by Rex Stout
I had been sitting in my room twenty minutes when I noticed that I hadn’t drunk any milk, but I hadn’t spilled any from the glass.
Chapter 20
MY INTENTION WAS TO go back downstairs and re-enter the turmoil when the microscope came. It was expected by some that the microscope would do the job, and it seemed to me quite likely.
I had myself been rinsed out, by Wolfe and Cramer working as a team, which alone made the case unique. But the circumstances made me a key man. The working assumption was that Phoebe had come and mounted the stoop, and that the murderer had either come with her, or joined her near or on the stoop, and had struck her before she had pushed the bell button, stunning her and knocking her off the stoop into the areaway. He had then run down into the areaway and hit her three times more to make sure she was finished, and shoved the body up against the gate, where it could not be seen by anyone on the stoop without leaning over and stretching your neck, and wasn’t likely to be seen from the sidewalk on account of the dimness of the light. Then, of course, the murderer might have gone home and to bed, but the assumption was that he had remounted the stoop and pushed the button, and I had let him in and taken his hat and coat.
That put me within ten feet of them, and maybe less, at the moment it happened, and if by chance I had pulled the curtain on the glass panel aside at that moment I would have seen it. It also had me greeting the murderer within a few seconds after he had finished, and, as I admitted to Wolfe and Cramer, I had observed each arriving face with both eyes to discover how they were getting along under the strain. That was another reason I had gone up to my room, to look back on those faces. It didn’t seem possible that I couldn’t pick the one, or at least the two or three most probable ones, whose owner had just a minute previously been smashing Phoebe’s skull with an iron pipe. Well, I couldn’t. They had all been the opposite of carefree, showing it one way or another, and so what? Wolfe had sighed at me, and Cramer had growled like a frustrated lion, but that was the best I could do.
Naturally I had been asked to make up a list showing the order of arrivals and the approximate intervals between, and had been glad to oblige. I hadn’t punched a time clock for them, but I was willing to certify my list as pretty accurate. They had all come singly. The idea was that if any two of them had arrived close together, say within two minutes or less of each other, the one that entered the house first could be marked as improbable. But not the one that came in second, because the murderer, having finished, and hearing footsteps or a taxi approaching, could have flattened himself against the gate in that dark corner, waited until the arriver had mounted the stoop and been admitted, and then immediately ascended the stoop himself to ring the bell. Anyhow, such close calculation wasn’t required, since, as my memory had it, none of the intervals had been less than three minutes.
Of course the position on the list meant nothing. As far as opportunity was concerned, there was no difference between Hattie Harding, who came first, and Nina Boone, who came last.
All the guests had been questioned at least once, each separately, and it was probable that repeat performances would go on all night if the microscope didn’t live up to expectations. Since they had all already been put through it, over and over, about the Boone murder, the askers had hard going. The questions had to be about what had happened there that evening, and what was there to ask? There was no such thing as an alibi. Each one had been on the stoop alone between nine-fifty and ten-forty, and during that period Phoebe Gunther had arrived and had been killed. About all you could ask anybody was this, “Did you ring the bell as soon as you mounted the stoop? Did you kill Phoebe Gunther first?” If he said Phoebe Gunther wasn’t there, and he pushed the button and was admitted by Mr. Goodwin, what did you ask next? Naturally you wanted to know whether he came by car or taxi, or on foot from a bus or subway, and where did that get you?
Very neat management, I told myself, sitting by the window in my room. Fully as neat as any I remembered. Very neat, the dirty deadly bastard.
I have said that the assumption was that the murderer had remounted the stoop and entered the house, but perhaps I should have said one of the assumptions. The NIA had another one, originated by Winterhoff, which had been made a part of the record. In the questioning marathon Winterhoff had come toward the end. His story had three main ingredients:
1. He (Winterhoff, the Man of Distinction) always had shoe soles made of a composition which was almost as quiet as rubber, and therefore made little noise when he walked.
