“I wasn’t here last evening,” Cramer said dryly.
“So you weren’t. Instead of ‘you,’ I should have said the Police Department. It must all be in the files. They were questioned at the time it happened, and told their stories as they have now told them to me. You can get it there. Have you ever known me to have to eat my words?”
“I’ve seen times when I would have liked to shove them down your throat.”
“But you never have. Here are three more I shall not eat: Mion was murdered. I won’t tell you, now, how I reached that conclusion; study your files.”
Cramer was keeping himself under restraint. “I don’t have to study them,” he declared, “for one detail—how he was killed. Are you saying he fired the gun himself but was driven to it?”
“No. The murderer fired the gun.”
“It must have been quite a murderer. It’s quite a trick to pry a guy’s mouth open and stick a gun in it without getting bit. Would you mind naming him?”
Wolfe shook his head. “I haven’t got that far yet. But it isn’t the objection you raise that’s bothering me; that can be overcome; it’s something else.” He leaned forward and was earnest. “Look here, Mr. Cramer. It would not have been impossible for me to see this through alone, deliver the murderer and the evidence to you, and flap my wings and crow. But first, I have no ambition to expose you as a zany, since you’re not; and second, I need your help. I am not now prepared to prove to you that Mion was murdered; I can only assure you that he was and repeat that I won’t have to eat it—and neither will you. Isn’t that enough, at least to arouse your interest?”
Cramer stopped chewing the cigar. He never lit one. “Sure,” he said grimly. “Hell, I’m interested. Another first-class headache. I’m flattered you want me to help. How?”
“I want you to arrest two people as material witnesses, question them, and let them out on bail.”
“Which two? Why not all six?” I warned you his sarcasm was hefty.
“But”—Wolfe ignored it—”under clearly defined conditions. They must not know that I am responsible; they must not even know that I have spoken with you. The arrests should be made late this afternoon or early evening, so they’ll be kept in custody all night and until they arrange for bail in the morning. The bail need not be high; that’s not important. The questioning should be fairly prolonged and severe, not merely a gesture, and if they get little or no sleep so much the better. Of course this sort of thing is routine for you.”
“Yeah, we do it constantly.” Cramer’s tone was unchanged. “But when we ask for a warrant we like to have a fairly good excuse. We wouldn’t like to put down that it’s to do Nero Wolfe a favor. I don’t want to be contrary.”
“There’s ample excuse for these two. They are material witnesses. They are indeed.”
“You haven’t named them. Who are they?”
“The man and woman who found the body. Mr. Frederick Weppler, the music critic, and Mrs. Mion, the widow.”
This time I didn’t goggle, but I had to catch myself quick. It was a first if there ever was one. Time and again I have seen Wolfe go far, on a few occasions much too far, to keep a client from being pinched. He regards it as an unbearable personal insult. And here he was, practically begging the law to haul Fred and Peggy in, when I had deposited her check for five grand only the day before!
“Oh,” Cramer said. “Them?”
“Yes, sir,” Wolfe assured him cooperatively. “As you know or can learn from the files, there is plenty to ask them about it. Mr. Weppler was there for lunch that day, with others, and when the others left he remained with Mrs. Mion. What was discussed? What did they do that afternoon; where were they? Why did Mr. Weppler return to the Mion apartment at seven o’clock? Why did he and Mrs. Mion ascend together to the studio? After finding the body, why did Mr. Weppler go downstairs before notifying the police, to get a list of names from the doorman and elevator man? An extraordinary performance. Was it Mion’s habit to take an afternoon nap? Did he sleep with his mouth open?”
“Much obliged,” Cramer said not gratefully. “You’re a wonder at thinking of questions to ask. But even if Mion did take naps with his mouth open, I doubt if he did it standing up. And after the bullet left his head it went up to the ceiling, as I remember it. Now.” Cramer put his palms on the arms of the chair, with the cigar in his mouth tilted up at about the angle the gun in Mion’s mouth had probably been. “Who’s your client?”
