The Silent Speaker

by Rex Stout

  “Well,” I said brightly, “we’ve taken a big step forward. We have eliminated Winterhoff’s darting and dashing man. I am prepared to go on the stand and swear that he didn’t dash into the hall.”

  That got a rise out of nobody, which showed the pathetic condition they were in. All that happened was that the D.A. looked at me as if I reminded him of someone who hadn’t voted for him.

  The P.C. spoke. “Winterhoff is a damned liar. He didn’t see a man running away from that stoop. He made that up.”

  “For God’s sake,” the D.A. burst out ferociously, “we’re not after a liar! We’re after a murderer!”

  “I would like,” Wolfe muttered sulkily, “to go to bed. It’s four o’clock and you’re stuck.”

  “Oh, we are.” Cramer glowered at him. “We’re stuck. The way you put it, I suppose you’re not stuck?”

  “Me? No, Mr. Cramer. No indeed. But I’m tired and sleepy.”

  That might have led to violence if there hadn’t been an interruption. There was a knock on the door and a dick entered, approached Cramer, and reported:

  “We’ve got two more taxi drivers, the two that brought Mrs. Boone and O’Neill. I thought you might want to see them, Inspector. One is named—”

  He stopped on account of Cramer’s aspect. “This,” Cramer said, “will make you a Deputy Chief Inspector. Easy.” He pointed to the door. “Out that way and find someone to tell it to.” The dick, looking frustrated, turned and went. Cramer said to anyone who cared to listen, “My God. Taxi drivers!”

  The P.C. said, “We’ll have to let them go.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cramer agreed. “I know we will. Get ‘em in here, Archie.”

  So that was the state of mind the Inspector was in. As I proceeded to obey his command I tried to remember another occasion on which he had called me Archie, and couldn’t, in all the years I had known him. Of course after he had got some sleep and had a shower he would feel differently about it, but I put it away for some fitting moment in the future to remind him that he had called me Archie. Meanwhile Purley and I, with plenty of assistance, herded everybody from the front room and dining room into the office.

  The strategy council had left their chairs and collected at the far end of Wolfe’s desk, standing. The guests took seats. The city employees, over a dozen of them, scattered around the room and stood looking as alert and intelligent as the facts of the case would permit, under the eye of the big boss, the P.C. himself.

  Cramer, on his feet confronting them, spoke:

  “We’re letting you people go home. But before you go, this is the situation. The microscopic examination of your hands didn’t show anything. But the microscope got results. On a scarf that was in a pocket of one of your overcoats, hanging in the hall, particles from the pipe were found. The scarf was unquestionably used by the murderer to keep his hand from contact with the pipe. Therefore—”

  “Whose coat was it in?” Breslow blurted.

  Cramer shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you whose coat it was or who the scarf belongs to, and I think it would be better if the owners didn’t tell, because it would be sure to get to the papers, and you know what the papers—”

  “No, you don’t,” Alger Kates piped up. “That would suit your plans, you and Nero Wolfe and the NIA, but you’re not going to put any gag on me! It was my coat! And I’ve never seen the scarf before! This is the most—”

  “That’s enough, Kates,” Solomon Dexter rumbled at him.

  “Okay.” Cramer did not sound displeased. “So it was found in Mr. Kates’s coat, and he says he never saw the scarf before. That—”

  “The scarf,” Winterhoff interposed, his voice heavier and flatter than ever, “belongs to me. It was stolen from my overcoat in this house last Friday night. I haven’t seen it since, until you showed it to me here. Since you have permitted Kates to make insinuations about the plans of the NIA—”

  “No,” Cramer said curtly, “that’s out. I’m not interested in insinuations. If you people want to carry on your quarrel you can hire a hall. What I want to say is this, that some hours ago I said that one of you killed Miss Gunther, and Mr. Erskine objected. Now there’s no room for objection. Now there’s no doubt about it. We could take you all down and book you as material witnesses. But being who you are, within a few hours you’d all be out on bail. So we’re letting you go home, including the one who committed a murder here tonight, because we don’t know which one it is. We intend to find out. Meanwhile you may be expected to be called on or sent for any time, day or night. You are not to leave the city, even for an hour, without permission. Your movements may or may not be kept under observation. That’s up to us, and no protests about it will get you anywhere.”