2. He disapproved of tossing trash, including cigarette butts, in the street, and never did so himself.
3. He lived on East End Avenue. His wife and daughters were using the car and chauffeur that evening. He never used taxis if he could help it, because of the revolutionary attitude of the drivers during the present shortage of cabs. So when the phone call had come requesting his presence at Wolfe’s office, he had taken a Second Avenue bus down to Thirty-fifth Street, and walked crosstown.
Well. Approaching Wolfe’s house from the east, on his silent soles, he had stopped about eighty feet short of his destination because he was stuck with a cigarette butt and noticed an ashcan standing inside the railing of an areaway. He went down the steps to the can and killed the butt therein, and, ascending the steps, was barely back to the sidewalk when he saw a man dart out from behind a stoop, out of an areaway, and dash off in the other direction, toward the river. He had gone on to Wolfe’s house, and had noted that it was that areaway, probably, that the man had darted from, but he had not gone so far as to lean over the stoop’s low parapet to peer into the areaway. The best he could do on the darting and dashing man was that he had worn dark clothes and had been neither a giant nor a midget.
And by gosh, there had been corroboration. Of the thousand more or less dicks who had been dispatched on errands, two had been sent up the street to check. In half an hour they had returned and reported that there was an ashcan in an areaway exactly twenty-four paces east of Wolfe’s stoop. Not only that, there was a cigarette butt on top of the ashes, and its condition, and certain telltale streaks on the inside of the can, about one inch below its rim, made it probable that the butt had been killed by rubbing it against the inside of the can. Not only that, they had the butt with them.
Winterhoff had not lied. He had stopped to kill a butt in an ashcan, and he was a good judge of distances. Unfortunately, it was impossible to corroborate the part about the darting and dashing man because he had disappeared during the two hours that had elapsed.
How much Wolfe or Cramer had bought of it, I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure how well I liked it, but I had been below normal since I had flashed the light on Phoebe Gunther’s face.
Cramer, hearing it from Rowcliffe, who had questioned Winterhoff, had merely grunted, but that had apparently been because at the moment he had his mind on something else. Some scientist, I never knew which one, had just made the suggestion about the microscope. Cramer lost no time on that. He gave orders that Erskine and Dexter, who were elsewhere being questioned, should be returned immediately to the front room, and had then gone there himself, accompanied by Purley and me, stood facing the assemblage and got their attention, which took no effort at all, and had begun a speech:
“Please listen to this closely so you’ll know what I’m asking. The piece of—”
Breslow blurted, “This is outrageous! We’ve all answered questions! We’ve let ourselves be searched! We’ve told everything we know! We—”
Cramer told a dick in a loud and hard voice, “Go and stand by him and if he doesn’t keep his trap shut, shut it.”
The dick moved. Breslow stopped blurting. Cramer said:
“I’ve had enough injured innocence for one night.” He was as sore and savage as I had ever seen him. “For six days I’ve been handling you people as tender as babies, because I had to because you’re such important people, but now it’s different. On killing Boone all of you might have been innocent, but now I
know one of you isn’t. One of you killed that woman, and it’s a fair guess that the same one killed Boone. I—”
“Excuse me, Inspector.” Frank Thomas Erskine was sharp, by no means apologetic, but neither was he outraged. “You’ve made a statement that you may regret. What about the man seen by Mr. Winterhoff running from the areaway—”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about him.” Cramer was conceding nothing. “For the present I stick to my statement. I add to it that the Police Commissioner has just confirmed my belief that I’m in charge here, at the scene of a murder with those present detained, and the more time you waste bellyaching the longer you’ll stay. Your families have been notified where you are and why. One of you thinks he can have me sent up for twenty years because I won’t let him phone all his friends and lawyers. Okay. He don’t phone.”
Cramer made a face at them, at least it looked like it to me, and growled, “Do you understand the situation?”
