by Rex Stout
“Indeed.”
Wolfe’s brows were up. “Are you retiring? You’re not old enough.”
“No, I’m not retiring. Maybe I should. I’m not old enough, but I’m tired enough. But I’m not. But you are. You could call it retiring.”
“Apparently you have been misinformed. Or are you guessing?”
“No, I’m not guessing.”
Cramer got a cigar from a pocket, not a Don Pedro, stuck it in his mouth and clamped his teeth on it, and took it out again. He hadn’t lit one for years. “It’s no go, Wolfe. This time you are done. Not only the DA, the Commissioner. I think he has even spoken to the Mayor. Is this being recorded?”
“Of course not. My word of honor if you need it.”
“I don’t.”
Cramer put the cigar between his teeth, took it out, threw it at my wastebasket, and missed by two feet. “You know,” he said, “I don’t really know how dumb you think I am. I never have known.”
“Pfui. That’s flummery. My knowledge of you is not mere surmise. I know you. Certainly your mental processes have limits, so have mine, but you are not dumb-your word-at all. If you were dumb, you would have in fact concluded that I am done-again, your word-and you wouldn’t have come. You would have abandoned me to the vengeance of the District Attorney-perhaps with a touch of regret that you wouldn’t have another chance to come and whirl that globe around.”
“Goddam it, I didn’t whirl it!”
“Spin, rotate, twirl, circumvolute-your choice. So why did you come? “You tell me.”
“I will. Because you suspected that I might not be done, there might be a hole I could wriggle out through, and you wanted to know where and how.”
“That would be a wriggle. You wriggle?”
“Confound it, quit scorning my diction. I choose words to serve my purpose. Archie, tell Fritz he may bring the coffee. Three cups. Or would you prefer beer or brandy?”
Cramer said no, he would like coffee, and I went. Tired as I was after a long, hard day, including such items as telling Jill what had happened to Orrie, I didn’t drag my feet. I too wanted to know where and how. When I went back in, Wolfe was talking.
“… but I’m not going to tell you what I intend to do. Actually I don’t intend to do anything. I’m going to loaf, drift, for the first time in ten days. Read books, drink beer, discuss food with Fritz, logomachize with Archie. Perhaps chat with you if you have occasion to drop in. I’m loose, Mr. Cramer. I’m at peace.”
“Like hell you are. Your licenses have been suspended.”
“Not for long, I think. When the coffee comes-” It came. Fritz was there with the tray. He put it on Wolfe’s desk and left. Wolfe poured, and he remembered that Cramer took sugar and cream, though it had been at least three years since he had had coffee with us. I got up and served Cramer and got mine, sat and stirred and took a sip, and crossed my legs, hoping that by bedtime I would be at peace too.
Wolfe took a swallow-he can take coffee hotter than I can-and leaned back. “I told you nine days ago,” he said, “Tuesday of last week, that I was going to tell you absolutely nothing. I repeat that. I am going to tell you nothing. But if you care to listen, I’ll make a supposition. I’ll imagine a situation and describe it. Do you want me to?”
“You can start. I can always interrupt.”
Cramer took too big a sip of hot coffee. I was afraid he would have to spit it out, but his mouth and jaw worked on it and he got it down.
“A long and elaborate supposition,” Wolfe said. “Suppose that five days ago, last Saturday, an accumulation of facts and observations forced me to surmise that a man who had been associated with me for years had committed three murders. The first item of that accumulation had come the morning Pierre Ducos died in my house when Archie-I drop the formality-Archie told me what Pierre had said when he arrived. He refused to give Archie any details; he would tell only me. Perhaps it was my self-esteem that made me give that item too little thought; Pierre said I was the greatest detective in the world. All is vanity.”
He drank coffee. “The second item of the accumulation came Wednesday evening, a week ago yesterday, when Orrie Gather offered to donate his services, to take no pay. He made the offer first, before either Saul Panzer or Fred Durkin. That was out of character. For him it was remarkable. Shall I iterate and reiterate that this is merely a series of suppositions?”