  Cramer scanned the faces. “Police cars will take you home. You can go now, but one last word. This isn’t going to let up. It’s bad for all of you, and it will go on being bad until the murderer is caught. So if any of you knows anything that will help, the worst mistake you can make is not to let us have it. Stay now and tell us. The Police Commissioner and the District Attorney and I are right here and you can talk with any of us.”

  His invitation wasn’t accepted, at least not on the terms as stated. The Erskine family lingered to exchange words with the D.A., Winterhoff had a point to make with the P.C., Mrs. Boone got Travis of the FBI, whom she apparently knew, to one side, Breslow had something to say to Wolfe, and Dexter confronted Cramer with questions. But before long they had all departed, and it didn’t appear that anything useful had been contributed to the cause.

  Wolfe braced his palms against the rim of his desk, pushed his chair back, and got to his feet.

  Cramer, on the contrary, sat down. “Go to bed if you want to,” he said grimly, “but I’m having a talk with Goodwin.” Already it was Goodwin again. “I want to know who besides Kates had a chance to put that scarf in his coat.”

  “Nonsense.” Wolfe was peevish. “With an ordinary person that might be necessary, but Mr. Goodwin is trained, competent, reliable, and moderately intelligent. If he could help on that he would have told us so. Merely ask him a question. I’ll ask him myself.—Archie. Is your suspicion directed at anyone putting the scarf in the coat, or can you eliminate anyone as totally without opportunity?”

  “No sir twice,” I told him. “I’ve thought about it and gone over all of them. I was moving in and out between bell rings, and so were most of them. The trouble is the door to the front room was standing open, and so was the door from the front room to the hall.”

  Cramer grunted. “I’d give two bits to know how you would have answered that question if you had been alone with Wolfe, and how you will answer it.”

  “If that’s how you feel about it,” I said, “you might as well skip it. My resistance to torture is strongest at dawn, which it is now, and how are you going to drag the truth out of me?”

  “I could use a nap,” G. G. Spero said, and he got the votes.

  But what with packing the scarf in a box as if it had been a museum piece, which incidentally it now is, and collecting papers and miscellaneous items, it was practically five o’clock before they were finally out.

  The house was ours again. Wolfe started for the elevator. I still had to make the rounds to see what was missing and to make sure there were no public servants sleeping under the furniture. I called to Wolfe:

  “Instructions for the morning, sir?”

  “Yes!” he called back. “Let me alone!”

  Chapter 24

  FROM THERE ON I had a feeling that I was out of it. As it turned out, the feeling was not entirely justified, but anyhow I had it.

  What Wolfe tells me, and what he doesn’t tell me, never depends, as far as I can make out, on the relevant circumstances. It depends on what he had to eat at the last meal, what he is going to have to eat at the next meal, the kind of shirt and tie I am wearing, how well my shoes are shined, and so forth. He does not like purple. Once Lily Rowan gave me a dozen Sulka shirts, with
stripes of assorted colors and shades. I happened to put on the purple one the day we started on the Chesterton-Best case, the guy that burgled his own house and shot a week-end guest in the belly. Wolfe took one look at the shirt and clammed up on me. Just for spite I wore the shirt a week, and I never did know what was going on, or who was which, until Wolfe had it all wrapped up, and even then I had to get most of the details from the newspapers and Dora Chesterton, with whom I had struck up an acquaintance. Dora had a way of—no, I’ll save that for my autobiography.