Nobody answered. He went on, “Here’s what I came in here to say. The piece of pipe she was killed with has been examined for fingerprints. We haven’t found any that are any good. The galvanizing was rough to begin with, and it’s a used piece of pipe, very old, and the galvanizing is flaking off, and there are blotches of stuff, paint and other matter, more or less all over it. We figure that anybody grasping that pipe hard enough to crack a skull with it would almost certainly get particles of stuff in the creases of his hands. I don’t mean flakes you could see, I mean particles too small to be visible, and you wouldn’t get them all out of the creases just by rubbing your palms on your clothes. The examination would have to be made with a microscope. I don’t want to take all of you down to the laboratory, so I’m having a microscope brought here. I am requesting all of you to permit this examination of your hands, and also of your gloves and handkerchiefs.”
Mrs. Boone spoke up, “But, Inspector, I’ve washed my hands. I went to the kitchen to help make sandwiches, and of course I washed my hands.”
“That’s too bad,” Cramer growled. “We can still try it. Some of those particles might not come out of the creases even with washing. You can give your answers, yes or no, to Sergeant Stebbins. I’m busy.”
He marched out and returned to the dining room. It was at that point that I felt I needed some arranging inside, and went to the office and told Wolfe I would be in my room if he wanted me. I stayed there over half an hour. It was one A.M. when the microscope came. Police cars were coming and going all the time, and it was by accident that, through my window, I saw a man get out of one carrying a large box. I gulped the rest of the milk and returned downstairs.
Chapter 21
I MIGHT AS WELL have stayed put, because that was where the hand inspecting was done, my bedroom. The laboratory man wanted a quiet spot, and there was still activity everywhere else except Wolfe’s room, which, by his instructions, was not to be entered. So the customers, one by one, had to climb the two flights. The apparatus, with its special light plugged in, was set up on my table. There were five of us in the room: the two experts, the dick who brought and took the customers, the current customer, and me sitting on the edge of the bed.
I was there partly because it was my room and I didn’t care for the idea of abandoning it to a gang of strangers, and partly because I was stubborn and still couldn’t understand why I was unable to pick the face, as I had greeted them at the door, of the one who had just finished killing Phoebe. That was the reason I might have bid as high as a nickel for Winterhoff’s man in dark clothes darting and dashing. I wanted another good look at them. I had a feeling, of which I wouldn’t have told Wolfe, that if I looked straight at the face of the person who had killed Phoebe, I would know it. It was an entirely new slant on crime detection, especially for me, but I had it. So I sat on the edge of my bed and looked straight at faces while the experts looked at hands.
First, Nina Boone. Pale, tired, and nervous.
Second, Don O’Neill. Resentful, impatient, and curious. Eyes bloodshot.
Third, Hattie Harding. Saggy and very jittery. Eyes nothing like as competent as they had been four days earlier in her office.
Fourth, Winterhoff. Distinguished, sweaty, and worried stiff.
Fifth, Father Erskine. Tense and determined.
Sixth, Alger Kates. Grim and about ready to cry. Eyes backing into his head.
Seventh, Mrs. Boone. Everything coming loose but trying to hang on. The tiredest of all.
Eighth, Solomon Dexter. Sort of swollen, with bags under the eyes. Not worried, but extremely resolute.
Ninth, Breslow. Lips tight with fury and eyes like a mad pig. He was the only one who stared back at me instead of at his own hand, under the light and the lens.
Tenth, Ed Erskine. Sarcastic, skeptical, and hangover all gone. About as worried as a pigeon in the park.
There had been no exclamations of delighted discovery from the experts, any more than from me. They had spoken to the customers, to instruct them about holding still and shifting position when required, and had exchanged brief comments in undertones, and that was all. They had tweezers and pillboxes and other paraphernalia handy, but had made no use of it. When the last one, Ed Erskine, had been escorted out, I asked them:
“Any soap?”
The one without much chin replied, “We report to the Inspector.”
“Goodness gracious,” I said enviously. “It must be wonderful to be connected with the Police Department, with all the secrets. Why do you think Cramer let me come up and sit here and watch? To keep my mind a blank?”
