Wolfe stayed on the stool. His eyes came to me. “Any complaint, Archie?”
“Only their bad manners. Next time they’ll talk through a crack.”
His eyes moved. “Mr. Cramer. As I said, I will not talk business in this room. Not a word. If you’ll wait in my office I’ll be down at eleven o’clock. If you put hands on me, and Mr. Goodwin, and take us elsewhere, we’ll stand mute and communicate with our lawyer. When he comes we’ll confer with him privately, and the afternoon paper, the Gazette, and tomorrow morning’s papers, will publish the news that Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin have discovered the identity of the murderer of Elinor Denovo and have delivered satisfactory evidence to the police. Also, that in recognition of that public service they have been arrested and are behind bars, and their lawyer is arranging to secure their release on bail. Archie, here, please. This Miltonia charlesworthi germination card has conflicting entries. We’ll have to check it.”
I went and took the card and scowled at it.
Cramer was in a box. My taking him the contents of those cartons and the letter, if the prints matched, certainly made us material witnesses, but if he herded us downtown and we performed as programmed by Wolfe, and we would, he would have to plug his ears for the horse laughs. If he and Stebbins waited there to go down to the office with us there was nowhere to sit, and standing around waiting may be all right for a sergeant but not for an inspector.
Stebbins muttered, apparently to himself, “God, I’d love to knock him off that stool.” He looked at Cramer. “We take ’em down and lock ’em up and kick ’em out before the lawyer comes.”
Actually Cramer is not a fool, not at all. Stebbins must have sold him the bright idea of coming before eleven and invading the plant rooms. He jerked his head and a hand toward the door, an order, and the sergeant obeyed. He stepped to the door and opened it, and when Cramer was through he followed him, leaving the door wide open. Theodore went and shut it, and Wolfe looked at the electric clock which controlled the temperature and some of the ventilation. It was six minutes to eleven.
I asked, “Is this card really off?”
“No. Stay here.” He turned to Theodore. “Those Odontoglossum pyramus aren’t ready for sevens. Put them in sixes. Do you agree?”
“No,” Theodore said. “A little extra room won’t hurt them any.”
I didn’t listen to that argument, which took ten minutes; I was concentrating on what Cramer and Stebbins would find when they went through our desks, and congratulating myself for having undraped the red leather chair. I had to stay, of course, not only because Wolfe had told me to; if I had followed them down they would have started in on me and I might overdo it, the way I felt.
They would probably be expecting us to come down together in the elevator, so when Wolfe left the stool and unbuttoned the smock I said I would take the stairs and went. Since all three flights are carpeted, noise was no problem, and they didn’t even know I was there, in the office doorway, until I spoke. Stebbins was seated at my desk, with two drawers open, and Cramer was over by the cabinets but with none of them open because they had locks.
I said, “I hadn’t opened the safe yet. Sorry.”
Cramer about-faced and narrowed his eyes at me. Stebbins merely took more papers from a drawer and started leafing through them. A cop inside the house. The sound came of the elevator descending, and it stopped, and as Wolfe came I stepped into the office. He entered, halted, shot a glance at Cramer, glared at Stebbins, who went right on with papers, and said, “Get Mr. Parker. I’ll take it in the kitchen.”
“What did you expect?” Cramer demanded. “Knock it off, Purley. Goodwin wants his chair. Come on, move!”
Stebbins tossed papers on my desk, a mess, got to his feet in no hurry, and went to get one of the yellow chairs. He likes to be with his back to a wall. By the time he had the chair where he wanted it. Cramer was in the red leather chair and Wolfe, at his desk, had a drawer open to see if it was in order. He made a face and turned to Cramer. “The briefer we make this the better. You want to know who made those fingerprints.”
“You’re damned right I do. And I want—”
“I know what you want, but something I want comes first. I will not have that man”—he aimed a straight finger at Stebbins—“in my house. Ransacking my office? Pfui. I would like to exclude you too, but someone even less tolerable would probably replace you. Archie. On a letterhead, Mr. Vance’s name and both addresses and telephone numbers. One carbon.”
