The Golden Spiders

by Rex Stout

  “No.”

  “Anything to be contrary. Why not?”

  “You haven’t done enough sorting, Mr. Cramer. But your snatching at a blackmail victim as the culprit shows that you’re hard up. There have been three murders. Assuming, to keep it tidy, that there is only one murderer, have all the handy ones been eliminated?”

  “No.”

  “Who has been?”

  “Crossed off, nobody. Of course there are complications. For instance, Mrs. Horan says that Friday night her husband returned to the apartment ten minutes after he left with Mrs. Fromm to take her down to her car, and he went to bed and stayed there, but that’s a wife corroborating a husband. If you’re ready to nominate a candidate don’t let me stop you. Have you got one?”

  “Yes.”

  “The hell you have. Name him.”

  “The question was, have I a candidate, not am I ready to nominate. I may be ready in an hour, or in a week, but not now.”

  Cramer grunted. “Either you’re grandstanding, which would be nothing new, or you’re holding out. I admit you’ve made a haul—this racket, and Egan, and, by luck, Horan too—and much obliged. Okay. None of that names the murderer. What else? If you’re after a deal, here I am. I’ll give you anything and everything we’ve got, ask me anything you want to—of course that’s what you’re after—if you’ll reciprocate and give me all you’ve got.”

  Stebbins made a noise and then tried to look as if he hadn’t.

  “That,” Wolfe said, “is theoretically a fair and forthright proposal, but practically it’s pointless. Because first, I’ve given you all I’ve got; and second, you have nothing I want or need.”

  Cramer and Stebbins gawked at him, both surprised and suspicious.

  “You’ve already told me,” Wolfe went on, “that no one has been eliminated, more than three days since Mrs. Fromm was killed. That will do for me. By now you have tens of thousands of words of reports and statements, and I admit it’s possible that buried somewhere in them is a fact or a phrase I might think cogent, but even if you cart it all up here I don’t intend to wade through it. For example, how many pages have you on the background and associates and recent comings and goings of Miss Angela Wright?”

  “Enough,” Cramer growled.

  “Of course. I don’t decry it. Such lines of inquiry often get you an answer, but manifestly in this case they haven’t even hinted at one or you wouldn’t be here. Would I find in your dossier the answer to this question: Why did the man who killed the boy in broad daylight, with people around on the street, dare to run the risk of later identification by one or more onlookers? Or to this one: How to account for the log of the earrings—bought by Mrs. Fromm on May eleventh, worn by another woman on May nineteenth, and worn by Mrs. Fromm on May twenty-second? Have you found any trace of the earrings beyond that? Worn by anyone at any time?”

  “No.”

  “So I have provided my own answers, but since I can’t expound them without naming my candidate, that will have to wait. Meanwhile—”

  He halted because the door to the hall was opening. It swung halfway, enough for Fred Durkin to slip past the edge and signal to me to come.

  I arose, but Wolfe asked him, “What is it, Fred?”

  “A message for Archie from Saul.”

  “Deliver it. We’re sharing everything with Mr. Cramer.”

  “Yes, sir. Horan wants to speak with you. Now. Urgent.”

  “Does he know Mr. Cramer and Mr. Stebbins are here?”

  “No, sir.”

  Wolfe went to Cramer. “This man Horan is a hyena, and he irritates me. I should think you would prefer to deal with him on your own premises—and also the other two. Why don’t you take them?”

  Cramer regarded him. He took the cigar from his mouth, held it half a minute, and put it back between his teeth. “I would have thought,” he said, not positively, “that I have seen you work all the dodges there are, but this is new. I’m damned if I get it. You had Horan and that lawyer Maddox here, and you chased them. The same with Paul Kuffner. Now Horan and the other two, there in your front room, and you don’t even want to see them, and still you claim you’re after the murderer. I know you too well to ask you why, but by God I’d like to find out.” He swiveled his head around to Fred. “Bring Horan in here.”

