He shook his head. “You’d better run them off again and make a transcription of them. Three carbons.” He glanced at the wall clock. “I’ll be going upstairs in thirty-five minutes. Do it then.”
“Yes, sir.” I was grim. “I expected this.”
“You did? I didn’t.”
“I don’t mean I expected the cylinders to be antiques. I expected this typewriting job. That’s the level this case seems to have descended to.”
“Don’t badger me. I was an ass to undertake it. I have more Cattleyas than I have room for, and I could have sold five hundred of them for twelve thousand dollars.” He let his eyes come half open. “When you have finished transcribing these things, take them down to Mr. Cramer and tell him how we got them.”
“Tell him everything?”
“Yes. But before you go to him do another typing job. Your notebook. Send this letter to everyone who was here Friday evening.” He frowned for words, and in a moment dictated, “ ‘Since you were good enough to come to my office at my invitation Friday evening, and since you were present when it was intimated that Miss Gunther’s statement that she had left the leather case on the window sill of the reception room might not deserve credence, I am writing to inform you of a development that occurred today. Paragraph. Mr. Don O’Neill received in the mail a ticket for a parcel that had been checked at Grand Central Station. The parcel proved to be the leather case in question, with the figure four stamped on the lid as described by Miss Gunther. However, most of the cylinders it contained were obviously dictated by Mr. Boone prior to March 26th. I send you this information in justice to Miss Gunther.’ ”
“That’s all?” I inquired.
“Yes.”
“Cramer will throw a fit.”
“No doubt. Mail them before you go to him, and take him a carbon. Then bring Miss Gunther here.”
“Her? Phoebe Gunther?”
“Yes.”
“That’s dangerous. Isn’t it too risky to trust me with her?”
“Yes. But I want to see her.”
“Okay, it’s on you.”
Chapter 16
Two hours and more of back-breaking drudgery. Ten whole cylinders. Three carbons. Not only that, it was new to me and I had to adjust the speed about twenty times before I got the knack of it. When I finally got it finished and the sheets collated, I gave the original to Wolfe, who was back in the office by that time, placed the first two carbons in the safe, and folded the third carbon and stuck it in my pocket. Then there were the dozen letters to be typed and envelopes for same. As Wolfe signed them he folded and inserted them, and even sealed the envelopes. Sometimes he has bursts of feverish energy that are uncontrollable. By that time it was the dinner hour, but I decided not to dawdle through a meal in the dining room with Wolfe and made a quickie of it in the kitchen.
I had phoned the Homicide Squad office to make sure that Cramer would be on hand, to avoid having to deal with Lieutenant Rowcliffe, whose murder I hoped to help investigate some day, and had also called Phoebe Gunther’s apartment to make a date but got no answer. Getting the car from the garage, I went first to Eighth Avenue to drop the letters in the post office and then headed south for Twentieth Street.
After I had been in with Cramer ten minutes he said, “This sounds like something. I’ll be damned.”
After another twenty minutes he said, “This sounds like something. I’ll be damned.”
That, of course, showed clear as day where he stood—up to his hips in a swamp. If he had been anywhere near dry ground, or even in sight of some, he would have waved his prerogative in front of my nose and cussed Wolfe and me up one side and down the other for withholding evidence for nine hours and fourteen minutes and so forth, including threats, growls, and warnings. Instead of which, at one point it looked as if he might abandon all restraint and thank me. Obviously he was desperate.
When I left Cramer I still had the carbon of the transcription in my pocket, because it was not intended for him. If I was to take Phoebe Gunther to Wolfe it was desirable that I get her before Cramer did, and it seemed likely that he would want to know exactly what was on those cylinders before he started a roundup. So I had kept it sketchy and hadn’t told him that a transcription had been made.
Also I wasted no time getting to Fifty-fifth Street.
The doorman phoned up, gave me another look of surprise when he turned to tell me I would be received, and called an okay to the elevator. Up at Nine H, Phoebe opened the door and allowed me to enter. I put my coat and hat on a chair and followed her into the room, and there was Alger Kates over in the corner where the light was dim.