It took longer than usual to get paper and carbon in the typewriter on account of the mess Stebbins had made. As I typed Cramer said something, saw that Wolfe wasn’t listening and didn’t intend to, and shut his trap. As I rolled the paper out Wolfe said, “One to each,” and I went and handed Cramer the original and Stebbins the carbon, and Wolfe told Cramer, “Get him out of here.”
You have to admit that he knows when he can get away with what. In any ordinary circumstances he wouldn’t have tried telling Cramer to get Stebbins out of there, but I had just given him the name and address of a man who had left his cigar case in a hit-and-run car.
Cramer said to Wolfe, “Floyd Vance. Was it his prints on that stuff you sent me?”
Wolfe said, “Yes. He made most of them last evening, in my presence, and Mr. Goodwin’s, sitting in that chair.”
Cramer turned to Stebbins and said, “Get him and take him in.”
Stebbins got up and went.
So that man was out of there. As he turned into the hall Wolfe said, “You have been scampering around on a hot day and would presumably like something to drink, but you have forfeited your right to civilities. We’ve given you the name of a man you’ve been seeking for more than three months. What else do you want?”
The air conditioning had dried the sweat on Cramer’s forehead and taken some of the red from his face. “I want plenty,” he said. “I want one good reason why you and Goodwin shouldn’t be charged with withholding information of a crime and obstructing justice. I want to know how long you have known that this Floyd Vance was the driver of that hit-and-run car, and how you spotted him. I want to know if he’s the father you said you were looking for, and if so, and Elinor Denovo was the mother, I want to know why he killed her.”
“That will take a lot of talking, Mr. Cramer.”
“It sure will. Even for you. Go right ahead.”
Wolfe adjusted his bulk in the chair. “First, withholding information. Last Thursday Mr. Goodwin gave you our word that if we got anything you might be able to use we would pass it on to you before we made any use of it ourselves. We got those fingerprints late last evening and delivered them to you early this morning, and we have made no use of them and don’t intend to. I have no other information that you might be able to use, in my judgment.”
“To hell with your judgment. If you think you can decide—”
“If you please. You told me to talk. As I told you, my client was, and is, a young woman who hired me to find her father. We found one likely prospect but investigation conclusively eliminated him. We found another, but he too was eliminated. I was inclined to return the retainer and withdraw, and persisted only because I am what I call tenacious and Mr. Goodwin calls pigheaded. Do you recognize the name Raymond Thorne?”
“Raymond Thorne? No.”
“Doubtless some of your staff would. Elinor Denovo spent most of her adult life working for him. Raymond Thorne Productions. Television. He came at my request last Thursday evening and answered questions for more than four hours, and one of the many things I learned was that a man named Floyd Vance had tried many times last May to see Elinor Denovo, and she had refused to see him. His last attempt to see her was on the twenty-second of May, only four days before she died. If you had questioned the receptionist at Raymond Thorne Productions with sufficient perseverance you might have solved that case long ago. We made long and laborious inquiries about Floyd Vance and discovered that he had known Elinor Denovo in nineteen forty-four, when she w
as Carlotta Vaughn, and had seen her frequently for several months. It was possible that he was the father I was trying to find, and we tackled him. He is a self-styled public-relations counselor—one of the various modern activities that are an insult to the dignity of man. Mr. Goodwin got him here last evening. Preparations had been made. His attempts to see Elinor Denovo shortly before her death prompted the surmise that he had killed her, and, knowing that you had fingerprints, Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Panzer made proper arrangements. That was fortunate, but not for me, for you. Without that you would probably never had found him. And here you come—”
“I’m supposed to pin a medal on you?”
“I don’t like medals. The fingerprints didn’t help me any. He denied that he had fathered a child by Carlotta Vaughn. He could have been lying, certainly, but I was helpless. And am. Even if he is the man I’m looking for there is no conceivable way to establish it. Can you suggest one?”
