He sat and scowled.
Wolfe said, “You were lamenting the lack of motive.”
“What?” He looked at Wolfe. “Yeah. I’d give my afternoon off to know what you know right now.”
“It would cost you more than an afternoon, Mr. Cramer. I read a lot of books.”
“To hell with books. I am fully aware that you’ve got some kind of a line on this thing and I haven’t; I knew that as soon as I heard about Goodwin. If it ever did any good to look at your face I’d look at it while I’m telling you that the commissioner just informed me that he had a phone call ten minutes ago from the British consul general. The consul stated that he was shocked and concerned to learn of the sudden and violent death of a British subject named Percy Ludlow and he hoped that no effort would be spared and so forth.”
Wolfe shook his head. “I’m afraid my face wouldn’t help you any on that. My sole reaction is the thought that the British consul general must have remarkable channels of information. It’s half past ten at night. The murder occurred only four hours ago.”
“Nothing remarkable about it. He heard it on a radio news bulletin.”
“The source of the news was you or your staff?”
“Naturally.”
“Then you had discovered that Ludlow was a British subject?”
“No. No one up there knew much about him. Men are out on that now.”
“Then obviously it’s remarkable. The radio tells the consul merely that a man named Percy Ludlow has been killed at a dancing and fencing studio on 48th Street, and he knows at once that the victim was a British subject. Not only that, he doesn’t wait until morning, when the usual conventional communication could be sent to the police from his office, but immediately phones the commissioner himself. So either Mr. Ludlow was himself important, or he was concerned in important business. Maybe the consul could supply some details.”
“Much obliged. The commissioner has a date with him at eleven o’clock. Meanwhile how about supplying a few yourself?”
“I don’t know any. I heard Mr. Ludlow’s name for the first time shortly before six o’clock this afternoon.”
“You say. All right, to hell with you and your client both. I don’t kick on any ordinary murder, it’s my job and I try to handle it, but I hate these damn foreign mix-ups. Look at those two girls, they barely speak English, and if they want to monkey around playing with swords why can’t they stay where they belong and do it there? Look at Miltan, I suppose some kind of a Frenchman, and his wife. Look at Zorka. Then look at that Rudolph Faber guy, he reminds me of the cartoons of Prussian officers at the time of the World War. And now the Federals are up there horning in, and this consul general informs us that even the dead man wasn’t a plain honest-to-God American—”
“From old Ireland,” I slipped in.
“Shut up. You know what I mean. I don’t care if the background is wop or mick or kike or dago or yankee or squarehead or dutch colonial, so long as it’s American. Give me an American murder with an American motive and an American weapon, and I’ll deal with it. But these damn alien trimmings, épée and culdymores and consuls calling up about their damn subjects—and moreover, why I was fool enough to expect anything here is beyond me. I should have had you tagged and hauled in and let you wait in a cold hall until sunrise.”
He appeared to be preparing to leave his chair. Wolfe displayed a palm.
“Please, Mr. Cramer. Good heavens, the corpse is barely cooled off. Would you mind telling me how Mr. Faber made himself responsible for the fact that there’s been no arrest? I think that was how you put it.”
“I might and I might not. Do you know Faber?”
“I’ve said all those people are strangers to me. I tell only useful lies, and only those not easily exposed.”
“Okay. I would have arrested your client—I’m pretty sure I would—if it hadn’t been for Faber.”
“Then I’m in debt to him.”
“You sure are. Except for lack of motive, which might have been supplied and still may be, it looked like Miss Tormic. She admitted she was in there fencing with Ludlow. There was no evidence of anyone else having entered the room, though of course someone could have done so unobserved. Miss Tormic said that when she left the room Ludlow said he would stay and fool with the dummy a while. A dummy is a thing fastened to the wall with a mechanical arm that you can hook a sword onto. She said she went to the locker room and left her pad and glove and mask, and then—”
“What about her épée?”
