Read Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 for Free Online

next flight down, she turned my way and approached, with the intention, as I thought, of switching on the coo, but I was wrong. She did not merely toss me a glance, she kept her eyes straight at my face as she advanced, and even swiveled her head to prolong it until she was nearly even with me, but she kept right on going and uttered no sound. I could have stuck out a foot and tripped her as she passed. She went to the door to Huck’s room, knocked, and entered without waiting. By then the elevator had stopped at my level, and I pulled the door open, stepped in, and pushed the button marked B.
    Down in the basement I found the kitchen and walked in. It was big and clean and smelled good. An inmate I had not see before, a plump little woman with extra chins, was at a table peeling mushrooms, and Mrs. O’Shea was across from her, sorting slips of paper.
    I spoke as I approached. “I should have told you, Mrs. O’Shea, I doubt if Mr. Lewent will show up for dinner. From what he said when he asked me to stay, I think he feels that under the circumstances it would be better if he were not there.”
    She went on with the slips a moment before she looked up to reply. “Very well. You were going to talk with me.”
    “I got sidetracked.” I glanced at the cook. “Here?”
    “As well here as anywhere.”
    I parked half of my fundament on the edge of the table. She resumed with the slips of paper, distributing them in piles, and as I watched her arm and hand in quick, deft movement I considered whether they could have struck the blow that killed Lewent, though my mind might easily have been better occupied, since actually a ten-year-old could have done it with the right weapon and the right frame of mind.
    “From what you said earlier upstairs.” I remarked, “I got the impression that you feel sorry for Mr. Lewent—in a way.”
    She compressed her lips. “Mr. Lewent is a thoroughly immoral man. And this trouble he’s making—he deserves no sympathy from anyone.”
    “Then my impression was wrong?”
    “I didn’t say that.” She sent the deep blue eyes straight at me, and they were much too cold to show sorrow for anyone or anything whatever. “Frankly, Mr. Goodwin, I am not interested in your impressions. I speak with you at all only because Mr. Huck asked us to.”
    “And I speak with you, Mrs. O’Shea, only because the man whose father built this house thinks he’s been rooked and has hired me to find out. That doesn’t interest you either?”
    “No.” She resumed with the slips of paper.
    I eyed her. My trouble with her, as with the rest of them, was that it would take some well-chosen leading questions to jostle her loose, and all the best questions were out of bounds as long as Lewent was supposed to be still breathing.
    “Look,” I said, “suppose we try this. It’s been more than two hours since I talked with you ladies up in the sewing room. Have you discussed the matter with Mr. Lewent? If so, when and where, and what was said?”
    She sent me a sharp sidewise glance. “Ask him.”
    “I intend to, but I want—”
    I got interrupted. A door in the kitchen’s far wall was standing open, and through it, rolling almost silently on rubber tires, came a large cabinet of stainless steel. It was more than four feet high, its top reaching almost to the shoulders of Paul Thayer, who was behind it, pushing it. He rolled it across to the neighborhood of Mrs. O’Shea’s chair and halted it.
    “It’s okay,” he told her. “Just a bum wire, and I put in a new one. At your service. Invoice follows.”
    “Thank you, Paul.” She had clipped the slips of paper together and was putting them in a drawer. “I’m glad you got it fixed. Mr. Goodwin is staying for dinner, so I suppose you’ll bring him up for cocktails. Harriet, don’tforget about the capers. Mr. Huck will not have it without the capers.”
    The plump little woman said she knew it, and Mrs. O’Shea left us, with, I noticed, the hip-swing