“No,” Wolfe said regretfully. “I’m not ready to disclose that.”
“I thought not. In fact, there isn’t one single damn thing you have disclosed. You’ve got no evidence, or if you have any you’re keeping it under your belt. You’ve got a conclusion you like, that will help a client you won’t name, and you want me to test it for you by arresting two reputable citizens and giving them the works. I’ve seen samples of your nerve before, but this is tops. For God’s sake!”
“I’ve told you I won’t eat it, and neither will you. If—”
“You’d eat one of your own orchids if you had to earn a fee!”
That started the fireworks. I have sat many times and listened to that pair in a slugging match and enjoyed every minute of it, but this one got so hot that I wasn’t exactly sure I was enjoying it. At 12:40 Cramer was on his feet, starting to leave. At 12:45 he was back in the red leather chair, shaking his fist and snarling. At 12:48 Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut, pretending he was deaf. At 12:52 he was pounding his desk and bellowing.
At ten past one it was all over. Cramer had taken it and was gone. He had made a condition, that there would first be a check of the record and a staff talk, but that didn’t matter, since the arrests were to be postponed until after judges had gone home. He accepted the proviso that the victims were not to know that Wolfe had a hand in it, so it could have been said that he was knuckling under, but actually he was merely using horse sense. No matter how much he discounted Wolfe’s three words that were not to be eaten—and he knew from experience how risky it was to discount Wolfe just for the hell of it—they made it fairly probable that it wouldn’t hurt to give Mion’s death another look; and in that case a session with the couple who had found the body was as good a way to start as any. As a matter of fact, the only detail that Cramer choked on was Wolfe’s refusal to tell who his client was.
As I followed Wolfe into the dining room for lunch I remarked to his outspread back, “There are already eight hundred and nine people in the metropolitan area who would like to poison you. This will make it eight hundred and eleven. Don’t think they won’t find out sooner or later.”
“Of course they will,” he conceded, pulling his chair back. “But too late.”
The rest of that day and evening nothing happened at all, as far as we knew.
VI
I was at my desk in the office at 10:40 the next morning when the phone rang. I got it and told the transmitter, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”
“I want to talk to Mr. Wolfe.”
“He won’t be available until eleven o’clock. Can I help?”
“This is urgent. This is Weppler, Frederick Weppler. I’m in a booth in a drugstore on Ninth Avenue near Twentieth Street. Mrs. Mion is with me. We’ve been arrested.”
“Good God!” I was horrified. “What for?”
“To ask us about Mion’s death. They had material-witness warrants. They kept us all night, and we just got out on bail. I had a lawyer arrange for the bail, but I don’t want him to know about—that we consulted Wolfe, and he’s not with us. We want to see Wolfe.”
“You sure do,” I agreed emphatically. “It’s a damn outrage. Come on up here. He’ll be down from the plant rooms by the time you arrive. Grab a taxi.”
“We can’t. That’s why I’m phoning. We’re being followed by two detectives and we don’t want them to know we’re seeing Wolfe. How can we shake them?”
It would have saved time and energy to tell him to come ahead, tha
t a couple of official tails needn’t worry him, but I thought I’d better play along.
“For God’s sake,” I said, disgusted. “Cops give me a pain in the neck. Listen. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Go to the Feder Paper Company, Five-thirty-five West Seventeenth Street. In the office ask for Mr. Sol Feder. Tell him your name is Montgomery. He’ll conduct you along a passage that exits on Eighteenth Street. Right there, either at the curb or double-parked, will be a taxi with a handkerchief on the door handle. I’ll be in it. Don’t lose any time climbing in. Have you got it?”
“I think so. You’d better repeat the address.”
I did so, and told him to wait ten minutes before starting, to give me time to get there. Then, after hanging up, I phoned Sol Feder to instruct him, got Wolfe on the house phone to inform him, and beat it.