  Fred, not moving, looked at Wolfe. Wolfe heaved a sigh. “All right, Fred.”

  Chapter 14

  For a second I thought Dennis Horan was actually going to turn and scoot. He came wheeling in like a man with a purpose, stopped short when he saw we had company, forward marched four steps, recognized Cramer, and stopped short again. That was when I thought he was going to skedaddle.

  “Oh,” he said. “I don’t want to butt in.”

  “Not at all,” Cramer assured him. “Sit down. We were just talking about you. If you’ve got something to say, go right ahead. I’ve been told how you happen to be here.”

  Considering the atmosphere and circumstances, including the hard night he had been through, Horan did pretty well. He had to make a snap decision whether to make any change in his program because of the unexpected presence of the law, and apparently he managed it while he was placing a chair between Stebbins and Cramer and putting himself on it. Seated, he glanced from Cramer to Wolfe and back to Cramer.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  “So am I,” Cramer rumbled.

  “Because,” Horan went on, “you may feel that I owe you an apology, though I may not agree.” The tenor was down a couple of notches. “You may think I should have told you about a talk I had Friday evening with Mrs. Fromm.”

  Cramer was giving him a hard eye. “You have told us about it.”

  “Yes, but not all of it. I had to make an extremely difficult decision, and I thought I made it right, but now I’m not so sure. Mrs. Fromm had told me something that might prove damaging to the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons if it were made public. She was the president of the Association, and I was its counsel, and therefore what she told me was a privileged communication. Ordinarily, of course, it is improper for an attorney to divulge such a communication, but I had to decide whether this was a case where the public interest prevails. I decided that the Association had a right to rely on my discretion.”

  “I think the record will show that you gave no indication that you were withholding anything.”

  “I suppose it will,” Horan conceded. “Possibly I even stated I had told you all that was said that evening, but you know how that is.” He thought he would smile and then thought he wouldn’t. “I had made a decision, that’s all, and now I think it was wrong. At least I now want to reverse it. After dinner that evening Mrs. Fromm took me aside and told me something that shocked me greatly. She said she had received information that someone connected with the Association was furnishing names of people illegally in this country to a blackmailer, or a blackmail ring, and that the people were being persecuted; that the blackmailer, or the head of the ring, had been a man named Matthew Birch, who had been murdered Tuesday night; that a man named Egan was involved in it; and that—”

  “Aren’t you Egan’s attorney?” Cramer demanded.

  “No. That was a mistake. I acted on impulse. I’ve thought it over, and I’ve told him I can’t act for him. Mrs. Fromm also told me that the meeting place of the blackmailers was a garage on Tenth Avenue—she gave me its name and address. She wanted me to go there at midnight that night, Friday. She said there was a pushbutton on the second pillar to the left in the garage, and I should give a signal with it, two short, one long, and one short, and then go to the rear and down a stair to the basement. She left it to me how to proceed with whomever I might find there, but she impressed on me that the main thing was to prevent any scandal that would injure the Association. That was like her! Thinking always of others, never of herself.”

  He paused, evidently momentarily overcome. Cramer asked, “Did you go?”

  “You know I did
n’t, Inspector. As my wife and I have told you, after I took Mrs. Fromm down to her car I returned to my apartment and went to bed. I had told Mrs. Fromm that I would think it over. I would probably have decided to go the next night, Saturday, but in the morning the news came of Mrs. Fromm’s death, and that terrible shock—” Horan had to pause again.

  He resumed. “Frankly, I was hoping that you would find the murderer, and that there would be no connection between the crime and the affairs of the Association. So I didn’t tell you of that talk. But Sunday came and went, and Monday, and I began to fear that I had made a mistake. Last evening I decided to try something. Around midnight I drove to that garage, drove right in, and there on the second pillar found the pushbutton. I pressed it, giving the signal as Mrs. Fromm had told me, and an answering signal came, a buzzer. As I was starting for the rear a man who had been lurking nearby drew a gun and ordered me to go as he directed. I did so. He took me back to a stair and commanded me to descend. At the foot of the stairs was another man with a gun, whom I recognized—Archie Goodwin.”