“She said she left it in the fencing room. There’s a dozen or more in there on a rack. There was one with a button on it lying on the floor not far from Ludlow’s body, presumably the one he had been using. Ludlow had no mask on, but of course it could have been slipped off after he was killed. I see no reason why it should have been, unless to make it look as if he hadn’t been fencing at the moment it happened. Nor was there any reason for removing the culdymore as far as I can see except to play hide and seek with it. But about Faber. He was downstairs in a dancing room with Zorka until she went with Ted Gill to show him how to hold a sword. Then he went up and changed to fencing clothes, intending to get Carla Lovchen to fence with him as soon as she was through with Driscoll. He was hanging around the upper hall when Miss Tormic came out of the end room, and Ludlow was there too, opening the door for her to leave. Ludlow called to ask Faber if he cared to fence a little, and Faber said no. He says. Ludlow said all right, he’d practice his wrist on the dummy, and went back in the end room, closing the door, and Faber and Miss Tormic went to an alcove at the other end of the hall and sat and smoked a couple of cigarettes. They were still there when the porter entered the end room to clean up, thinking it was empty, and saw the body and came out squealing. They ran to see what it was, and other people appeared from all directions.”
Wolfe, who had closed his eyes, opened them to slits. “I see,” he murmured. “You couldn’t very well have arrested her after that, even if you had known she was my client. From where they sat did they have a view of the hall?”
“No, there’s a corner.”
“How long were they sitting there before the rumpus?”
“Fifteen to twenty minutes.”
“Did anyone see them?”
“Yes, Donald Barrett. He was looking for Miss Tormic to ask her to have dinner with him. He went to the door of the ladies’ locker room and Miss Lovchen told him Miss Tormic wasn’t there. He found them in the alcove, and was still with them five minutes later when the yelling started.”
“He hadn’t looked for her in the end room?”
“No. Miss Lovchen told him she had stopped in the locker room and left her pad and glove and mask, so he presumed she wasn’t fencing.”
After a little silence Wolfe heaved a sigh. “Well,” he said irritably but mildly, “I don’t see why the devil you resent my client. She seems to be wrapped in a mantle of innocence from head to foot.”
“Sure, it’s simply beautiful.” Cramer abruptly got up. “But … there’s a couple of little things. So far as is known, she and no one else was in that room with him, and for the purpose of lunging at him with an épée. Then the alibi Faber gives her is one of those neat babies that could be 99 per cent true and still be a phony. All you’d have to subtract would be the part about his seeing and speaking with Ludlow as Miss Tormic left the end room. I don’t claim to know any reason why Faber—”
The interruption was the entrance of Fritz. Inside the door a pace he halted to get a nod from Wolfe, and then advanced to the desk and extended the card tray. Wolfe took the card, glanced at it, and elevated his brows.
He told Fritz to stand by, and looked up at Cramer, who was standing, speculatively.
“You know,” he said, “since you’re leaving anyway, I could easily finesse around you by having this caller shown into the front room until you’re gone. But I really do like to cooperate when I can. One of your ten inmates up there has got loose. Unless they’ve let him
go in order to follow him, which I believe is a usual tactic.”
“Which one?”
Wolfe glanced at the card again. “Mr. Rudolph Faber.”
“You don’t say.” Cramer stared at Wolfe’s face for seven seconds. “This is a hell of a time of night for a complete stranger to be making an unexpected call.”
“It certainly is. Show him in, please, Fritz.”
Cramer turned to face the door.
I chalked up one for the chinless wonder. He may have been shy on chin, but his nerve was okay. While there may have been no reason why the unlooked-for sight of Inspector Cramer’s visage should have paralyzed him with terror, it must have been at least quite a surprise, but he did no shrinking or blanching. He merely halted in a manner that should have made his heels click but didn’t, lifted a brow, and then marched on.