I will not deny that I am often forthright, but I would put up an argument if anyone called me crude. Yet, at sight of Kates there again, I said what I said. I suppose it could be interpreted different ways. I do not concede that Phoebe Gunther had me fidgeting on a string, but the fact remains that I stared at Alger Kates and demanded:
“Do you live here?”
He stared back and replied, “If it’s any of your business, yes, I do.”
“Sit down, Mr. Goodwin.” Phoebe possibly smiled. She got against the cushions on the couch. “I’ll straighten it out. Mr. Kates does live here, when he’s in New York. His wife keeps this apartment because she can’t stand Washington. Right now she’s in Florida. I couldn’t get a hotel room, so Mr. Kates is staying with friends on Eleventh Street and letting me sleep here. Does that clear me? And him?”
Naturally I felt foolish. “I’ll take it up,” I said, “with the Housing Administration and see what I can do. Meanwhile I may be in a hurry, depending on how urgent Inspector Cramer feels. When I phoned you about an hour ago there was no answer.”
She reached for a cigarette. “Why, do I need clearance on that too? I was out for a bite to eat.”
“Has Cramer’s office called since you returned?”
“No.” She was frowning. “Does he want me? What for?”
“He either wants you now or he soon will.” It was in the line of duty to keep my eyes fastened to her, to get her reaction. “I just took him that case of cylinders that you left on a window sill Tuesday evening.”
I do not believe there was any menace in my tone. I don’t know where it would have come from, as I did not at that time regard myself as a menace to Miss Gunther. But Alger Kates suddenly stood up, as if I had brandished a monkey wrench at her. He immediately sat down again. She kept her seat, but stopped her cigarette abruptly on its way to her lips, and the muscles of her neck stiffened.
“That case? With the cylinders in it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you—what’s on them?”
“Well, that’s a long story—”
“Where did you find it?”
“That’s another long story. We’ve got to step on it, because Cramer has it now, and he may send for you any minute, or come to see you, or he may wait until he has listened to the cylinders. Anyhow, Mr. Wolfe wants to see you first, and since it was me—”
“Then you don’t know what’s on them?”
Kates had left his dim corner and moved across to the end of the couch, and was standing there in an attitude of readiness to repel the enemy. I ignored him and told her:
“Sure, I know. So does Mr. Wolfe. We got a machine and ran them off. They’re interesting but not helpful. Their outstanding feature is that they weren’t dictated on Tuesday, but before that—some of them a week or more. I’ll tell—”
“But that’s impossible!”
“Nope. Possible and true. I’ll—”
“How do you know?”
“Dates and things. Absolutely.” I stood up. “I’m getting restless. As I say, Mr. Wolfe wants to see you first. With Cramer there’s no telling, especially when he’s hanging on by his fingernails, so let’s go. Kates can come along to protect you if you want him. I’ve got a transcription of the cylinders in my pocket and you can look at it on the way, and I’ll tell—”
A
bell rang. Having, though from the outside, heard it ring twice previously, I knew what it was.
I thought goddam it. I asked her in a whisper, “You expecting anybody?”
She shook her head, and the look in her eyes, straight at mine, said plainly that I could name the tune. But of course it was hopeless. Whoever had got by the doorman had also got information. Even so, there’s nothing like trying, so I put a finger to my lips and stood there looking at them—at least I gave Kates a glance. His expression said belligerently, I’m not doing this for you, mister. We had held the tableau maybe ten seconds when a voice I knew well, the voice of Sergeant Purley Stebbins, came loud and irritated through the door.
“Come on, Goodwin, what the hell!”
I marched across and opened up. He came in past me rudely, took off his hat, and began to try to pretend he was a gentleman.
“Good afternoon, Miss Gunther. Good afternoon, Mr. Kates.” He looked at her. “Inspector Cramer would be much obliged if you’d let me drive you down to his office. He’s got some things there he wants you to look at. He told me to tell you they’re Stenophone cylinders.”