  He nodded sidewise at me. I didn’t return it. He went on. “I had seen him Saturday evening in this office. While I no longer feared for my own safety, naturally I resented having guns pointed at me, and I protested. Goodwin summoned another man from within a room, also armed, and I was taken across to a wall and held there. I had seen this other man previously. He had called at my office yesterday morning, giving the name of Leopold Heim, and I had—”

  “I know,” Cramer said curtly. “Finish the garage.”

  “As you wish, Inspector, of course. Before long Goodwin called to this man, calling him Saul, to bring me to the room. There were three other men in there, one obviously with Goodwin, and the other two lying on the floor with their ankles bound. Goodwin said he had telephoned Nero Wolfe, and apologized to me. Then, after he had spoken briefly to the two on the floor, saying they had committed felonies and he was going to take them to Wolfe for questioning, he told one of them, the one he called Egan, that I was a lawyer and I might be willing to represent him. When the man asked me I said I would, and I must confess that that was ill-considered. I explain it, though I don’t ask you to excuse it, by the fact that I was not in proper command of my faculties. I had been ordered around by men with guns, and besides I resented Goodwin’s arbitrary transport of those men to the house of his employer when the proper procedure would have been to notify the authorities. So I agreed, and came here with them, and have been held here all night. I—”

  “No,” I objected. “Correction. Not held. I told you several times you could go whenever you wanted to.”

  “They were held, and I was held by the foolish commitment I had made. I admit it was foolish, and I regret it. Considering these latest developments, I have reluctantly concluded that Mrs. Fromm’s death may after all have had some connection with the affairs of the Association, or with one of its personnel, and in that case my duty is plain. I am now performing it, fully and frankly, and, I hope, helpfully.”

  He got out a handkerchief and wiped his brow, his face, and his neck all around. “I have had no chance for a morning toilet,” he said apologetically. That was a damn lie. There was a well-equipped bathroom with doors both from the front room and the office, and he had been in it. If, not having then decided to be full and frank and helpful, he hadn’t wanted to have Egan out of his sight long enough to wash his face, that was his affair.

  Cramer’s hard eye hadn’t softened any. “We’re always grateful for help, Mr. Horan,” he said, not gratefully. “Even when it’s a little late. Who heard your talk with Mrs. Fromm?”

  “No one. As I said, she took me aside.”

  “Did you tell anyone about it?”

  “No. She told me not to.”

  “Who did she suspect of being implicated?”

  “I told you. Matthew Birch, and a man named Egan.”

  “No. I mean who connected with the Association.”

  “She didn’t say. My impression was that she suspected no one in particular.”

  “From whom had she got her information?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.”

  “That’s hard to believe.” Cramer was holding himself in. “She had a lot of details—Birch’s name, and Egan’s, and the name and address of the garage, and even the button on the pillar and the signal. She didn’t tell you where she got all that?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “Certainly. She said she couldn’t tell me because she had been told in confidence.”

  Our four pairs of eyes were on him. He kept his, with their swollen red lids and long curled lashes, at Cramer. All of us, including him, understood the situation perfectly. We knew he was a damn liar, and he knew we knew it. He had been in a hole up to his neck, and this was his try at scrambling out. He had had to cook up some explanation for his going to the garage, and especially for the pushbutton and his signaling with it, and on the whole it wasn’t a bad job. Since Mrs. Fromm was dead he could quote her all he wanted to, and since Birch was dead too there was no risk in naming him. Egan had been his problem. He couldn’t ignore him, since he was right there in the next room. He couldn’t stick to him, since to act as attorney for a blackmailer whose racket was being exposed—and the exposure would hurt the Association, of which Horan was counsel—that was out of the question. So Egan had to be tossed to the wolves. That was it from where I sat; and, knowing the other three as well as I did, and seeing their faces as they looked at him, that was it from where they sat too.

