The important thing is not Kates himself, but what this shows. It shows that it is simply insanity for me to put complete trust in anybody, anyone whatever except Dexter and you, and we must install a much better system of checks immediately. To some extent we can continue to let the FBI handle it, but we must reinforce that with a setup and personnel that will work directly under us. I want you to think it over for tomorrow’s discussion, to which no one will be invited but Dexter. The way it strikes me now, you’ll have to take this over and drop everything else. That will leave me in a hole, but this is vitally important. Think it over. I have to appear before the Senate Committee in the morning, so I’ll take this to New York and give it to you, and you can run it off while I’m up on the Hill, and we’ll get at it as early in the afternoon as possible.
The voice stopped and was replaced by a faint sizzling purr, and I reached to flip the switch.
There was complete dead silence.
Wolfe broke in. “What about it, Mr. Kates?” he asked in a tone of innocent curiosity. “When you entered that room, taking Mr. Boone material for his speech, and he found himself face to face with you, did he get his fingers around your throat and try to choke you?”
“No,” Kates squeaked. He sounded indignant, but that may have been only because squeaks often do.
O’Neill commanded him: “You keep out of this, Kates! Keep your mouth shut!”
Wolfe chuckled. “That’s marvelous, Mr. O’Neill. It really is. Almost verbatim. That first evening here you admonished him, word for word, ‘You can keep out of this, Kates! Sit down and shut up!’ It was not very intelligent of you, since it sounded precisely like a high-handed man ordering an employee around, as indeed it was. It led to my having a good man spend three days trying to find a link between you and Mr. Kates, but you had been too circumspect.” His eyes darted back to Kates. “I asked about Mr. Boone’s choking you because apparently he had it in mind, and also because it suggests a possible line for you—self-defense. A good lawyer might do something with it—but then of course there’s Miss Gunther. I doubt if a jury could be persuaded that she too tried to choke you, there on my stoop. By the way, there’s one detail I’m curious about. Miss Gunther told Mrs. Boone that she wrote a letter to the murderer, telling him that he must return that wedding picture. I don’t believe it. I don’t think Miss Gunther would have put anything like that in writing. I think she got the picture and the automobile license from you and mailed them to Mrs. Boone herself. Didn’t she?”
For reply Alger Kates put on one of the strangest performances I have ever seen, and I have seen plenty. He squeaked, and this time there was no question about the indignation, not at Wolfe but at Inspector Cramer. He was trembling with indignation, up on his feet, a retake in every way of the dramatic moment when he had accused Breslow of going beyond the bounds of common decency. He squeaked, “The police were utterly incompetent! They should have found out where that piece of pipe came from in a few hours! They never did! It came from a pile of rubbish in a basement hall in the building on Forty-first Street where the NIA offices are!”
“For Christ’s sake,” Cramer rumbled. “Listen to him! He’s sore!”
“He’s a fool,” O’Neill said righteously, apparently addressing the Stenophone. “He’s a contemptible fool. I certainly never suspected him of murder.” He turned to look straight at Kates. “Good God, I never thought you were capable of that!”
“Neither did I,” Kates squeaked. He had stopped trembling and was standing straight, holding himself stiff. “Not before it happened. After it happened I understood myself better. I wasn’t as much of a fool as Phoebe was. She should have known it then, what I was capable of. I did. She wouldn’t even promise not to tell or to destroy that cylinder. She wouldn’t even promise!” He kept his unblinking eyes on O’Neill. “I should have killed you too, the same evening. I could have. You were afraid of me. You’re afraid of me right now! Neither of them was afraid of me, but you are! You say you never suspected me of murder when you knew all about it!”
O’Neill started a remark, but Cramer squelched him and asked Kates, “How did he know all about it?”
“I told him.” If Kates’s squeak was as painful to perform as it was to listen to he was certainly being hurt. “Or rather I didn’t have to tell him. He arranged to meet me—”
“That’s a lie,” O’Neill said coldly and precisely. “Now you’re lying.”