“Hell no. You’re just imagining it. Sure. Go ahead.”
“The third item was an old fact. The best opportunity-the only one I knew of-for someone to put the bomb in Pierre’s pocket had been when he was at work and his coat was in his locker at the restaurant. Orrie Gather was familiar with that room; he had once helped with an investigation there, and the lock would have been no problem for him. The fourth item was that Mrs. Harvey Bassett questioned a friend of hers about Archie Goodwin-had she seen him, and had he learned who had killed Pierre Ducos. The fifth item was that Mr. Bassett had an obsession about his wife-information supplied by two of the men who were at that dinner. It was at that point that I first thought it possible that Orrie Gather was somehow involved, for the sixth item was my knowledge of Orrie’s contacts with women and his habitual conduct with them.”
He emptied his cup and poured, and I took Cramer’s cup and mine and got refills.
“As I said,” Wolfe resumed, “it’s a long and elaborate supposition. The seventh item was another mention of Mrs. Bassett by one of those men. The eighth item was another action out of character by Orrie Gather. With him present, I told Saul Panzer to see Lucile Ducos and try to learn if she knew anything and if so what, and Orrie suggested that he should see her instead of Saul. It was unheard of for him to suggest that he would be better than Saul for anything whatever. And the next day, last Saturday, came the ninth and last item. Lucile Ducos was shot and killed as she left her home that morning. That was conclusive. It pointed up all the other items, brought them into focus. It was no longer a conjecture that Orrie was implicated; it was a conclusion.”
It certainly was a conclusion, the way he told it. Lucile had been killed five days ago. I should have known. We all should have known. I said some chapters back that you probably knew, but, as I also said, you were just reading it and we were in the middle of it. It was like getting the idea that a member of your family had committed three murders. A family affair. Would you have known? Wolfe was going on. “One more supposition. Suppose that yesterday Archie and Saul, having arrived at the same conclusion, went to that apartment on Fifty-fourth Street and searched the room of Lucile Ducos and found something that your men had failed to find. Hidden in a book on her shelves was a slip of paper on which she had written Orrie Gather’s name and address. That made it-” “By God. I want that. You can’t-” “Pfui. This is supposition. That made it unnecessary for them to spend time and energy seeking further support for their conclusion. They went to Saul’s apartment, got Fred to join them, discussed the situation, asked Orrie Gather to come, and when he came they told him how it stood and that they intended, with my help, to make it impossible for him to live. Also they took his gun and kept it.”
Wolfe drank coffee and leaned back. “Here reality takes over from invention. This you already know. At half past eleven o’clock this morning Orrie Gather rang my doorbell and was hurtled down to the sidewalk, dead. Evidently he had two of those bombs, since Sergeant Stebbins has told me that scraps of aluminum have been found similar to those found ten days ago on the floor of that room upstairs. Also evidently he didn’t wait to see if he would be admitted, because he knew he wouldn’t be.”
He straightened up and emptied his second cup and reached to put it on the tray. “There’s more coffee, still hot, if you would like some. I’ve finished.”
Cramer was staring at him. “And you say you’re going to loaf. Drift. It’s incredible. You’re incredible. You’re at peace. Good God.”
Wolfe nodded. “You haven’t had time to consider it from either angle. First your angle.
Assume that Orrie Gather is alive and this conversation has not taken place. Where would you stand? Not only would you have no evidence against him; you wouldn’t even suspect that he was involved.”
He turned to me. “What odds would you give that he would never suspect it?”
“A hundred to one. At least.”
Back to Cramer. “And you should have. The one item of solid evidence, one that would have been persuasive for a jury, was the slip of paper with Orrie’s name on it, which Lucile Ducos had hidden in a book. Your men searched her room and didn’t find it. Archie and Saul did find it. You don’t know now whether it has been destroyed or is there in my safe. With me, and Archie and Saul and Fred and Orrie, standing mute, you would not only have no evidence, you would have no suspicion. Orrie would be in no jeopardy and almost certainly never would be. In time you would add three to your list of unsolved homicides.”