Cramer grunted something at him, grunted a good night to Wolfe and me, and tramped out. I got up to greet the newcomer, leaving the front hall politeness to Fritz. Wolfe submitted to a handshake and motioned the caller to the chair that was still warm from Cramer. Faber thanked him and blinked at him, and then turned on me and demanded:
“How did you get away up there? Bribe the cop?”
I could have told, just looking at him, that that was the tone he would use asking a question. A tone that took it for granted any question he asked was going to be answered just because he asked it. I don’t like it and I know of no way anybody is ever going to make me like it.
I said, “Write me special delivery and I’ll refer the matter to my secretary’s secretary.”
His forehead wrinkled in displeasure. “Now, my man—”
“Not on your life. Not your man. I belong to me. This is the United States of America. I’m Nero Wolfe’s employee, bodyguard, office manager, and wage slave, but I can quit any minute. I’m my own man. I don’t know in what part of the world the door is that your key fits, but—”
“That will do, Archie.” Wolfe said that without bothering to glance at me; his eyes were on the caller. “Apparently, Mr. Faber, Mr. Goodwin doesn’t like you. Let’s disregard that. What can I do for you?”
“You can first,” said Faber in his perfect precise English, “instruct your subordinate to answer questions that are put to him.”
“I suppose I can. I’ll try it some time. What else can I do for you?”
“There is no discipline in your country, Mr. Wolfe.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. There are various kinds of discipline. One man’s flower is another man’s weed. We submit to traffic cops and the sanitary code and so on, but we are extremely fond of certain liberties. Surely you didn’t come here in order to discipline Mr. Goodwin? Don’t try it; you’d soon get sick of the job. Forget it. Beyond that? …”
“I came to satisfy myself as to your position and intentions regarding Miss Neya Tormic.”
“Well.” Wolfe was keeping his voice oiled—controlling himself. “What is it in you that requires satisfaction? Your curiosity?”
“No. I am interested. I might be prepared, under certain conditions, to explain my interest, and you might find it profitable to help me advance it. I know your reputation of course—and your methods. You’re expensive. What you want is money.”
“I like money, and I use a lot of it. Would it be your money, Mr. Faber?”
“It would be yours after it was paid to you.”
“Quite right. What would I have to do to earn it?”
“I don’t know. It is an affair of urgency and it demands great discretion. That inspector of police who was here—can you satify me that you are not a secret agent of the police?”
“I couldn’t say. I don’t know how hard you are to satisfy. I can give you my word, but I know what it’s worth and you don’t. Before I went to a lot of trouble to establish my good faith, I would need satisfaction on a few points myself. Your own position and intentions, for instance. Is your interest a personal one in Miss Tormic, or is it—somewhat broader? And does it coincide with hers? It is at least, I suppose, not hostile to her, or you wouldn’t have established that alibi for her when she was threatened with a charge of murder. But exactly what is it?”
Rudolph Faber looked at me, with his thin lips thinner, and then said to Wolfe, “Send him out of the room.”
I started to deride him with a grin, knowing the reception that kind of suggestion always got, no matter who made it; but the grin froze on my face with amazement when I heard Wolfe saying calmly, “Certainly, sir. Archie, leave us, please.”
I was so damn flabbergasted and boiling I got up to go without a word. I guess I staggered. But when I was nearly to the door Wolfe’s voice from behind stopped me:
“By the way, we promised to phone Mr. Green. You might do so from Mr. Brenner’s room.”
So that was it. I might have known it. I said, “Yes, sir,” and went on out, closing the door behind me, and proceeded three paces towards the kitchen. Where I stopped there was hanging on the left wall, the one that separated the hall from the office, an old brown wood carving, a panel in three sections. The two side sections were hinged to the middle one. I swung the right section around, stooped a little—for it had been constructed at the level of Wolfe’s eyes—and looked through the peephole, camouflaged on the other side by a painting with the two little apertures backed by gauze, into the office. I could see them both, Faber’s profile and Wolfe’s full, and I mean full, face. Also I could hear their words, by straining a little, but it was obvious that they were both going on with the sparring with no prospect of getting anywhere, so I went to the kitchen. Fritz was there in his sock feet reading a newspaper, with his slippers beside him on another chair in case of a summons. He looked up and nodded.