“No doubt,” the other one, the one with a jaw, said grimly, “the Inspector will inform you of our findings. Go down and report, Phillips.”
I was beginning to get restless, so, deciding to leave my room to its fate temporarily, I followed Phillips downstairs. If it was a weird experience for me, all these aliens trampling all over the house as if they owned it, I could imagine what the effect must be on Wolfe. Phillips trotted into the dining room, but Cramer wasn’t among those present, and I steered him into the office. Wolfe was at his desk, and the P.C., the D.A., and the two FBI’s were still there, all with their eyes on Cramer, who stood talking to them. He stopped at sight of Phillips.
“Well?”
“On the microscopic examination of hands the results are negative, Inspector.”
“The hell they are. Another big rousing achievement. Tell Stebbins to get all gloves and handkerchiefs from their persons and send them up to you. Including the ladies’ bags. Tell him to tag everything. Also from their overcoat pockets—no, send up coats and hats and all, and you see what’s in the pockets. For God’s sake don’t mix anything up.”
“Yes, sir.” Phillips turned and went.
Not seeing how any good could come of staring straight at the faces of gloves and handkerchiefs, I crossed over to the Police Commissioner and addressed him:
“If you don’t mind, this is my chair.”
He looked startled, opened his mouth, shut it again, and moved to another seat. I sat down where I belonged. Cramer talked:
“You can do it if you can get away with it, but you know what the law is. Our jurisdiction extends to the limits of the premises occupied by the deceased provided it was the scene of the crime, but not otherwise. We can—”
“That’s not the law,” the D.A. snapped.
“You mean it’s not statute. But it’s accepted custom and it’s what the courts stand for, so it’s law for me. You wanted my opinion, and that’s it. I won’t be responsible for continued occupation of the apartment Miss Gunther was staying in, and not by my men anyway because I can’t spare them. The tenant of the apartment is Kates. Three good searchers have spent an hour and a half there and haven’t found anything. I’m willing to let them keep at it all night, or at least until we turn Kates loose, if and when we’re through here, but any order for continued occupancy and keeping Kates out”—he looked at the P.C.—”will have to come from you, sir, or,” he looked at the D.A., “from you.
”
Travis of the FBI put in, “I’d advise against it.”
“This,” the D.A. said stiffly, “is a local problem.”
They went on. I started kicking my left ankle with my right foot, and vice versa. Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, and I was pleased to note that his opinion of high strategy was apparently the same as mine. The P.C., the D.A., and the FBI, not to mention the head of the Homicide Squad, debating where Alger Kates was going to sleep, when he got a chance to sleep, and that after three cops had had the apartment to themselves long enough to saw all the legs off the chairs and glue them back on. It developed that it was the D.A. who was plugging for continued occupancy. I decided to enter the conversation just for the hell of it and was considering which side to be on when the phone rang.
It was from Washington, for FBI Travis, and he came to my desk to take it. The others stopped talking and looked at him. On his part it was mostly listening. When he had finished he shoved the phone back and turned to announce:
“This has some bearing on what we’ve been discussing. Our men and the Washington police have completed their search of Miss Gunther’s apartment in Washington—one large room, bath, and kitchenette. In a hatbox on a shelf in a closet they found nine Stenophone cylinders—”
“Confound it!” Wolfe burst out. “Nine?” He was as indignant and irritated as if he had been served a veal cutlet with an egg perched on it. Everyone stared at him.
“Nine,” said Travis curtly. He was justifiably annoyed at having his scene stolen. “Nine Stenophone cylinders. A BPR man was with them, and they are now at the BPR office running them off and making a transcription.” He looked coldly at Wolfe. “What’s wrong with nine?”
“For you,” Wolfe said offensively, “apparently nothing. For me, nine is no better than none. I want ten.”
“That’s a damn shame. I apologize. They should have found ten.” Having demolished Wolfe, he reported to the others, “They’ll call again as soon as they get something we might use.”