I got on a stool. "Yes, and more to come. A woman got killed, and it should mean a change of program, but he's trying to set a new world record for mules. Don't bother about lunch for me. 111 chew nails. I know you have problems with him too, garlic and juniper berries and bay leaf, but-" The doorbell. I slid off the stool, went to the hall, took one look through the one-way glass panel, and entered the office. Wolfe was at his desk with the middle drawer open, counting beer-bottle caps.
"Sooner even than I expected," I said. "Cramer. Saul called. He phoned Lucile Ducos at nine o'clock this morning. The maid answered and he told her his name and said he was working for you. He told Lucile Ducos he wanted to see her and ask her some questions, and she told him to call her around noon."
The doorbell rang.
He said, "Grrrhh."
"I agree. Do I let Cramer in?"
"Yes" I went to the front and opened the door, swung it wide, and he stepped in. I stood on the sill and looked out and down. His car was double-parked, with the driver in front at the wheel and one in the back seat I had seen but had never met. When I turned, no Cramer. I shut die door and went to the office.
[108] He was standing at the edge of Wolfe's desk, his hat and coat on, talking.
"... and I may sit down and I may not. I've got a stenographer out in the car. If 1 bring him in, will you talk?"
"No."
It's barely possible that I have news for you. Do you know that Pierre Ducos's daughter was shot down in front of her house four hours ago?"
"Yes."
"You do. The old man still won't talk, in any language, but a Homicide Bureau man and I have just spent an hour with Marie Garrou, the maid. Will you talk?"
"No."
"'Goddam it, Wolfe, what's eating you?"
"I told you three days ago that I was outraged and out of control. I am no longer out of control, but I am still outraged. Mr. Cramer. I respect your integrity, your ability, and your understanding. I even trust you up to a point; of course no man has complete trust in another, he merely thinks he has because he needs to and hopes to. And in this matter I trust only myself. As I said, I am outraged."
Cramer turned his head to look at me, but he didn't see me. He turned back to Wolfe and leaned over to flatten bis palms on the desk. 1 came here with a stenographer," he said, "because I trust you too, up to a point I want to say something not as Inspector Cramer or Mr. Cramer to a private investigator or Mr. Wolfe, but just as Cramer to Wolfe. Man to man. If you don't let go, you're sunk. Done. Let me bring him in and talk to me. Now."
Wolfe shook his head. "I appreciate this. I do. But even as Wolfe to Cramer, no."
Cramer straightened up and turned and went.
When the sound came of the front door opening and dosing, I didn't even go to the hall fox a look.
[109] If he had stayed inside, all right, he had. I merely remarked to Wolfe, "About any one little fact, I never know for sure whether you have bothered to know it or not. You may or may not know that the Homicide Bureau is a bunch of cops that don't take orders from Cramer. They're under the DA."
"Yes."
So he might have known it and he might not. "And," I said, "one of them helped him buzz Marie Garrou. I now know her name. And Cramer came straight here because he was sorry for you. That's hard to believe, but he did, and you should send him a Christmas card if you're where you can get one."
He squinted at me. "You changed your clothes."
"Certainly. I like to dress properly. This is my cage outfit. Coop. Hoosegow."
He opened the drawer, slid the bottle caps into it, shut the drawer, pushed his chair back, rose, and headed for the door. I supposed to tell Fritz to hurry lunch, but he turned right, and the elevator door opened and closed. Going up to tell Theodore to come tomorrow, Sunday. But I was wrong again; it went up only one flight. He was going to his room to change to his cage outfit, whatever that might be. It was at that point that I quit. The only possible explanation was that he really had a screw loose, and therefore my choice was plain. I could bow out for good, go to Twentieth Street, to either Stebbins or Cramer, and open the bag, or I could stick and take it as it came. Just wait and see.
I don't know, actually, why I stuck. I honestly don't know. Maybe it was just habit, the habit of watching him pull rabbits out of hats. Or maybe it was good old-fashioned loyalty, true-blue Archie Goodwin, hats off everybody. Or maybe it was merely curiosity; what was eating him and could he possibly get away with it? [110] But I know why I did what I did. It wasn't loyalty or curiosity that sent me to the kitchen to get things from the refrigerator-just plain horse sense. It would probably be Coggin, and he would like it even better if we were just sitting down to lunch, and I had had enough of the sandwiches they brought you at the DA's office. As I got out sturgeon and bread and milk and cucumber rings and celery and brandied cherries, Fritz looked but said nothing. He knows it is understood that it's his kitchen, and if I take liberties without asking, it is not the moment for conversation. My copy of the Times was still in the rack on the little table, and I opened it to Sports. I felt sporty. I was on the cherries when the sound came of the elevator. When I went to the office Wolfe was at his desk with a crossword puzzle.