“Milk, Archie?”
“No. Keep it low. The hole’s uncovered. Tricks.”
“Ah!” His eyes gleamed. He loved conspiracies and sinister things. “Good case?”
“Case hell. The second World War. It started this afternoon up on 48th Street. We’d better not talk.”
I sat on the edge of the table for two minutes by my watch and then went to the house phone on the wall and buzzed the office. Wolfe answered.
“Well?”
“Mr. Goodwin speaking. Green says he has got to talk with you.”
“I’m busy.”
“I told him that. He said what the hell.”
“You can give him the program as well as I can, and the reports we got yesterday—”
“I told him that too. He says he wants to hear it from you. I’ll switch him onto your line.”
“No, no, don’t do that. Confound him anyway. You know I’m not alone—and that’s a confidential—tell him to hold the wire. He’s an unspeakable nuisance. I’ll come there and take it.”
“Okay.”
I hung up and tiptoed back to the wood carving in the hall. In a moment the office door opened and Wolfe came out and shut the door. He got to me fast, whispered to me, “Quick on the signal,” and glued his eyes to the peephole.
And I nearly missed connections. Rudolph Faber must have been in a hurry. Wolfe hadn’t been at the peephole more than ten seconds before he jerked his hand up and waved it. I wasn’t supposed to jump or run, so I trod the three paces to the office door, giving my steps plenty of weight, and flung the door open and kept going on in. Faber, in an attitude of arrested motion, was standing across the room from where his chair was, with his back to the bookshelves, but his hands were empty. He blinked at me once, but otherwise his face was impassive except for its inborn expression of superior and bullheaded meanness. With only one swift glance at him, I went to my desk and sat down, opened a drawer and took out a file of papers, and began going through them to look for something.
He didn’t say a word and neither did I. I finished going through the file and started on another one, and was prepared to continue with that indefinitely, but it wasn’t necessary. I was halfway through the second one when noises filtered in through the door to th
e hall, and pretty soon the door opened and I looked up and got another shock. Nero Wolfe was there, in overcoat, muffler, hat and gloves, with his applewood stick in his hand. I gawked at him.
“I’m sorry,” he told Faber. “I must go out on business. If you want to go on with this, come tomorrow between eleven and one or two and four or six and eight. Those are my hours. Archie, we’ll take the sedan. If you please. Fritz! Fritz, if you will help Mr. Faber with his coat …”
This time Faber’s heels did click. I suppose they’re more apt to when you’re upset. He went, without having committed himself on the question of going on with it tomorrow.
When Fritz came back in Wolfe said, “Here, take these, please,” and handed him stick, hat, gloves, muffler and overcoat. “Two bottles of beer.” Hearing that, I put the files away in the drawer and went to the kitchen and got a glass of milk. When I returned to the office he was back at his desk, leaning back with his eyes closed. I sat and sipped the milk until the arrival of the beer made him straighten up, and then said:
“Genius again. He was going for United Yugoslavia.”
Wolfe nodded. “He had his fingers on it when you opened the door.”
“Lucky guess.”
“Not a guess, an experiment. He was stalling. He wasn’t saying anything and had no intention of saying anything. But he wanted you out of the room. Why?”
“Sure. Very good. But how did he figure on getting you out of the room too?”
“I don’t know.” Wolfe emptied the glass. “I don’t manage his mind for him, thank God. I did go out, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. Okay. So, did one of the Balkans send him to get that paper, or has he got Miss Tormic in his power because he’s her alibi on the murder, or did he—by jiminy!” I slapped my thigh. “I’ve got it! He’s Prince Donevitch!”
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