“Okay, let him finish it.” Cramer kept at Kates, “When was that?”
“The next day, Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon. We met that evening.”
“Where?”
“On Second Avenue between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth. We talked there on the sidewalk. He gave me some money and told me that if anything happened, if I was arrested, he would furnish whatever I needed. He was afraid of me then. He kept watching me, watching my hands.”
“How long were you together?”
“Ten minutes. My estimate would be ten minutes.”
“What time was it?”
“Ten o’clock. We were to meet at ten o’clock and I was on time, but he was late about fifteen minutes because he said he had to make sure he wasn’t being followed. I don’t think an intelligent man should have any trouble about that.”
Wolfe broke in. “Mr. Cramer. Isn’t this a waste of time? You’re going to have to go all over it again downtown, with a stenographer. He seems to be ready to co-operate.”
“He is ready,” O’Neill put in, “to get himself electrocuted and to make all the trouble he can for other people with his damn lies.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that if I were you.” Wolfe regarded O’Neill with a glint in his eyes. “He is at least more of a philosopher than you are. Bad as he is, he has the grace to accept the inevitable with a show of decorum. You, on the contrary, try to wiggle. From the glances you have been directing at Mr. Warder, I suspect you have no clear idea of where you’re at. You should be making up with him. You’re going to need him to look after the business while you’re away.”
“I’m seeing this through. I’m not going away.”
“Oh, but you are. You’re going to jail. At least that seems—” Wolfe turned abruptly to the Vice-President. “What about it, Mr. Warder? Are you going to try to discredit this message from the dead? Are you going to repudiate or distort your interview with Mr. Boone and have a jury vote you a liar? Or are you going to show that you have some sense?”
Warder no longer looked scared, and when he spoke he showed no inclination to scream. “I am going,” he said in a firm and virtuous voice, “to tell the truth.”
“Did Mr. Boone tell the truth on that cylinder?”
“Yes. He did.”
Wolfe’s eyes flashed back to O’Neill. “There you are, sir. Bribery is a felony. You’re going to need Mr. Warder. The other matter, complicity in murder as an accessory after the fact—that all depends, mostly on your lawyer. From here on the lawyers take over.—Mr. Cramer. Get them out of here, won’t you? I’m tired of looking at them.” He shifted to me. “Archie, pack up that cylinder. Mr. Cramer will want to take it along.”
Cramer, moving, addressed me: “Hold it, Goodwin, while I use the phone,” so I sat facing the audience, with the automatic in my hand in case someone had an attack of nerves, while he dialed his number and conversed. I was interested to hear that his objective was not the Homicide Squad office, where Ash had been installed, nor even the Chief Inspector, but Hombert himself. Cramer did occasionally show signs of having more brain than a mollusk.
“Commissioner Hombert? Inspector Cramer. Yes, sir. No, I’m calling from Nero Wolfe’s office. No, sir, I’m not trying to horn in, but if you’ll let me … Yes, sir, I’m quite aware it would be a breach of discipline, but if you’d just listen a minute—certainly I’m here with Wolfe, I didn’t break in, and I’ve got the man, I’ve got the evidence, and I’ve got a confession. That’s exactly what I’m telling you, and I’m neither drunk nor crazy. Se
nd—wait a minute, hold it.”
Wolfe was making frantic gestures.
“Tell him,” Wolfe commanded, “to keep that confounded doctor away from here.”
Cramer resumed. “All right, Commissioner. Send up—oh, nothing, just Wolfe raving something about a doctor. Were you sending him a doctor? He don’t need one and in my opinion never will. Send three cars and six men to Wolfe’s address. No, I don’t, but I’m bringing three of them down. You’ll see when I get there. Yes, sir, I’m telling you, the case is finished, all sewed up and no gaps worth mentioning. Sure, I’ll bring them straight to you.…”
He hung up.
“You won’t have to put handcuffs on me, will you?” Alger Kates squeaked.
“I want to phone my lawyer,” O’Neill said in a frozen voice.
Warder just sat.