I admit I have been working up to a climax, and here it is. Wolfe had gone up to change. But he had changed not to his oldest suit but his newest one-a soft light-brown with tiny yellow specks that you could see only under a strong light. He had paid Boynton $345.00 for it only a month ago. The same shirt, yellow of course, but another tie, solid dark-brown silk. I couldn't see his shoes, but he had probably changed them too. As I went to my desk and sat, I was trying to prepare a suitable remark, but it didn't come because I knew I should have just learned something new about him, but what? "The mail," he said.
I hadn't opened it. I reached to my desk tray, a hollowed-out slab of green marble, for the opener and began to slit, and for the next twenty minutes you might have thought it was just a normal weekday. I had my notebook and Wolfe was starting on the third letter when Fritz came to announce lunch, and Wolfe got up and went without a glance at me. I don't know how he knew I had had mine.
I had typed the two letters and was doing (be en- [111] velopes when the doorbell rang. My watch said 1: 22, and the clock agreed. Evidently Coggin knew that Wolfe's lunch hour was a quarter past one. I got up and went. But it wasn't Coggin. It was a pair I had never seen before, standing stiff-backed shoulder to shoulder, and each one had a folded paper in his hand. When I opened the door, the one on the right said, "Warrants to take Nero Wolfe and Archie Good-win. You're Goodwin. You're under arrest."
"Well," I said, "come in. While we get our coats on."
They crossed the sill and I shut the door. They were 5 feet 11, 180 pounds, very erect. I say "they" because they were twins, long narrow faces and big ears, but one was white and the other one black. "I've had my lunch," I said, "but Mr. Wolfe has just started his. Could we let him finish? Half an hour?"
"Sure, why not?"
White said and started shedding his coat.
"No hurry at all," Black said.
They took their time hanging up their coats. No hats. I showed them the door to the office and entered the dining room. Wolfe was opening his mouth for a forkful of something. "Two from the Homicide Bureau," I said. "With warrants. I'm under arrest. I asked if you could finish your lunch, and they said sure, no hurry."
He nodded. I turned and went, in no hurry, in case he wished to comment, but he didn't. In the office, White was in the red leather chair with Wolfe's copy of the Times, and Black was over at the bookshelves looking at titles. I went to my desk, finished the envelopes and put things away, picked up the phone, and dialed a number. Sometimes it takes ten minutes to get Lon Cohen, but that time it took only two.
"So you're still around," he said.
"No. Here's that one little bean I said I would spill. Maybe in time for today. A scoop. Nero Wolfe and [112] Archie Goodwin are under arrest as material witness
es. Just now. We are being taken down."
"Then why are you making phone calls?"
"I don't know. See you in court."
I hung up. Black said, "You're not supposed to do that."
He was on a yellow chair with a book.
"Of course not," I said, "and I wonder why. 'No hurry at all.'
I'm just curious. Do you feel sorry for me? Or for Nero Wolfe?"
"No. Why the hell should we?"
"Then you don't like the guy who sent you."
"Oh, hell do. He's not the best but he's not the worst."
"Look," White said, "we know about you. Yeah, you're curious, more ways than one. Just forget it. It's Saturday afternoon, and we're off at four o'clock, and if we don't get there too soon we'll be off. So there's no hurry. If you have no objection."
He turned to another page of the Times. Black opened his book; I couldn't see the title. I got my nail file from the drawer and attended to a rough spot on my right thumbnail.
It was twenty-five minutes past two when we descended the seven steps of the stoop and climbed into the cars, Wolfe with White and me with Black.
[113] 12 "Stand mute" sounds simple, as if all you had to do is keep your mouth shut, but actually it's not simple at all. Assistant District Attorneys have had a lot of practice using words. For instance: "Why did you compel, physically compel, Lucile Ducos to stay with you in her father's room while you searched the room?"
"In the signed statement you gave Sergeant Stebbins you said you included everything Pierre Ducos said to you. But you left out that he saw one of the men at that dinner hand Bassett a slip of paper. Why did you tell that lie?"
"If Ducos didn't tell you who had been at that dinner meeting, how did you learn about Benjamin Igoe?"
"If Ducos didn't tell you about that dinner meeting, who did?"
"Why did you tell Saul Panzer that Lucile Ducos must be kept from talking?"
"When did you learn that Nero Wolfe had persuaded Leon Ducos not to talk to the police?"
"What did you take from the pockets of Pierre Ducos before you reported your discovery of his body?"
"What did you find concealed in a book in the room of Lucile Ducos?"
That's just a few samples. I haven't included a [114] sample of some asked by an assistant DA I had never seen before, a little squirt with gold-rimmed cheaters, because they were so damn ridiculous you wouldn't believe it-implying that Nero Wolfe had opened up. Implying that Saul and Fred and Orrie had talked, sure, that was routine. But Wolfe-now, really. As for me, I don't suppose I set a record for standing mute, but between three o'clock Saturday afternoon and eleven-thirty Monday morning I must have been asked at least two thousand questions by three assistant DAs and Joe Murphy, the head of the Homicide Bureau. Most of Murphy's questions had nothing to do with murder. He wanted to know exactly why it had taken so long for Wolfe and me to get our coats on Saturday afternoon, and how the Gazette had got the news in time for the late edition that day. It was a pleasure to stand mute to him because I was glad to give Black and White a break, but with the others it wasn't easy and my jaw got tired from clamping it. The trouble was I like to be quick with good answers, and they knew it and did their best to get me started, and two of them were good at it. But mute doesn't mean pick and choose, it means mute, tongue-tied, aphonous, and don't forget it.
