“So,” I ended, looking straight at Wolfe, “here I am. I have disgraced the uniform. A million people are at this moment reading the headline, Nero Wolfe’s Former Assistant Locked Up, and snickering. Even if Cramer believes my story, he still has a lock of my hair. If he doesn’t believe it, he may get me electrocuted. And it’s all on account of you! If you—”
Cramer was regarding me sourly, mangling his third cigar, and massaging the back of his neck. “I had a headache,” he said cutting me off, “and now it’s worse. My son’s in Australia with the Air Corps. He’s a bombardier.”
“I was aware of it,” I said politely. “Have you heard from him recently?”
“Go to hell. As you know damn well, Goodwin, I’ve been wanting to teach you a lesson for years. Here’s my chance. Five years would be about right. But short of murder you’re clear. I said so, and what I say sticks. If it wasn’t for that I’d hang it on you, don’t think I wouldn’t. Anyway you’re wearing the same uniform my son’s wearing, and I have more respect for it than you seem to have. And I guess you’ll be court-martialed. There was a Colonel Ryder here to see you about an hour ago and I wouldn’t let him.”
“That’ll be all right,” I said reassuringly. “As soon as Mr. Wolfe finds the murderer everything will be rosy.”
“You don’t say. Wolfe’s going to find the murderer, is he? That’s damn kind of him.”
“Archie.” Wolfe had found his tongue. “You admit that the sole purpose of this grotesque performance was to bring pressure on me? To coerce me?”
“To stimulate you, yes, sir.”
Wolfe nodded grimly. “We’ll discuss it at the proper time. I prefer not to do so in the presence of others. First there is this murder. How much of what you told Mr. Cramer was true?”
“All of it.”
“You’re talking to me now.”
“I know I am.”
“How much did you withhold?”
“Nothing. That was the works.”
“I don’t believe it. You hesitated twice.”
I shook my head, grinning at him. “You’re a little rusty, that’s all. You’re out of practice. But there is one thing I didn’t say. I did want you to get back to work because the Army needs you, but when I saw Ann Amory there on the floor there was another reason. She was a good kid. She was all right. I danced with her and I liked her. If you had seen her as she was Monday evening, and then as she was there on the floor—anyway, I saw her. So I was in favor of making sure that the guy who did it wouldn’t live any longer than was necessary, and that was another reason for getting you back to work. Because it may have been partly my fault. I went down there and stirred it up. Otherwise it might not have happened.”
“Nonsense,” Wolfe said testily. “A murderer doesn’t sprout overnight like a mushroom. What about it, Mr. Cramer? What have you got? Do you need anything?”
Cramer grunted. “I didn’t need what Goodwin gave me. If I believe him. Say I believe him. I didn’t need him to scratch the favorite.”
My brows went up. “Roy Douglas? Were you liking him?”
“I was.” Cramer tossed the worn-out unlit cigar in the wastebasket. “For one thing, because he beat it. But if I’m believing you, he’s good and out. According to three people, the girl left her office a couple of minutes after five. She couldn’t have got home before 5:20, probably not before 5:25. Miss Rowan saw her there dead at 5:45, close to that. So she was killed in that twenty minutes. Or even if you want to get fancy and say she was killed somewhere else, as soon as she left the office, and then taken and dumped in the apartment, still Douglas is out. According to you, he got to Wolfe’s house before five o’clock and was with you constantly until Miss Rowan arrived.”
I nodded. “I told you I checked on her leaving the office. If I had slipped the murderer a hundred bucks for a train ride, that would have been overdoing it. What have you got left? How about Leon Furey?”
“Playing pool at Martin’s from four o’clock on. Ate sandwiches there and went on playing. Didn’t return to Barnum Street until nearly midnight.”
“Sewed up?”