Cramer just sat with his jaw clamped. Of course what really hurt was the slip of paper they had missed. If they had found it-No. I prefer not to put in black and white what it would have been like if they had found it.
“Apparently,” Wolfe said, “you don’t wish to comment. So much for your angle. Now the other angle -the District Attorney. Orrie Gather is not alive. Assume that when you leave here you go to the District Attorney-No, it’s past ten o’clock. Assume that in the morning you go to him and report this conversation. Even assume that it is being recorded on a contraption on your person-” “You know damn well it isn’t.”
“Assume that it is, and you give it to him. With Orrie Gather dead, what can he do? He can’t prefer charges against him, even for three murders. He would of course like to get us, all four of us-have our bail rescinded, lock us up, put us on trial, and convict us. Convict us of what, with us standing mute? Withholding evidence? Evidence of what? Not of murder; no murder will have been legally established. It can’t be legally established without someone to charge and convict. Establish a murder by charging us with complicity, and us standing mute? Pfui. Somehow manage to get a report, even a tape recording, of this conversation, into an action of law? Again pfui. I had merely amused myself by inventing a rigmarole of suppositions. I had cozened you.”
He turned a palm up. “Being a resourceful man, he could probably pester us, though I don’t know exactly how. He has his position and his staff, the power and prestige of his office, but I have resources too. I have ten million people who like to be informed and diverted, and a comfortable relationship with a popular newspaper. If he chooses to try to get satisfaction, I’ll try to make him regret it.”
He turned to me again. “Archie, what odds that we’ll have our licenses back before the end of the year?”
I lifted my shoulders and let them down. “Offhand, I’d say twenty to one.”
Back to Cramer. “That will be satisfactory for me. I am already in an uncomfortably high tax bracket for the year and would take no jobs anyway. If you want to ask questions about my elaborate supposition, I may answer them.”
“I want to ask one. How did she hide the slip of paper in the book? Put it in between the pages?”
“No. She put it on the inside of the back caver, face down, and pasted a sheet of paper over it.”
“What’s the title of the book?”
“The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. I read about a third of it.”
“Where is it?”
Wolfe flipped a hand. “I suppose it has been destroyed.”
“Balls. You wouldn’t. Wolfe, I want that book. And the slip of paper.”
“Mr. Cramer.”
Wolfe cocked his head. “You haven’t reflected. If you reprimand the men who searched that room for misfeasance, whether or not you show them the slip of paper and the book, where will you be? You’ll be committed. You will have to report this entire conversation to the District Attorney, of course telling him that you think it was a collection not of suppositions but of facts. You may decide to report it to him anyway, but I doubt it. As I said, your mental processes have limits, but you are not dumb. You would probably be prodded into a long and difficult investigation that couldn’t possibly have an adequate result-for instance, you might discover how Mr. Bassett learned Orrie Gather’s name and address, but then what? No matter what you discover, even what solid evidence you get, the dominant fact, that Orrie Gather is dead, will remain.”
“And you killed him. Your men killed him on your order.”
Wolfe nodded. “I won’t challenge your right to put it like that. Of course I would put it differently. I might say that the ultimate responsibility for his death rests with the performance of the genes at the instant of his conception, but that could be construed as a rejection of free will, and I do not reject it. If it pleases you to say that I killed him, I won’t contend. You have worked hard on it for ten days and should have some satisfaction.”
“Satisfaction my ass.”
He stood up. “Yes, ten days. I’ll reflect on it all right.”
He went and got his coat and put it on and came back, to the comer of Wolfe’s desk, and said, “I’m going home and try to get some sleep. You probably have never had to try to get some sleep. You probably never will.”
He turned, saw the globe, and went and whirled it so hard that it hadn’t quite stopped when he was through to the hall. When the sound came of the front door closing, Wolfe said, “Will you bring brandy, Archie? And two glasses. If Fritz is up, bring him and three glasses. We’ll try to get some sleep.”
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Rex Stout
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