one when I got upstairs to my room. I went up alone of course. We talked a while downstairs.”

Cramer surprised me. He was seldom plain nasty, leaving that to the boys, but now he barked at her, “When Waldo Moore took you home you didn’t go upstairs alone, did you?”

Ben Frenkel sprang from his chair with his fists doubled up and his eyes blazing. A dick standing in the rear moved forward. I tightened up a little myself, not knowing how far Frenkel’s impulses might go. But evidently Gwynne did, for she was on her feet and in front of him, with her hands up to grasp his coat lapels.

“Now, Ben, honey.” When she put: appeal in her voice it could have been used for a welding torch.

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