“We thought it was. Now we’ll have to go over it. We were after Douglas. We’ll have to go back over all of it. I suppose even the grandmother. Two people saw her entering at 7:10, but she could have been there earlier and gone out again. And Miss Leeds. Her agent was with her up to some time between 6:30 and 7:00, going over leases and accounts, and now we’ll have to pin that down. We had crossed off four other people who were in the building at the time because they seemed to have no connection with Ann Amory, but we’ll have to go back to that too.” Cramer glared at me. “Nuts. I don’t remember any single time I ever saw you or spoke to you that you didn’t ball something up.”
He picked up the phone and began giving orders. In ten minutes or less he issued instructions that started a couple of dozen men either going or coming. But I wasn’t paying very close attention. In spite of Wolfe’s agreeing to see Colonel Ryder and permitting the order to be relayed to Fritz for pan-broiled young turkey, I wasn’t sure whether I had him or not. He was as unpredictable as Lily Rowan, and I was trying to figure out some way of getting him really involved. I didn’t like the way he looked. He was keeping his eyes open and his head straight up; and there was no way of telling what it meant because it was new to me. Of course the thing to do was to get him home, get him seated back of his desk again, with beer in front of him and smells coming from the kitchen, as soon as possible.
I was considering ways of selling that idea to Cramer, when Cramer saved me the trouble. He pushed the phone aside and said abruptly to Wolfe, “You asked if I need anything. Well, I do. I suppose you’ve noticed the way things seem to be heading.”
“I perceive,” Wolfe said dryly, “a general tendency in the direction of Miss Rowan.”
Cramer nodded without enthusiasm. “That don’t require much perceiving. We’ve got to go back over everybody, but that’s the way it looks now. And Lily Rowan’s father was one of my best friends. He got me on the force, and he got me out of a couple of tight holes in the old days when he was on the inside at the Hall. I knew Lily before she could walk. I’m not the man to do any cleaning job on her, and I don’t want to turn her over to any of these wolves. I want you to handle her up at your place. And I want to be there in the front room where she can’t see me.”
Wolfe frowned. “I know her myself. I have given her orchids. She has been pestering me lately. It will not be pleasant.” He shot me a glance that was supposed to wither me. Then he regarded Cramer with an expression of repugnance, and heaved a sigh. “Very well. Provided Archie goes with us, and stays. This idiotic farce—”
A dick I didn’t know entered the room, advanced at a nod from Cramer and reported: “Mrs. Chack is here and wants to talk. Miss Leeds is with her. Give her to Lieutenant Rowcliff?”
“No,” Cramer said, after a glance at the clock, “bring them in here.”
Chapter 10
Those two females had been something out of the ordinary when I saw them separately on my first trip to Barnum Street, but marching in that office together they were really something. As far as size and weight went, Miss Leeds could easily have tucked Mrs. Chack under her arm and carried her off, but the expression in Mrs. Chack’s black eyes made it seem likely that such things as size and weight would be minor considerations, and age too, if anybody tried to start anything. She had to take two steps to Miss Leeds’s one, but she was in front. They were both dressed to sit in a buggy and watch a parade of soldiers returning from the Spanish-American war. When Purley had got them into chairs, Cramer asked, “You ladies have something to say?”
“I have,” Mrs. Chack snapped. “I want to know when you are going to get Roy Douglas. I want to see him face to face. He killed my granddaughter.”
“You are crazy,” Miss Leeds declared huskily but firmly. “You have been crazy for fifty years. I have permitted you to live in my house—”
�
�I will not tolerate—”
They were both talking at once.
“Ladies!” Cramer boomed. They both stopped talking as if he had turned a valve. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “you had better wait outside, Miss Leeds, until I hear what Mrs. Chack has to say—”
“No,” Miss Leeds said immovably. “I intend to hear it.”
“Then please don’t interrupt. You’ll get a chance—”
“She has been afraid of me,” Mrs. Chack asserted, “since I discovered that her mother poisoned squirrels in Washington Square on December ninth, 1905. That’s a prison offense. But now my own granddaughter is dead because I committed a sin myself and have no right to expect the mercy of God and I am willing to be punished. I am old enough to die and I ought to die. When Cora Leeds died on the ninth of December last year I said to myself, in my wretched vanity, it was the Hand of God, because it pleased me. Then when I learned that Roy Douglas had killed Cora Leeds, murdered her, I said I didn’t believe it. In my vanity I would not relinquish the Hand of God—”
“Who was Cora Leeds?” Cramer demanded.