I was at his side. “You come right to the point, don’t you, Purley, huh?”
“Oh,” he said, pivoting his big fine empty head, “you still here? I supposed you was gone. The Inspector will be glad to know I ran into you.”
“Nuts.” I dropped him. “Of course you know, Miss Gunther, that you may do as you please. Some people think that when a city employee comes to take them somewhere they have to go. That’s a fallacy, unless he has a document, which he hasn’t.”
“Is that true?” She asked me.
“Yes. That’s true.”
She had stood up when Purley entered. Now she moved across right to me, facing me, and stood looking up to meet my eyes. It wasn’t much of a slant, because her eyes were only about five inches below mine, and therefore it wasn’t a strain for either of us.
“You know,” she said, “you have a way of suggesting things that appeal to me. With all I know about cops and their attitude toward people with power and position and money, and with the little I know about you, even if your boss has been hired by the NIA, I almost think I would let you hold my purse if I had to fix my garter. So you decide for me. I’ll go with you to see Mr. Wolfe, or I’ll go with this oversize sergeant, whichever you say.”
Whereupon I made a mistake. It isn’t so much that I regret it because it was a mistake, since I believe in having my share of everything on my way through life, including mistakes. The trouble was, as I now admit, that I did it not for my sake, or for Wolfe’s, or for the good of the job, but for her. I would have loved to escort her down to my car with Purley traipsing along behind growling. Wolfe liked nothing better than to rile Cramer. But I knew if I took her to Wolfe’s house Purley would camp outside, and after Wolfe finished with her she would either go on downtown for a night of it, or she would refuse to go, and she would certainly never hear the last of that. So I made the mistake because I thought Miss Gunther should have some sleep. Since she had told me herself that the tireder she got the better she looked, and there I was looking at her, it was evident that she was about all in.
So I said, “I deeply appreciate your confidence, which I deserve. You hold onto the purse while I fix the garter. For the present, I hate to say it, but it would be better to accept Cramer’s invitation. I’ll be seeing you.”
Twenty minutes later I walked into the office and told Wolfe:
“Purley Stebbins arrived at Miss Gunther’s before I could get her away, and she likes him better than she does me. She is now down at Twentieth Street.”
So not only had I made a mistake, but also I was lying to the boss.
Chapter 17
Monday would fill a book if I let it, and so would any other day, I suppose, if you put it all in.
First thing in the morning Wolfe provided evidence of how we were doing, or rather not doing, by having Saul Panzer and Bill Gore sent up to his room during the breakfast hour for private instructions. That was one of his established dodges for trying to keep me from needling him. The theory was that if I contributed any remarks about inertia or age beginning to tell or anything like that, he could shut me up by intimating that he was working like a demon supervising Saul and Bill, and they were gathering in the sheaves. Also that it wouldn’t be safe to let me in on the secret because I couldn’t control my face. One reason that got my goat was that I knew that he knew it wasn’t true.
The sheaves they had so far delivered had not relieved the famine. The armful of words, typed, printed and mimeographed, that Bill Gore had brought in from the NIA would have kept the Time and Life research staff out of mischief for a week, and that was about all it was good for. Saul Panzer’s report of his weekend at the Waldorf was what you would expect, no man whose initials were not A.G. could have done better, but all it added up to was that no hair of a murderer’s head was to be found on the premises. What Wolfe was continuing to shell out fifty bucks a day for was, as I say, presumably none of my business.
Public Relations had tottered to its feet again, taken a deep breath, and let out a battle cry. There was a full page ad in the Times, signed by the National Industrial Association, warning us that the Bureau of Price Regulation, after depriving us of our shirts and pants, was all set to peel off our hides. While there was no mention of homicide, the implication was that since it was still necessary for the NIA to save the country from the vicious deep-laid plots of the BPR, it was silly to imagine that it had any hand in the bumping off of Cheney Boone. As strategy, the hitch in it was that it would work only with those who already agreed with the NIA regarding who or what had got the shirts and pants.
