by Rex Stout
“I don’t understand,” Skinner interposed, “why O’Neill was such an easy sucker for that Dorothy Unger phone call. Didn’t the damn fool suspect a plant? Or is he a damn fool or something else?”
Wolfe shook his head. “Now you’re asking for more than I’ve got. Mr. O’Neill is a headstrong and bumptious man, which may account for it; and we know that he was irresistibly tempted to learn what was on those cylinders, whether because he had killed Mr. Boone or for some other reason is yet to be discovered. Presumably Miss Gunther knew what might be expected of him. Anyhow her plot was moderately successful. It kept us all in that side alley for a day or two, it further jumbled the matter of the cylinders and the leather case, and it was one more involvement of an NIA man, without, however, the undesirable result-undesirable for Miss Gunther-of exposing him as the murderer. She was saving that-the disclosure of the murderer’s identity and the evidence she had-for the time that would best suit her purpose.”
“You’ve got pictures of all this,” Skinner said sarcastically. “Why didn’t you call her on the phone or get her in your office and lecture her on the duties of a citizen?”
“It was impractical. She was dead.”
“Oh? Then you didn’t know it all until after she had been killed?”
“Certainly not. How the devil could I? Some of it, yes, it doesn’t matter how much. But when word came from Washington that they had found in Miss Gunther’s apartment, perfunctorily concealed, nine of the cylinders Mr. Boone had dictated the afternoon of his death-nine, not ten-there was the whole story. There was no other acceptable explanation. All questions became paltry and pointless except the one question: where is the tenth cylinder?”
“Wherever you start a sentence,” Hombert complained grouchily, “it always ends on that goddam cylinder!”
Wolfe opened his eyes enough to pick Hombert out. “You try doing a sentence that makes any sense and leave the cylinder out.”
Skinner demanded, “What if she threw it in the river?”
“She didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve already told you. Because she intended to use it, when the time came, to get the murderer punished.”
“What if you’re making your first and only mistake and she did throw it in the river?”
“Drag the river. All the rivers she could reach.”
“Don’t be whimsical. Answer my question.”
Wolfe’s shoulders went perceptibly up and down. “In that case we would be licked. We’d never get him.”
“I think,” Hombert said pointedly, “that it is conceivable that you would like to sell a bill of goods. I don’t say you’re a barefaced liar.”
“I don’t say I’m not, Mr. Hombert. We all take those chances when we exchange words with other people. So I might as well go home-”
“Wait a minute,” Skinner snapped. “Do you mean that as an expert investigator you advise abandoning all lines of inquiry except the search for that cylinder?”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Wolfe frowned, considering. “Especially not with a thousand men or more at your disposal. Of course I don’t know what has been done and what hasn’t, but I know how such things go and I doubt if much has been overlooked in a case of this importance, knowing Mr. Cramer as I do. For instance, that piece of iron pipe; I suppose every possible effort has been made to discover where it came from. The matter of arrivals at my house Monday evening has of course been explored with every resource and ingenuity. The tenants of all the buildings in my block on both sides of the street have naturally been interviewed, on the slim chance, unlikely in that quiet neighborhood, that somebody saw or heard something. The question of opportunity alone, the evening of the dinner at the Waldorf, must have kept a dozen men busy for a week, and perhaps you’re still working on it. Inquiries regarding relationships, both open and concealed, the checking and rechecking of Mr. Dexter’s alibi-these and a thousand other details have unquestionably been competently and thoroughly attended to.”
Wolfe wiggled a finger. “And where are you? So sunk in a bog of futility and bewilderment that you resort to such monkey tricks as ditching Mr. Cramer, replacing him with a buffoon like Mr. Ash, and swearing out a warrant for my arrest! Over a long period I have become familiar with the abilities and performances of the New York police, and I never expected to see the day when the inspector heading the Homicide Squad would try to solve a difficult murder case by dragging me off to a cell, attacking my person, putting me in handcuffs, and threatening me with mayhem!”
“That’s a slight exaggeration. This is not a cell, and I don’t-”
“He intended to,” Wolfe asserted grimly. “He would have. Very well. You have asked me my advice. I would continue, within reason, all lines of inquiry that have already been started, and initiate any others that offer any promise whatever, because no matter what the cylinder gives you-if and when you find it-you will almost certainly need all available scraps of support and corroboration. But the main chance, the only real hope, is the cylinder. I suggest you try this. You both met Miss Gunther? Good. Sit down and shut your eyes and imagine it is last Thursday afternoon, and you are Miss Gunther, sitting in your office in the BPR headquarters in Washington. You have decided what you are going to do with the leather case and the nine eliminated cylinders; forget all that. In your hand is the cylinder, and the question is what to do with it. Here’s what you’re after: you want to preserve it against any risk of damage, you want it easily accessible should you need it on short notice, and you want to be certain that no matter how many people look for it, or who, with whatever persistence and ingenuity, it will not be found.”