“Her mother.” Mrs. Chack pointed a bony little finger, straight as an arrow, at Miss Leeds. “I refused—”
“How did you learn that Roy Douglas killed her?”
“Ann told me. My granddaughter. She told me how she knew, but I can’t remember. I have been trying to remember since last night. It will come back to me. My mind isn’t too old for a thing like that to come back. Cora Leeds was in bed, she had been in bed since she hurt her leg in September, and he put a pillow over her face and held her down, and when she struggled it was too much for her old heart and she died. I think Ann saw him putting the pillow—no, I’m just guessing. You see, I didn’t want to remember it because then it wouldn’t have been the Hand of God on December ninth, so I forgot it. That’s the way an old mind works. Since last night I’ve been trying to remember so I could come and tell you as soon as I did, but I decided I’d better not wait.”
“She’s crazy,” Miss Leeds stated in her voice like a man. “She has been crazy for—”
Cramer gestured her into silence without taking his gaze away from Mrs. Chack. “But,” he rumbled, “you said that Roy Douglas killed your granddaughter. Do you remember how you know that?”
“Certainly I do,” she snapped. “He killed her because she knew he had killed Cora Leeds, and he was afraid of her. He was afraid she would tell someone. Isn’t that a good reason?”
“Yeah, it’s all right for a reason. Have you got any proof? Any evidence? Did you see him around there?”
“See him? How could I? I wasn’t there. When I got home she was dead.” Her voice got shrill. “I am eighty-nine years old! I went home and found my granddaughter dead! Could I sit right down and think it out? After I was in bed I knew he had killed her! I want you to get him! I want to see him face to face!”
“You will,” Cramer assured her. “Take it easy, Mrs. Chack. Do you remember why he killed Cora Leeds?”
“Certainly I do. Because he didn’t want to give up his pigeon loft. She was going to have it torn down.”
“I thought she had built it for him,” I put in.
“She had. She spent thousands of dollars on it. But after she hurt her leg and couldn’t go to the Square any more, she hated him and she hated everybody. She sent word to me that I had to move out, had to leave that house where I had lived for over forty years. And she told Leon he had to get out and she wouldn’t pay him any more for killing hawks. She had paid him twenty dollars for every hawk he killed. And she told Roy Douglas she owned the pigeons, he didn’t, and she was going to tear the loft down and he had to go. And she told her own daughter she had to stop going to the Square, and when she found out her daughter was secretly giving money to Leon for killing hawks she wouldn’t let her have any money for anything. That’s the way she acted after she hurt her leg and couldn’t go to the Square. It was no wonder I thought it was the Hand of God, especially when it happened on December ninth. But God forgive me, it wasn’t. And I knew it wasn’t, I knew it was Roy Douglas, because Ann told me—God forgive me.”
Cramer cleared his throat and asked, “From what you said, Miss Leeds, I understand you don’t agree with Mrs. Chack?”
“I do not,” Miss Leeds declared emphatically. “She’s crazy. She did it herself.”
“Did what herself? Made that up?”
“No, she did it. She killed my mother and she killed her granddaughter. I doubt if she even knows she did it. Nobody in their right mind would have hurt Ann. She was a nice child and everybody liked her.”
“Excuse me,” I put in. “You told me Monday that nobody killed your mother. You said she died of old age. Now you say—”
“And you said,” she retorted crushingly, “that you came there just to see Ann, and here you are. Didn’t I tell you, Army or police, it’s all the same? Here you are together, and what do you do about anything? In sixty years you haven’t moved a finger to stop the hawks entering the city. What was the sense of my telling you that that crazy old woman killed my mother? What would you have done about it? How did I know she was going to kill Ann too? I only came with her because—”
“Madam!” Wolfe said in a tone that stopped her. “If you yourself are sane, you can answer a question. Did your mother tell Mrs. Chack to leave the house?”