One of my Monday problems was to get my outgoing phone calls made, on account of so many coming in the other direction. I started bright and early after Phoebe Gunther and never did get her. First, from the Fifty-fifth Street apartment, I got no answer. At nine-thirty I tried the BPR office and was told she hadn’t arrived, and no one seemed to know whether she was expected. At ten-thirty I was informed that she was there, but was in with Mr. Dexter and would I call later. Twice later, before noon, she was still with Mr. Dexter. At twelve-thirty she had gone to lunch; my message for her to call me had been given to her. At one-thirty she wasn’t back yet. At two o’clock the word was that she wouldn’t be back, and no one that I got to knew where she was. That may all sound as if I am a pushover for a runaround, but I had two strikes on me all the way. Apparently there was nobody at the BPR, from switchboard girls to the Regional Director, who didn’t know that Nero Wolfe, as Alger Kates put it, was in the pay of NIA, and they reacted accordingly. When I made an attempt to get connected with Dorothy Unger, the stenographer who had phoned Don O’Neill Saturday evening to ask him to mail her the parcel check which she had enclosed in his envelope by mistake, I couldn’t even find anyone who would even admit he had ever heard of her.
What I got for my money on phone calls that day was enough to send Tel & Tel to a new low. On incoming calls the score was no better. In addition to the usual routine on a big case, like newspaper boys wanting a ringside seat in case Nero Wolfe was winding up for another fast one, there were all kinds of client trouble on account of the letters Wolfe had sent about finding the cylinders. The ad in the Times may have indicated that the NIA was a united front, but the phone calls didn’t. Each one had a different slant. Winterhoff’s line was that the assumption in the letter that the manner of finding the cylinders vindicated Miss Gunther was unjustified; that on the contrary it reinforced the suspicion that Miss Gunther was lying about it, since the parcel check had been mailed to Don O’Neill in a BPR envelope. Breslow, of course, was angry, so much so that he phoned twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. What had him sore this time was that we had spread the news about the cylinders. In the interests of justice we should have kept it to ourselves and the cops. He accused us of trying to make an impression on the Executive Committee, of
trying to show that we were earning our money, and that was a hell of a note; we should have only two things in mind: the apprehension of the criminal and the proof of his guilt.
Even the Erskine family was divided. Frank Thomas Erskine, the father, had no complaint or criticism. He simply wanted something: namely, the full text of what was on the cylinders. He didn’t get indignant but he was utterly astonished. To him the situation was plain. Wolfe was doing a paid job for the NIA, and any information he got in the performance of that job was the property of the NIA, and any attempt to exclude them from possession of their property was felonious, malevolent, and naughty. He insisted as long as he thought there was any chance, and then quit without any indication of hard feelings.
The son, Ed, was the shortest and funniest. All the others had demanded to talk to Wolfe, not just me, but he said it didn’t matter, I would do fine, all he wanted was to ask a question. I said shoot, and he asked this, “How good is the evidence that O’Neill got the parcel check the way he says he did, in the mail?” I said that all we had, besides a look at the envelope, was O’Neill’s say-so, but that of course the police were checking it and he’d better ask them. He said much obliged and hung up.
All day I kept expecting a call from Don O’Neill, but there wasn’t a peep out of him.
The general impression I got was that the Executive Committee had better call a meeting and decide on policy.
The day went, and dusk came, and I turned on lights. Just before dinner I tried Fifty-fifth Street, but no Phoebe Gunther. The meal took even longer than usual, which is to be expected when Wolfe is completely at a loss. He uses up energy keeping thoughts out and trying to keep me quiet, and that makes him eat more. After dinner, back in the office, I tried Fifty-fifth Street once more, with the same result. I was stretched out on the couch, trying to work out an attack that would make Wolfe explode into some kind of action, when the bell rang and I went to the front door and swung it wide open without a preliminary peek through the glass. As far as I was concerned anybody at all would have been welcome, even Breslow, just for a friendly chat.
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