  The feeling that I was out of it had foundation in fact. Tuesday morning Wolfe breakfasted at the usual hour—my deduction from this evidence, that Fritz took up his tray, loaded, at eight o’clock, and brought it down empty at ten minutes to nine. On it was a note instructing me to tell Saul Panzer and Bill Gore, when they phoned in, to report at the office at eleven o’clock, and furthermore to arrange for Del Bascom, head of the Bascom Detective Agency, also to be present. They were all there waiting for him when he came down from the plant rooms, and he chased me out. I was sent to the roof to help Theodore cross-pollinate. When I went back down at lunch time Wolfe told me that envelopes from Bascom were to reach him unopened.

  “Hah,” I said. “Reports? Big operations?”

  “Yes.” He grimaced. “Twenty men. One of them may be worth his salt.”

  There went another five hundred bucks a day up the flue. At that rate the NIA retainer wouldn’t last long.

  “Do you want me to move to a hotel?” I inquired. “So I won’t hear anything unfit for my ears?”

  He didn’t bother to answer. He never let himself get upset just before a meal if he could help it.

  I could not, of course, be really blackballed, no matter what whim had struck him. For one thing, I had been among those present, and was therefore in demand. Friends on papers, especially Lon Cohen of the Gazette, thought I ought to tell them exactly who would be arrested and when and where. And Tuesday afternoon Inspector Cramer decided there was work to be done on me and invited me to Twentieth Street. He and three others did the honors. What was eating him was logic. To this effect: The NIA was Wolfe’s client. Therefore, if I had seen any NIA person lingering unnecessarily in the neighborhood of Kates’s overcoat as it hung in the hall, I would have reported it to Wolfe but not to anyone else. So far so good. Perfectly sound. But then Cramer went on to assume that with two hours of questions, backtracking, leapfrogging, and ambushing, he and his bunch could squeeze it out of me, which was droll. Add to that, that there was nothing in me to squeeze, and it became quaint. Anyhow, they tried hard.

  It appeared that Wolfe too thought I might still have uses. When he came down to the office at six o’clock he got into his chair, rang for beer, sat for a quarter of an hour and then said:

  “Archie.”

  It caught me in the middle of a yawn. After that was attended to I said:

  “Yeah.”

  He was frowning at me. “You’ve been with me a long time now.”

  “Yeah. How shall we do it? Shall I resign, or shall you fire me, or shall we just call it off by mutual consent?”

  He skipped that. “I have noted, perhaps in more detail than you think, your talents and capacities. You are an excellent observer, not in any respect an utter fool, completely intrepid, and too conceited to be seduced into perfidy.”

  “Good for me. I could use a raise. The cost of living has incr—”

  “You eat and sleep here, and because you are young and vain you spend too much for your clothes.” He gestured with a finger. “We can discuss that some other time. What I have in mind is a quality in you which I don’t at all understand but which I know you have. Its frequent result is a willingness on the part of young women to spend time in your company.”

  “It’s the perfume I use. From Brooks Brothers. They call it Stag at Eve.” I regarded him suspiciously. “You’re leading up to something. You’ve done the leading up. What’s the something?”

  “Find out how willing you can make Miss Boone, as quickly as possible.”

  I stared. “You know,” I said reproachfully, “I didn’t know that kind of a thought ever got within a million miles of you. Make Miss Boone? If you can think it you can do it. Make her yourself.”

  “I am speaking,” he said coldly, “of an investigating operation by gaining her confidence.”

  “That way it sounds even worse.” I continued to stare. “However, let’s put the best possible construction on it. Do you want me to worm a confession out of her that she murdered her uncle and Miss Gunther? No, thanks.”

  “Nonsense. You know perfectly well what I want.”

  “Tell me anyway. What do you want?”

  “I want information on these points. The extent of her personal or social contacts, if any, with anyone connected with the NIA, especially those who were here last night. The same for Mrs. Boone, her aunt. Also, how intimate was she with Miss Gunther, what did they think of each other, and how much did she see of Miss Gunther the past week? That would do to start. If developments warrant it, you can then get more specific. Why don’t you telephone her now?”

  “It seems legitimate,” I conceded, “up to the point where we get specific, and that can wait. But do you mean to say you think one of those NIA specimens is it?”

  “Why not? Why shouldn’t he be?”