“Yes. It was her house—”
“Did she stop paying Leon Furey for killing hawks and tell him to leave also?”
“Yes. After she got hurt—”
“Did she tell Roy Douglas she was going to tear down his pigeon loft?”
“Yes. She couldn’t bear—”
“Did she quit giving you money and forbid you to go to the Square?”
“Yes. But I didn’t—”
“Then, madam, your diagnosis is faulty. Mrs. Chack’s mind retains all those details with accuracy, which is a creditable performance at her age. I wouldn’t advise you—”
The phone buzzed and Cramer took it. He listened briefly, said to wait, and spoke to Wolfe, “I’m through if you are.” Wolfe nodded, and Cramer told the phone, “Come and escort the ladies out and then bring him in.”
Escorting the ladies out wasn’t so simple. They weren’t through, whether Wolfe and Cramer were or not. Finally Cramer had to leave his desk to get them herded through the door, and by the time he got back to his chair in came a city employee with another visitor.
Chapter 11
Leon Furey wasn’t liking himself as well as he had been the last time I saw him. As he walked in, looked around at us, and dropped into a chair by invitation, he was not jaunty. It was doubtful if he had been in his pajamas until noon that day, because his clothes looked as if he had not taken them off at all. Sizing him up as he sat there, with lumps under his bloodshot eyes and a two-day growth of beard, I saw nothing inconsistent with the theory that he had tied that scarf around Ann Amory’s throat, except the alibi, and that didn’t show.
“You want to say something?” Cramer asked.
“Yes, I do.” Leon spoke too loud for a man out in the clear and really satisfied with the surroundings. “I want to know why you’ve got men following me. I’ve been absolutely straight on this and I’ve accounted for every minute of my time, and you’ve verified it. What right have you got to treat me like a criminal? Having me followed, checking up on my draft registration, investigating everywhere I’ve been and everything I’ve done for God knows how long. What’s the big idea?”
“Routine in a murder case,” Cramer said shortly. “We waste a lot of time that way. If you’re claiming injury, get a lawyer. Is it pinching you somewhere?”
“That’s not the question.” Leon’s voice stayed loud. “I’ve proved that I had nothing to do with any murder, you know damn well I have, and you’ve got no right to go on investigating me as if I might have had. And I’ve got a right to make a living the same as anybody. Doing it by killing hawks may or may not meet with your approval, but if Miss Lee
ds wants to pay me for it what business is it of yours or anybody else’s?”
Cramer grunted. “Oh, that’s it.”
“Yes, that’s it. Wasting the taxpayer’s money telephoning all over the state of New York. All right, so you find out that farmers have been shipping me hawks they shot and I’ve been paying them five dollars per hawk. So what? Is that a crime? If Miss Leeds is willing to cough up twenty dollars for a dead hawk, and that gives me a little profit for my trouble, does that make it a crime? It made her happy, didn’t it? Hawks are destructive. They kill chickens. My plan benefits the state, it benefits the farmers, it benefits Miss Leeds, it benefits me, and it hurts nobody.”
“Then what are you beefing about?”
“I’m beefing because I think you’re going to tell Miss Leeds about it, and that would put me out of business. If it so happens that she has got the impression that the hawks are killed right here in New York City, and that gives her pleasure, what’s that to you? Or to me either? What it amounts to, in its simplest terms, I’m doing her a favor. And I’m not hogging it. I keep it down to an average of three or four a week. I could make it twice or three times that if I—”
“Beat it.” Cramer growled in disgust. “Get the hell out of here. I don’t—Wait a minute. You organized this dead hawk business quite a while ago, didn’t you?”
“Why—no, I wouldn’t say—”
“How long ago?”
Leon hesitated. “I don’t remember exactly.”
“Say a year ago?”
“Why, yes, sure, at least a year ago.”
“What did old Mrs. Leeds pay you? Same as her daughter does? Twenty dollars per hawk?”
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