Chapter 35
Skipping a thousand or so minor details over the weekend, such as the eminent neurologist Green—no one having bothered to stop him—showing up promptly at a quarter to six, only a few minutes after Cramer had left with his catch, and being informed, in spite of his court order, that the deal was off, I bounce to Monday morning. Wolfe, coming down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock, knew that he would have a visitor, Cramer having phoned for an appointment, and when he entered the office the Inspector was there in the red leather chair. Beside him on the floor was a misshapen object covered with green florist’s paper which he had refused to let me relieve him of. After greetings had been exchanged and Wolfe had got himself comfortable, Cramer said he supposed that Wolfe had seen in the paper that Kates had signed a full and detailed confession to both murders.
Wolfe nodded. “A foolish and inadequate man, that Mr. Kates. But not intellectually to be despised. One item of his performance might even be called brilliant.”
“Sure. I would say more than one. Do you mean his leaving that scarf in his own pocket instead of slipping it into somebody else’s?”
“Yes, sir. That was noteworthy.”
“He’s noteworthy all right,” Cramer agreed. “In fact he’s in a class by himself. There was one thing he wouldn’t talk about or sign any statement about, and what do you suppose it was, something that would help put him in the chair? Nope. We couldn’t get anything out of him about what he wanted the money for, and when we asked if it was his wife, trips to Florida and so forth, he stuck his chin out and said as if we was worms, ‘We’ll leave my wife out of this, you will not mention my wife again.’ She got here yesterday afternoon and he won’t see her. I think he thinks she’s too holy to be dragged in.”
“Indeed.”
“Indeed yes. But on the part that will do for him he was perfectly willing to oblige. For instance, with Boone there at the hotel. He entered the room and handed Boone some papers, and Boone threw it at him, what he had found out, and then told him to beat it and turned his back on him, and Kates picked up the monkey wrench and gave it to him. Kates tells us exactly what Boone said and what he said, and then carefully reads it over to be sure we got it down right. The same way with Phoebe Gunther here on your stoop. He wants the story straight. He wants it distinctly understood that he didn’t arrange to meet her and come here with her, when she phoned him, he merely waited in an areaway across the street until he saw her coming and then joined her and mounted the stoop with her. The pipe was up his sleeve with the scarf already wrapped around it. Three days before that, the first time they were here, when he swiped the scarf out of Winterhoff’s pocket, he didn’t know then what he would be using it for, he only thought there might be some way of planting it somewhere to involve Winterhoff—an NIA man.”
“Naturally.” Wolfe was contributing to the conversation just to be polite. “Anything to keep eyes away from him. Wasted effort, since my eye was already on him.”
“It was?” Cramer sounded skeptical. “What put it there?”
“Mostly two things. First, of course, that command Mr. O’Neill gave him here Friday evening, indubitably a command to one from whom he had reason to expect obedience. Second, and much more important, the wedding picture mailed to Mrs. Boone. Granted that there are men capable of that gesture, assuredly none of the five NIA men whom I had met had it in them. Miss Harding was obviously too cold-blooded to indulge in any such act of grace. Mr. Dexter’s alibi had been tested and stood. Mrs. Boone and her niece were manifestly not too suspected, not by me. There remained only Miss Gunther and Mr. Kates. Miss Gunther might conceivably have killed Mr. Boone, but not herself with a piece of pipe; and she was the only one of them who could without painful strain on probability be considered responsible for the return of the wedding picture. Then where did she get it? From the murderer. By name, from whom? As a logical and workable conjecture, Mr. Kates.”
Wolfe fluttered a hand. “All that was mere phantom-chasing. What was needed was evidence—and all the time here it was, on that bookshelf in my office. That, I confess, is a bitter pill to swallow. Will you have some beer?”
“No, thanks, I guess I won’t.” Cramer seemed to be nervous or uneasy or something. He looked at the clock and slid to the edge of the chair. “I’ve got to be going. I just dropped in.” He elevated to his feet and shook his pants legs down. “I’ve got a hell of a busy day. I suppose you’ve heard that I’m back at my desk at Twentieth Street. Inspector Ash has been moved to Richmond. Staten Island.”