Wolfe looked from one to the other. “There’s your little problem, Miss Gunther. Anything so simple, for example, as concealing it there in the BPR office is not even to be considered. Something far above that, something really fine, must be conceived. Your own apartment would be merely ridiculous; you show that you are quite aware of that by disposing of the other nine cylinders as you do. Perhaps the apartment of a friend or colleague you can trust? This is murder; this is of the utmost gravity and of ultimate importance; would you trust any other human being that far? You are ready now to leave, to go to your apartment first and then take a plane to New York. You will probably be in New York some days. Do you take the cylinder with you or leave it in Washington? If so, where? Where? Where?”
Wolfe flipped a hand. “There’s your question, gentlemen. Answer it the way Miss Gunther finally answered it, and your worries are ended.” He stood up. “I am spending a thousand dollars a day trying to learn how Miss Gunther answered it.” He was multiplying by two and it wasn’t his money he was spending, but at least it wasn’t a barefaced lie. “Come, Archie. I want to go home.”
They didn’t want him to go, even then, which was the best demonstration to date of the pitiable condition they were in. They certainly were stymied, flummoxed, and stripped to the bone. Wolfe magnanimously accommodated them by composing a few more well-constructed sentences, properly furnished with subjects, predicates, and subordinate clauses, none of which meant a damn thing, and then marched from the room with me bringing up the rear. He had postponed his exit, I noticed, until after a clerk had entered to deliver some papers to Hombert’s desk, which had occurred just as Wolfe was telling the P.C. and D.A. to shut their eyes and pretend they were Miss Gunther.
Driving back home he sat in the back seat, as usual, clutching the toggle, because of his theory that when-not if and when, just when-the car took a whim to dart aside and smash into some immovable object, your chances in back, hopeless as they were, were slightly better than in front. On the way down to Centre Street I had, on request, given him a sketch of my session with Nina Boone, and now, going home, I filled in the gaps. I couldn’t tell whether it contained any morsel that he considered nutritious, because my back was to him and his face wasn’t in my line of vision in the mirror, and also because the emotions that being in a moving vehicle aroused in hi
m were too overwhelming to leave any room for minor reactions.
As Fritz let us in and we entered the hall and I attended to hat and coat disposal, Wolfe looked almost good-humored. He had beaten a rap and was home safe, and it was only six o’clock, time for beer. But Fritz spoiled it at once by telling us that we had a visitor waiting in the office. Wolfe scowled at him and demanded in a ferocious whisper:
“Who is it?”
“Mrs. Cheney Boone.”
“Good heavens. That hysterical gammer?”
Which was absolutely unfair. Mrs. Boone had been in the house just twice, both times under anything but tranquil circumstances, and I hadn’t seen the faintest indication of hysteria.
Chapter 30
I HAD MADE A close and prolonged study of Wolfe’s attitude toward women. The basic fact about a woman that seemed to irritate him was that she was a woman; the long record showed not a single exception; but from there on the documentation was cockeyed. If woman as woman grated on him you would suppose that the most womany details would be the worst for him, but time and again I have known him to have a chair placed for a female so that his desk would not obstruct his view of her legs, and the answer can’t be that his interest is professional and he reads character from legs, because the older and dumpier she is the less he cares where she sits. It is a very complex question and some day I’m going to take a whole chapter for it. Another little detail: he is much more sensitive to women’s noses than he is to men’s. I have never been able to detect that extremes or unorthodoxies in men’s noses have any effect on him, but in women’s they do. Above all he doesn’t like a pug, or in fact a pronounced incurve anywhere along the bridge.
Mrs. Boone had a pug, and it was much too small for the surroundings. I saw him looking at it as he leaned back in his chair. So he told her in a gruff and inhospitable tone, barely not boorish:
“I have ten minutes to spare, madam.”
Entirely aside from the nose she looked terrible. She had had a go at her compact, but apparently with complete indifference to the result, and anyway it would have been a job for a make-up artist. She was simply all shot and her face had quit trying to do any pretending about it.
“Naturally,” she said, in a voice that was holding up much better than the face, “you’re wondering why I’m here.”
“Naturally,” Wolfe agreed.
“I mean why I came to see you, since you’re on the other side. It’s because I phoned my cousin this morning and he told me about you.”
“I am not,” Wolfe said curtly, “on the other side or any side. I have undertaken to catch a murderer. Do I know your cousin?”
She nodded. “General Carpenter. That was my maiden name. He is my first cousin. He’s in a hospital after an operation, or he would have come to help me when my husband was killed. He told me not to believe anything you said but to do whatever you told me to do. He said that you have your own private set of rules, and that if you are working on a case of murder the only one that can really rely on you is the murderer. Since you know my cousin, you know what he meant. I’m used to him.”
She stopped, looked at me and back at Wolfe, and used her handkerchief on her lower lip and at the corners, which didn’t improve things any. When her hand went back to her lap it was gripping the handkerchief as if it was afraid that someone was planning to snatch it.
“And?” Wolfe prompted her.
“So I came to see you to get some advice. Or maybe I ought to say make up my mind whether I want to ask your advice. I have to get some from somebody, and I don’t know-” She looked at me again, returned to Wolfe, and made a gesture with the hand that wasn’t guarding the handkerchief. “Do I have to tell you why I prefer not to go to someone in the FBI or the police?”