“I handle homicides, not paternity suits.”
“So you do. Now, with those fingerprints, you can handle this one. You said you want to know why he killed her. So do I. I haven’t the slightest notion. I have told you everything I know about him. I have seen him only once, here last evening, and I asked him no questions pertaining to Elinor Denovo’s death. I asked him nothing about his attempts to see her in May. Now, of course, you will, because you have a motive, and it’s possible that you will uncover one that will have a bearing on my problem. If you do, and if you can share it with me without hazard to your case, I’ll try to erase from memory this morning’s outrageous performance. It won’t be easy—especially the sight of that creature at Mr. Goodwin’s desk, deranging his and my belongings, while you stood and applauded.”
“I did not applaud. Your usual exaggeration.”
“You permitted.”
“Oh, skip it. A cop gets habits like everybody else. He was looking for information, not evidence. Even if he had found Goodwin’s signed confession that he had killed Elinor Denovo it wouldn’t have been admissible evidence; ask the Supreme Court.” Cramer looked at his watch and then at me. “How long has he been gone?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes,” I told him. “When you get up don’t put your hand on the right chair arm. It has four Floyd Vance prints on it.”
“Thanks for telling me.” He put both palms on the right chair arm and twisted around as he got to his feet. He faced Wolfe. “I want to be there when he brings him in. I admit you sound good, but you nearly always do sound good. I’m buying nothing, at least not until I see this Floyd Vance. If it goes one way you may hear from me, and if it goes another way you will hear from me. Have I ever thanked you for anything?”
“No.”
“And I’m not thanking you now. Not yet.” He turned and went. I stayed put.
Wolfe opened his desk drawer to take another look, and I attacked the mess Stebbins had made. Vandalism. There was no danger that he had taken anything important because no classified items were ever left in an unlocked drawer, and after getting things in order and back where they belonged I decided that he had taken nothing, except possibly a few of my calling cards. That suggested the question, if it’s illegal for a private detective to impersonate a cop why isn’t it illegal for a cop to impersonate a private detective? I would ask Wolfe. He had shut the drawer and was leaning back, looking thoughtful but not concentrated. When I turned to him he nodded and said, “Phalaenopsis Aphrodite sanderiana.”
I said, “If this is a quiz: rose, brown, purple, and yellow.”
“We’ll send some to that Dorothy Sebor, and I’ll go up and get them now. I intended to bring them down but those intruders came. Also I brought none for my desk.” He pushed his chair back.
“Instructions?”
“No. There is nothing you can do.”
“Saul is standing by. So are Fred and Orrie.”
“Release them. There is nothing. Our next step is obvious, but it must wait until Mr. Cramer learns his motive. If he learns his motive. He should, with a thousand trained men.”
After the sound came of the elevator starting up I sat and looked it over from every angle. It was nice to know the next step was obvious, but it would have been even nicer to know what it was.
Chapter 15
I didn’t know then, and I still don’t, exactly how long it took the city employees to find out why Floyd Vance killed Elinor Denovo. I mean really wrap it up. All I know is that Cramer’s phone call didn’t come until 6:38 p.m. Thursday, just in time to make me late at the poker party again. And I still didn’t know what the obvious step was. One of the eighty-seven facts about Wolfe that I would change if I knew how is that he doesn’t believe in talking merely to satisfy anyone’s curiosity, even mine. I admit that in this case there might have been other factors—for instance, he might have wanted to see if I would dope it out for myself and make some suggestions. You probably have, but maybe you wouldn’t if you had been in my shoes, waiting for a development which depended entirely on other people, and you didn’t know what they were doing and not doing.