Of the lock-ups I have slept in, including White Plains, only thirty miles away. New York is the worst. The worst for everything-food, dirt, smell, companionship, prices of everything from newspapers to another blanket-everything. I hadn't seen Wolfe. I will not report on my feelings about him during that fifty-one hours, except to say that they were mixed. It was harder on him than on me, but he had asked for it. I hadn't used my right to make one phone call to ring Nathaniel Parker because I assumed Wolfe had, and anyway Parker had certainly seen the Sunday Times, no matter where he was. But where was he now? "Now" was ten minutes to six Monday afternoon, and I sat on my cot trying to pretend I wasn't [115] stewing. The point was, at least one point, that tomorrow would be Election Day and judges might not be available-another reason to stew: an experienced private detective should know how many judges are available on Election Day, and I didn't. I was thinking that, in addition to everything else, Election Day had to come up and I might not be able to vote for Carey, when footsteps stopped at my door, a key scraped in the lock, the door opened, and a stranger said, "You're wanted downstairs, Goodwin. I guess you'd better take things."
There wasn't much to take. I put what there was in my pockets and walked out. My next-door neighbor on the left said something, but he was always saying something, and I didn't listen. The stranger herded me down the hall to the door at the end with steel bars about the size of my wrist, on which he had to use a key, on through, and across to the elevator. As we waited for it to come, he said, "You're number two hundred and twenty-four."
"Oh? I didn't know I had a number."
"You don't. My number. Guys I've had that I seen their pitcher in the paper."
"How many years?"
"Nineteen. Nineteen in January."
"Thanks for telling me. Two hundred and twenty-four. An interesting job you've got."
"You call it interesting. It's a job."
The elevator came.
In a big room on the ground floor with ceiling lights that glared, Nathaniel Parker sat on a wooden chair at one end of a big desk. The man behind the desk was in uniform, and another one in uniform stood at the other end. As I crossed over, Parker got up and offered a hand and I took it. The one standing pointed to a little pile of articles on the desk, handed me a 5-by-8 card, and said, "If it's all there, sign on the dotted line. There's your coat on the chair."
[116] It was all there-knife, key ring, wallet with no money in it because I had it in my pocket. Since I had been standing mute, I made sure the card didn't say anything it shouldn't before I signed. My coat smelled of something, but I smelled even worse, so what the hell. Parker was on his feet, and we walked out. The one behind the desk hadn't said a word. Neither did Parker until we were out on the sidewalk. Then he said, "Taxis are impossible, so I brought my car. It's around the comer."
I said firmly, "Also there's a bar around the comer."
My voice sounded funny, probably rusty and needed oil. I'd like to hear you talk a little, and not while you're driving."
The bar was pretty full, but a couple were just leaving a booth and we grabbed it. Parker ordered vodka on the rocks, and when I said a double bourbon and a large glass of milk he raised his brows.
"Milk for my stomach," I told him, "and bourbon for my nerves. How much this time?"
"Thirty thousand. Thirty for Wolfe and the same for you. Coggin pushed hard for fifty thousand because you're implicated, so he says, and you're standing mute. He said the charge will be changed to conspiracy to obstruct justice, and of course that was a mistake, and Judge Karp called him. You don't go to court with a threat."
"Where's Wolfe?"
"At home. I took him an hour ago. I want to know exactly what the situation is."
"It's simple. There have been three murders, and we're standing mute."
"Hell, I know that. That's all I know. I have never known Wolfe like this. He's practically standing mute to me. I'm counting on you to tell me exactly where it stands. In confidence. I'm your counsel."
The drinks came, and I took a sip of milk and then one of bourbon, and then two larger sips. "I'll tell you [117] everything I know," I said. "It will take an hour and a half. But I can't tell you why we've dived into a foxhole because I don't know. He's standing mute to me too. We could give them practically everything we've got and still go right on with our knitting -we've done that a thousand times, as you know-but he won't. He told Roman Vilar-you know who he is?"
"Yes. He told me that much."
"He told him he's buying satisfaction. Goody. He'll pay for it with our licenses. Of course-" "Your licenses have been suspended."
"We won'
t need them if we're behind bars. Where are Saul and Fred and Orrie?"
"They're behind bars now. Ill get them out tomorrow morning. Judge Karp has said he'll sit You honestly don't know why Wolfe has holed in?"
"Yes, I don't. You're my lawyer?"
"Of course."
"Then I can give you a privileged communication. Have you got an hour?"
"No, but go ahead."
I took a swallow of bourbon and one of milk. "First a question. If I tell you everything as your client, III also be telling you things about your other client that he is not telling. What about conflict of interest? Should I get another lawyer?"
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