“You are under no compulsion, madam, to tell me anything at all. You’ve already been talking three or four minutes.”
“I know. My cousin warned me that you would be incredibly rude.-Then I might as well come right out and say that I think I am responsible for the death of Phoebe Gunther.”
“That’s an uncomfortable thought,” muttered Wolfe. “Where did you get it?”
“That’s what I want to tell you, and I suppose I’m really going to or I wouldn’t have come here, but while I was sitting here waiting I got up to leave a dozen times and then sat down again. I don’t know what to do and last night I thought I was going crazy. I always depended on my husband to make important decisions. I don’t want to tell the police or the FBI because I may have committed some kind of a crime, I don’t know. But it seems silly to tell you on account of the way my husband felt about the NIA, and of course I feel the same way about them, and you’re working for them, you’re on their side. I suppose I ought to go to a lawyer, and I know lots of lawyers, but there doesn’t seem to be one I could tell this to. They all seem to do all the talking and I never understand what they’re saying.”
That should have softened Wolfe up. He did get a little more receptive, taking the trouble to repeat that he wasn’t on any side. “For me,” he stated, “this is not a private feud, whatever it may be for others. What was the crime you committed?”
“I don’t know-if it was one.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. That’s the trouble. What happened was that Miss Gunther told me what she was doing and I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone and I didn’t, and I have a feeling-”
She stopped. In a moment she went on, “That isn’t true, I haven’t just got a feeling. I’m sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“I’m sure that if I had told the police what she told me she wouldn’t have been killed. But I didn’t tell, because she explained that what she was doing was helping the BPR and hurting the NIA, and that was what my husband would have wanted more than anything else.” The widow was staring at Wolfe’s face as if she were trying to see inside. “And she was perfectly correct. I’m still making up my mind whether to tell you about it. In spite of what you say, there’s my husband’s side and there’s the other side, and you’re working for the NIA. After I talked with my cousin I thought I’d come and see what you sounded like.”
“What do I sound like?”
“I don’t know.” Her hand fluttered vaguely. “I really don’t know.”
Wolfe frowned at her in silence, then heaved a sigh and turned to me.
“Archie.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Your notebook. Take a letter. To be mailed this evening so it will be delivered in the morning. To the National Industrial Association, attention Mr. Frank Thomas Erskine.
“Gentlemen: The course events have taken obliges me to inform you that it will be impossible for me to continue to act in your behalf with regard to the investigation of the murders of Mr. Cheney Boone and Miss Phoebe Gunther. Therefore I enclose herewith my check for thirty thousand dollars, returning the retainer you have paid me and ending my association with you in this matter. Sincerely.”
I made the last scratch and looked at him. “Do I draw the check?”
“Certainly. You can’t enclose it if it hasn’t been drawn.” Wolfe’s eyes moved to the visitor. “There, Mrs. Boone, that should have some effect on your reluctance. Even accepting your point of view, that I was on the other side, now I am not. What did Miss Gunther tell you she was doing?”
The widow was gazing at him. “Thirty thousand dollars?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes.” Wolfe was smirking. “A substantial sum.”
“But was that all the NIA was paying you? Just thirty thousand? I supposed it was twenty times that! They have hundreds of millions-billions!”
“It was only the retainer,” Wolfe said testily. The smirk was gone. “Anyway, I am now a neutral. What did Miss Gunther tell you?”
“But now-but now you’re not getting anything at all!” Mrs. Boone was utterly bewildered. “My cousin told me that during the war you worked hard for the government for nothing, but that you charge p
rivate people outrageous prices. I ought to tell you-if you don’t know-that I can’t afford to pay you anything outrageous. I could-” she hesitated. “I could give you a check for a hundred dollars.”
“I don’t want a check.” Wolfe was exasperated. “If I can’t have a client in this case without being accused of taking sides in a sanguinary vendetta, I don’t want a client. Confound it, what did Miss Gunther tell you?”
Mrs. Boone looked at me, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was trying to find some sort of resemblance to her dead husband, he being gone and therefore no longer available for important decisions. I thought it might possibly help if I nodded at her reassuringly, so I did. Whether that broke the tie or not I don’t know, but something did, for she spoke to Wolfe:
“She knew who killed my husband. My husband told her something that day when he gave her the leather case, and she knew from that, and also he had dictated something on one of those cylinders that told about it, so the cylinder was evidence, and she had it. She was keeping it and she intended to give it to the police, but she was waiting until the talk and the rumors and the public feeling had done as much damage as possible to the NIA. She told me about it because I went to her and told her I knew she wasn’t telling the truth about that leather case, I knew she had had it with her at the table in the dining room, and I wasn’t going to keep still about it any longer. She told me what she was doing so I wouldn’t tell the police about the case.”
“When was that? What day?”
She thought a moment, the crease deepening in her forehead, and then shook her head uncertainly. “The days,” she said. “The days are all mixed up.”