  “It’s so damn obvious.”

  “Bah. Nothing is obvious in itself. Obviousness is subjective. Three pursuers learn that a fugitive boarded a train for Philadelphia. To the first pursuer it’s obvious that the fugitive has gone to Philadelphia. To the second pursuer it’s obvious that he left the train at Newark and has gone somewhere else. To the third pursuer, who knows how clever the fugitive is, it’s obvious that he didn’t leave the train at Newark, because that would be too obvious, but stayed on it and went to Philadelphia. Subtlety chases the obvious up a never-ending spiral and never quite catches it. Do you know Miss Boone’s telephone number?”

  I might have suspected him of sending me outdoors to play, to keep me out of mischief, but for the fact that it was a nuisance for him to have me out of the house, since he either had to answer the phone himself or let Fritz interrupt his other duties to attend to both the phone and the doorbell. So I granted his good faith, at least tentatively, and swiveled my chair to dial the Waldorf’s number, and asked for Mrs. Boone’s room. The room answered with a male voice that I didn’t recognize, and after giving my name, and waiting longer than seemed called for, I had Nina.

  “This is Nina Boone. Is this Mr. Goodwin of Nero Wolfe’s office? Did I get that right?”

  “Yep. In the pay of the NIA. Thank you for coming to the phone.”

  “Why—you’re welcome. Did you—want something?”

  “Certainly I did, but forget it. I’m not calling about what I want or wanted, or could easily want. I’m calling about something somebody else wants, because I was asked to, only in my opinion he’s cuckoo. You realize the position I’m in. I can’t call you up and say this is Archie Goodwin and I just drew ten bucks from the savings bank and how about using it to buy dinner for two at that Brazilian restaurant on Fifty-second Street? What’s the difference whether that’s what I want to do or not, as long as I can’t? Am I keeping you from something important?”

  “No … I have a minute. What is it that somebody else wants?”

  “I’ll come to that. So all I can say is, this is Archie Goodwin snooping for the NIA, and I would like to use some NIA expense money to buy you a dinner at that Brazilian restaurant on Fifty-second Street, with the understanding that it is strictly business and I am not to be trusted. To give you an idea how tricky I am, some people look under the bed at night, but I look in the bed, to make sure I’m not already there laying for me. Is the minute up?”

  “You sound really dangerous. Is that what somebody else wanted you to do, kid me into having dinner with you?”

  “The dinner part was my idea. It popped out when I heard your voice again. As f
or somebody else—you appreciate that working on this thing I’m thrown in with all sorts of people, not only Nero Wolfe, who is—well, he can’t help it, he’s what he is—but also the police, the FBI, the District Attorney’s outfit—all kinds. What would you say if I told you that one of them told me to call you and ask where Ed Erskine is?”

  “Ed Erskine?” She was flabbergasted. “Ask me where Ed Erskine is?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’d say he was out of his mind.”

  “So would I. So that’s settled. Now before we hang up, to leave no loose ends hanging, maybe you’d better answer my own personally conducted question, about the dinner. How do you usually say no? Blunt? Or do you zigzag to avoid hurting people’s feelings?”

  “Oh, I’m blunt.”

  “All right, wait till I brace myself. Shoot.”

  “I couldn’t go tonight, no matter how tricky you are. I’m eating here with my aunt in her room.”

  “Then supper later. Or breakfast. Lunch. Lunch tomorrow at one?”

  There was a pause. “What kind of a place is this Brazilian restaurant?”

  “Okay, out of the way, and good food.”

  “But … whenever I go on the street—”

  “I know. That’s how it is. Leave by the Forty-ninth Street entrance. I’ll be there at the curb with a dark blue Wethersill sedan. I’ll be right there from twelve-fifty on. You can trust me to be there, but beyond that, remember, be on your guard.”

  “I may be a little late.”

  “I should hope so. You look perfectly normal to me. And please don’t, five or ten years from now, try to tell me that I said you look average. I didn’t say average, I said normal. See you tomorrow.”