I did do one thing. When I learned from the noon news broadcast on Wednesday that Floyd Vance was being held without bail, and rang Lon Cohen to check it, I phoned Lily Rowan to say I wanted to see the client and was invited to lunch; and after we had finished the lobster salad and cantaloupe mousse and had gone out to the terrace, I told Amy that there was no more danger of her being a special target and if she went out for a walk her chances of getting back in one piece were as good as anybody else’s. Naturally she wanted to know what had happened, and Lily did too, and I think that was the first and only time that Lily suspected me of putting on an act in connection with my work. She remembered that she had a date, some kind of a committee meeting, which I doubted, and left me there with Amy. I admit she thought she was being considerate, but it was no favor to me. I had been stalling Amy for two weeks and she wanted to know, and I couldn’t blame her. Usually you can tell a client something, but I had already told her that her mother’s name was Carlotta Vaughn, and there was absolutely nothing that I was ready to add. When I left I wasn’t at all sure that I was still the one man in the world she could trust.
Of course I read every word in the Wednesday and Thursday papers about the hit-and-run driver the police had nabbed after three months, but learned nothing about motive. I got the impression that the fingerprints which had identified him had been secured by extremely competent detective work by the Homicide Bureau, but there were no published details about it. There was no mention of Nero Wolfe or Archie Goodwin. There was a lot of new information, new to me, about Floyd Vance, and one item cleared up a point that I had wondered about. In 1944 he had been in his late twenties and single, and why hadn’t he been sent, either to Europe or to Asia, to help several million of his fellow citizens do some expert handling of the public image of the United States of America? According to Wednesday’s Gazette and News, and Thursday’s Times, he had been excused because he had some kind of a trick knee. Other items, though they cleared up nothing, told me more about him—for instance, that he had always been a tadpole in a big frog pond as a public-relations counselor. Evidently he had had very little effect on the dignity of man, either way.
When the phone rang at 6:38 p.m. Thursday, I was at my desk working on germination records and Wolfe was at his with a book he had just started on, an advance copy of The Future of Germany, by Karl Jaspers. I reached for the receiver.
“Nero Wolfe’s Office, Archie—”
“I want Wolfe, Goodwin. Cramer.”
“Greetings.” Without bothering to cover the transmitter, I turned my head and said, “Cramer,” perhaps a little louder than usual, and Wolfe reached for his phone, perhaps a little faster than usual. I kept mine.
“Yes, Mr. Cramer?”
“About Floyd Vance. You read the papers.”
“Yes.”
“We’re going for first-degree and we expect it to stick. We’ve followed the new rules and we don’t even
ask him if he’s thirsty unless his lawyer’s present. I’m willing to give you some information we haven’t released if you give me your word that you’ll keep it in confidence.”
“That’s rather difficult. Information that I can’t use won’t help.”
“I doubt if you can use it. If you can use it without divulging it, okay.”
“Very well. You have my word.”
“For what you want, it’s negative. For at least a year and probably longer, we’re still digging at it, Elinor Denovo was knifing him. She must have been a slick article. We can’t find that she ever once actually mentioned his name, but last spring the only two clients he had that amounted to anything left him, and we have it in writing that they switched to a firm that was suggested and recommended by Elinor Denovo. Those are the two outstanding cases, but there are several others, and by the time it gets to trial we’ll have a good file on it. As it stands now his lawyer would like to cop a plea for second-degree, but we want to wrap it up for first and I think we will. Evidently she decided, I think about a year and a half ago, to make it impossible for him to operate and she was doing a damn good job of it. You worked on him. Didn’t you get any line on it?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t withhold information.”
“Sarcasm isn’t your best blade, Mr. Cramer.”
“That’s why I never use it. And I doubt if you can use what I’m giving you. We’ve got a motive for Floyd Vance that’s plenty good enough and it will be even better before we’re through, but her motive for cooking him is your problem, not mine. It could be that she decided to even up for something that happened back in nineteen forty-four, but I’m glad we don’t have to dig that deep. If you want to try, you’re welcome, but Goodwin can’t get him to come and spend another evening in that chair. He’s not available.”
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