  Cramer turned to Wolfe with his brows raised in inquiry. Wolfe shook his head.

  Cramer spoke. “Purley, bring Egan.”

  Purley got up and went. Horan adjusted himself in his chair, getting solider, and sat straight. This was going to be tough, but he had asked for it. “You realize,” he told Cramer, “that this man is evidently a low criminal and he is in a desperate situation. He is scarcely a credible witness.”

  “Yeah,” Cramer said and let it go at that. “Goodwin, how about a chair for him there near you, facing this way?”

  I obliged. That would put Stebbins between Egan and Horan. Also it would give Wolfe Egan’s profile, but since he offered no objection I placed the chair as requested. As I was doing so Stebbins returned with Egan. “Over here,” I told him, and he steered Egan across. Sitting, the low criminal fastened his eyes on Dennis Horan, but they weren’t met. Horan was watching Cramer.

  “You’re Lawrence Egan,” Cramer said. “Known as Lips Egan?”

  “That’s me.” It came out hoarse, and Egan cleared his throat.

  “I’m a police inspector. This is Nero Wolfe. I’ll soon have a report on you. Have you got a police record?”

  Egan hesitated, then blurted, “The report will tell you, won’t it?”

  “Yes, but I’m asking you.”

  “Better go by the report. Maybe I’ve forgot.”

  Cramer passed it. “That man next to you, Archie Goodwin, has told me what happened yesterday, from the time you called on a man at a hotel on First Avenue—you thought his name was Leopold Heim—until you were brought here. I’ll go over that with you later, but first I want to tell you where you stand. You may be thinking that you have an attorney present to protect your interests, but you haven’t. Mr. Horan says he has told you that he can’t represent you and doesn’t intend to. Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t mumble. Speak up. Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes!”

  “When?”

  “About half an hour ago.”

  “Then you know you’re not represented here. You’re facing two charges, assault with a loaded gun and attempted extortion. On the first one there are two witnesses, Fred Durkin and Archie Goodwin, so that’s all set. On the second one you may be thinking there’s only one witness, Saul Panzer alias Leopold Heim, but you’re wrong. We now have corroboration. Mr. Horan says that he was told last Friday even
ing, by a reliable person in a position to know, that you were involved in a blackmailing operation, extorting money from people who had entered the country illegally. He says that his agreement to represent you was given on an impulse which he now regrets. He says he wouldn’t represent a low criminal like you. He—”

  “That’s not what I said!” Horan squeaked. “I merely—”

  “Shut up!” Cramer barked. “One more interruption and out you go. Did you say you were told that Egan was in a blackmail racket? Yes or no!”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you say you won’t represent him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you call him a low criminal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then shut up if you like it here.” Cramer went to Egan. “I thought you had a right to know what Mr. Horan said, but we won’t need that to make the extortion stick. Leopold Heim wasn’t the first one, and don’t think we can’t find some of the others. That’s not worrying me any. I want to ask you something in Mr. Horan’s presence. Had you ever seen him before last night?”

  Egan was chewing his tongue, or anyhow he was chewing something. Some saliva escaped at a corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. His jaws still working, he interlaced his fingers and locked them tight. He was having a hell of a time.

  “Well?” Cramer demanded.

  “I gotta think,” Egan croaked.

  “Think straight. Don’t kid yourself. We’ve got you like that”—Cramer raised a fist—”on the assault and the extortion. It’s a simple question: Had you ever seen Mr. Horan before last night?”

  “Yeah. I guess so. Look, how about a deal?”

  “No. No deal. If the DA and the judge want to show some appreciation for cooperation, that’s up to them. They often do, you know that.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Then answer the question.”

  Egan took a deep breath. “You’re damn right I saw him before last night. Lots of times. Dozens of times.” He leered at Horan. “Right, brother? You goddam lousy rat.”

  “It’s a lie,” Horan said calmly, meeting the leer. He turned to Cramer. “You invited this, Inspector. You led him into it.”