I should have told him to wait fifteen or twenty minutes instead of ten, because I got to my post on Eighteenth Street barely in time. My taxi had just stopped, and I was reaching out to tie my handkerchief on the door handle, when here they came across the sidewalk like a bat out of hell. I swung the door wide, and Fred practically threw Peggy in and dived in after her.
“Okay, driver,” I said sternly, “you know where,” and we rolled.
As we swung into Tenth Avenue I asked if they had had breakfast and they said yes, not with any enthusiasm. The fact is, they looked as if they were entirely out of enthusiasm. Peggy’s lightweight green jacket, which she had on over a tan cotton dress, was rumpled and not very clean, and her face looked neglected. Fred’s hair might not have been combed for a month, and his brown tropical worsted was anything but natty. They sat holding hands, and about once a minute Fred twisted around to look through the rear window.
“We’re loose all right,” I assured him. “I’ve been saving Sol Feder just for an emergency like this.”
It was only a five-minute ride. When I ushered them into the office Wolfe was there in his big custom-made chair behind his desk. He arose to greet them, invited them to sit, asked if they had breakfasted properly, and said that the news of their arrest had been an unpleasant shock.
“One thing,” Fred blurted, still standing. “We came to see you and consult you in confidence, and forty-eight hours later we were arrested. Was that pure coincidence?”
Wolfe finished getting himself re-established in his chair. “That won’t help us any, Mr. Weppler,” he said without resentment. “If that’s your frame of mind you’d better go somewhere and cool off. You and Mrs. Mion are my clients. An insinuation that I am capable of acting against the interest of a client is too childish for discussion. What did the police ask you about?”
But Fred wasn’t satisfied. “You’re not a double-crosser,” he conceded. “I know that. But what about Goodwin here? He may not be a double-crosser either, but he might have got careless in conversation with someone.”
Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Archie. Did you?”
“No, sir. But he can postpone asking my pardon. They’ve had a hard night.” I looked at Fred. “Sit down and relax. If I had a careless tongue I wouldn’t last at this job a week.”
“It’s damn funny,” Fred persisted. He sat. “Mrs. Mion agrees with me. Don’t you, Peggy?”
Peggy, in the red leather chair, gave him a glance and then looked back at Wolfe. “I did, I guess,” she confessed. “Yes, I did. But now that I’m here, seeing you—” She made a gesture. “Oh, forget it! There’s no one else to go to. We know lawyers, of course, but we don’t want to tell a lawyer what we know—about the gun. We’ve already told you. But now the police suspect something, and we’re out on bail, and you’ve got to do something!”
“What did you find out Monday evening?” Fred demanded. “You stalled when I phoned yesterday. What did they say?”
“They recited facts,” Wolfe replied. “As I told you on the phone, I made some progress. I have nothing to add to that—now. But I want to know, I must know, what line the police took with you. Did they know what you told me about the gun?”
They both said no.
Wolfe grunted. “Then I might reasonably ask that you withdraw your insinuation that I or Mr. Goodwin betrayed you. What did they ask about?”
The answers to that took a good half an hour. The cops hadn’t missed a thing that was included in the picture as they knew it, and, with instructions from Cramer to make it thorough, they hadn’t left a scrap. Far from limiting it to the day of Mion’s death, they had been particularly curious about Peggy’s and Fred’s feelings and actions during the months both prior and subsequent thereto. Several times I had to take the tip of my tongue between my teeth to keep from asking the clients why they hadn’t told the cops to go soak their heads, but I really knew why: they had been scared. A scared man is only half a man. By the time they finished reporting on their ordeal I was feeling sympathetic, and even guilty on behalf of Wolfe, when suddenly he snapped me out of it.
He sat a while tapping the arm of his chair with a fingertip, and then looked at me and said abruptly, “Archie. Draw a check to the order of Mrs. Mion for five thousand dollars.”
They gawked at him. I got up and headed for the safe. They demanded to know what the idea was. I stood at the safe door to listen.