“Yes, sir. I congratulate you.”
“Much obliged. So with me back at the old stand you’ll have to continue to watch your step. Try pulling any fast ones and I’ll still be on your neck.”
“I wouldn’t dream of trying to pull a fast one.”
“Okay. Just so we understand each other.” Cramer started for the door. I called after him:
“Hey, your package!”
He said over his shoulder, barely halting. “Oh, I forgot, that’s for you, Wolfe, hope you like it,” and was on his way. Judging from the time it took him to get on out and slam the door behind him, he must have double-quicked.
I went over and lifted the package from the floor, put it on Wolfe’s desk, and tore the green paper off, exposing the contents to view. The pot was a glazed sickening green. The dirt was just dirt. The plant was in fair condition, but there were only two flowers on it. I stared at it in awe.
“By God,” I said when I could speak, “he brought you an orchid.”
“Brassocattleya thorntoni,” Wolfe purred. “Handsome.”
“Nuts,” I said realistically. “You’ve got a thousand better ones. Shall I throw it out?”
“Certainly not. Take it up to Theodore.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. “Archie. One of your most serious defects is that you have no sentiment.”
“No?” I grinned at him. “You’d be surprised. At this very moment one is almost choking me—namely, gratitude for our good luck at having Cramer back, obnoxious as he is. With Ash there life wouldn’t have been worth living.”
Wolfe snorted. “Luck!”
Chapter 36
Sooner or later I had to make it plain to him that I was not a halfwit. I was waiting for a fitting moment, and it came that same day, Monday afternoon, about an hour after lunch, when we received a phone call from Frank Thomas Erskine. He was permitted to speak to Wolfe, and I listened in at my desk.
The gist of it was that a check for one hundred thousand dollars would be mailed to Wolfe that afternoon, which would seem to be enough gist for one little phone call. The rest was just trivial. The NIA deeply appreciated what Wolfe had done for it and was utterly unable to understand why he had returned its money. It was paying him the full amount of the reward at once, as offered in its advertisement, in advance of the fulfillment of the specified conditions, because of its gratitude and its confidence in him, and also because Kates’s signed confession made the fulfillment of the conditions inevitable. It would be glad to pay an additional amount for expenses incurred if Wolfe would say how much. It had discussed the matter with Inspector Cramer, and Cramer had disavowed any c
laim to any part of the reward and insisted that it all belonged to Wolfe.
It was a nice phone call.
Wolfe said to me with a smirk, “That’s satisfactory and businesslike. Paying the reward without delay.”
I leered at him. “Yeah? Little does Mr. Erskine know.”
“Little does he know what? What’s wrong now?”
I threw one knee over the other and settled back. The time had come. “There are,” I stated, “several ways of doing this. One would be to put a hunk of butter in your mouth and see if it melted. I prefer my way, which is just to tell you. Or I should say ask you, since I’ll put it in the form of questions, only I’ll supply the answers myself.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“No, the questions originate with me. Number one: when did you find the cylinder? Saturday afternoon, when you waddled in here in your pajamas, belittling your brains? Not a chance. You knew where it was all the time, at least for three or four days. You found it either Tuesday morning, while I was down at Cramer’s office being wrung out, or Wednesday while I was up having lunch with Nina Boone. I lean to Tuesday, but I admit it may have been Wednesday.”
“You shouldn’t,” Wolfe murmured, “leave things teetering like that.”
“Please don’t interrupt me. Number two: why, if you knew where the cylinder was, did you pester Mrs. Boone to tell you? Because you wanted to make sure she didn’t know. If she had known she might have told the cops before you decided to let loose, and the reward would have gone to her, or anyway not to you. And since Phoebe Gunther had told her a lot she might have told her that too. Also, it was part of your general plan to spread the impression that you didn’t know where the cylinder was and would give an arm and several teeth to find it.”
Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 11 Page 22