“I’m quitting,” Wolfe said curtly. “I can’t stand you. I told you Sunday that one or both of you were lying, and you stubbornly denied it. I undertook to work around your lie, and I did my best. But now that the police have got curious about Mion’s death, and specifically about you, I refuse longer to risk it. I am willing to be a Quixote, but not a chump. In breaking with you, I should tell you that I shall immediately inform Inspector Cramer of all that you have told me. If, when the police start the next round with you, you are fools enough to contradict me, heaven knows what will happen. Your best course will be to acknowledge the truth and let them pursue the investigation you hired me for; but I would also warn you that they are not simpletons and they too will know that you are lying—at least one of you. Archie, what are you standing there gaping for? Get the checkbook.”
I opened the safe door.
Neither of them had uttered a peep. I suppose they were too tired to react normally. As I returned to my desk they just sat, looking at each other. As I started making the entry on the stub, Fred’s voice came.
“You can’t do this. This isn’t ethical.”
“Pfui.” Wolfe snorted. “You hire me to get you out of a fix, and lie to me about it, and talk of ethics! Incidentally, I did make progress Monday evening. I cleared everything up but two details, but the devil of it is that one of them depends on you. I have got to know who put that gun on the floor beside the body. I am convinced that it was one of you, but you won’t admit it. So I’m helpless and that’s a pity, because I am also convinced that neither of you was involved in Mion’s death. If there were—”
“What’s that?” Fred demanded. There was nothing wrong with his reaction now. “You’re convinced that neither of us was involved?”
“I am.”
Fred was out of his chair. He went to Wolfe’s desk, put his palms on it, leaned forward, and said harshly, “Do you mean that? Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me! Do you mean that?”
“Yes,” Wolfe told him. “Certainly I mean it.”
Fred gazed at him another moment and then straightened up. “All right,” he said, the harshness gone. “I put the gun on the floor.”
A wail came from Peggy. She sailed out of her chair and to him and seized his arm with both hands. “Fred! No! Fred!” she pleaded. I wouldn’t have thought her capable of wailing, but of course she was tired to begin with. He put a hand on top of hers and then decided that was inadequate and took her in his arms. For a minute he concentrated on her. Finally he turned his face to Wolfe and spoke.
“I may regret this, but if I do you will too. By God, you will.” He was quite positive of it. “All right, I lied. I put the gun on the floor. Now it’s up to you.” He held the ot
her client closer. “I did, Peggy. Don’t say I should have told you—maybe I should—but I couldn’t. It’ll be all right, dearest, really it will—”
“Sit down,” Wolfe said crossly. After a moment he made it an order. “Confound it, sit down!”
Peggy freed herself, Fred letting her go, and returned to her chair and dropped into it. Fred perched on its arm, with a hand on her far shoulder, and she put her hand up to his. Their eyes, suspicious, afraid, defiant, and hopeful all at once, were on Wolfe.
He stayed cross. “I assume,” he said, “that you see how it is. You haven’t impressed me. I already knew one of you had put the gun there. How could anyone else have entered the studio during those few minutes? The truth you have told me will be worse than useless, it will be extremely dangerous, unless you follow it with more truth. Try another lie and there’s no telling what will happen; I might not be able to save you. Where did you find it?”
“Don’t worry,” Fred said quietly. “You’ve screwed it out of me and you’ll get it straight. When we went in and found the body I saw the gun where Mion always kept it, on the base of Caruso’s bust. Mrs. Mion didn’t see it; she didn’t look that way. When I left her in her bedroom I went back up. I picked the gun up by the trigger guard and smelled it; it had been fired. I put it on the floor by the body, returned to the apartment, went out, and took the elevator to the ground floor. The rest was just as I told you Sunday.”
Wolfe grunted. “You may have been in love, but you didn’t think much of her intelligence. You assumed that after killing him she hadn’t had the wit to leave the gun where he might have dropped—”
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