Margery Allingham - Ellery Queen’s Anthology. 1960

“Are all alibis for last night being checked?” Cramer demanded.

“They have been.”

“Do them over, and good. Get it going. Use as many men as you need. And not only alibis — records, too. I want the Vardas pair as much as you do, but if the Stahl girl didn’t use that bottle on herself, I also want someone else. Get Biatti here. Let him have a try at her before you take her down.”

“Yes, sir.”

Purley moved. He went to the phone at the cashier’s counter. I went to the one in the booth at the end of the clothes rack and dialed the number I knew best. Fritz answered, and I asked him to buzz the extension in the plant-rooms, since it was still a few minutes short of six o’clock.

“Where are you?” Wolfe demanded.

“At the barbershop.” I was none too genial, myself. “Janet was sitting in her booth and got hit on the head with a bottle of oil. They have gone through the routine and are still at the starting line. Her condition is no more critical than it was before she got hit. As I told you, she insisted on seeing me, and I have had a long, intimate talk with her. I can’t say I made no progress, because she asked me to be her manager, and I am not giving you notice, quitting at the end of this week. Aside from that I got nowhere. I advise you to tell Fritz to increase the grocery orders until further notice.”

Silence. Then, “Who is there?”

“Everybody. Cramer, Purley, squad men, the staff. The whole party will be moved downtown in an hour or so.”

“Pfui.” Silence. In a moment: “Stay there.” The connection went.

I left the booth. Neither Purley nor Cramer was in sight. I moseyed toward the rear, with the line of empty barber chairs on my left and the row of waiting chairs against the partition on my right. Fickler was there, and three of the barbers — Ed being the missing one now — with dicks in between.

The chair on the left of the magazine table was empty, and I dropped into it. Apparently, no one had felt like reading today, since the same copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine was still on top. After sitting a few minutes I became aware that I was trying to analyze Janet. There must be some practical method of digging up from her memory the fact or facts that we had to have. Hypnotize her, maybe? That might work. I was considering suggesting it to Cramer when I became aware of movement over at the door and lifted my eyes.

A flatfoot was blocking the entrance to keep a man fully twice his weight from entering, and was explaining the situation. The man let him finish and then spoke:

“I know, I know.” His eyes came at me over the flatfoot’s shoulder, and he bellowed, “Archie! Where’s Mr. Cramer?”

I got up and made for the door in no haste or jubilation.

“Okay, take it easy. I’ll go see—”

But I didn’t have to go. His bellow had carried within, and Cramer’s voice came from right behind me:

“Well! Dynamite?”

The flatfoot had moved aside, leaving it to the brass, and Wolfe had crossed the sill. “I came to get a haircut,” he stated, and marched past the sergeant and inspector to the rack, took off his hat, coat, vest, and tie, hung them up, crossed to Jimmie’s chair, the second in the line, and got his bulk up onto the seat. In the mirrored wall fronting him he had a panorama of the row of barbers and dicks in his rear, and without turning his head he called, “Jimmie! If you please?”

Jimmie’s dancing dark eyes came to Cramer and Purley, there by me. So did others. Cramer stood scowling at Wolfe. We all held our poses while Cramer slowly lifted his right hand and carefully and thoroughly scratched the side of his nose with his forefinger. That attended to, he decided to sit down. He went to the first chair in the line, turned it to face Wolfe.

“You want a haircut, huh?”

“Yes sir. I need one.”

“Yeah.” Cramer turned his head. “All right, Kirk. Come and cut his hair.”

Jimmie got up and went past the chair to the cabinet for an apron. Everybody stirred, as if a climax had been reached and passed. Purley strode to the third chair in the line, Philip’s, and got on it. That way he and Cramer had Wolfe surrounded, and it seemed only fair for me to be handy, so I detoured around Cramer, pulled Jimmie’s stool to one side, and perched on it.

Jimmie had Wolfe aproned and his scissors were singing above the right ear. Wolfe barred clippers.

“You just dropped in,” Cramer rasped. “Like Goodwin this morning.”

“Certainly not.” Wolfe was curt but not pugnacious. “You summoned Mr. Goodwin. He told me on the phone of his fruitless talk with Miss Stahl, and I thought it well to come.”

Cramer grunted. “Okay, you’re here. And you’re not going to leave until I know why, without any funny business about murderers in your front room.”

“Not as short behind as last time,” Wolfe commanded.

“Yes, sir.” Jimmie had never had as big or attentive an audience, and he was giving a good show.

“Naturally,” Wolfe said tolerantly, “I expected that. You can badger me, if that’s what you’re after, and get nowhere, but I offer a suggestion. Why not work first? Why don’t we see if we can settle this business? Or would you rather harass me than catch a murderer?”

“I’m working now. I want the murderer. What about you?”

“Forget me for the moment. You can hound me any time. I would like to propose certain assumptions about what happened here today. Do you care to hear them?”

“I’ll listen, but don’t drag it out.”

“I won’t. Please don’t waste time challenging the assumptions; I don’t intend to defend them, much less validate them. They are merely a basis of exploration, to be tested. The first is this — that Wallen found something in the car, the car that had killed the woman... No, I don’t like it this way. I want a direct view, not reflections. Jimmie, turn me around, please.”

Jimmie whirled the chair a half-turn, so that Wolfe’s back was to the mirrored wall, also to me, and he was facing those seated in the chairs against the partition.

I spoke up: “Ed isn’t here.”

“I left him in the booth,” Purley rumbled.

“Get him,” Wolfe instructed. “And Miss Stahl, where is she?”

“In her booth lying down.”

“Archie. Bring Miss Stahl.”

He had a nerve picking on me, with an inspector and a sergeant and three dicks there, but I postponed telling him so and went, as Purley went for Ed. In the booth Janet was still on her back on the chairs, her eyes wide open. At sight of me she fired immediately: “You said you were going to send a reporter—”

I raised my voice to stop her: “Listen to me, girlie. You’re getting a break. Nero Wolfe is here with a suggestion and wants your opinion of it. Can you sit up?”

“Certainly I can, but—”

“Take it easy.” I put an arm behind her shoulders. “Are you dizzy?”

“I’m never dizzy,” she said scornfully, and shook me off and went on solo. She wasn’t taking help from a man, and of course I wasn’t her manager yet. She took the chair I had vacated when Wolfe appeared, next to the magazine table. Ed had been brought by Purley, who was back in Philip’s chair, flanking Wolfe. I returned to the stool.

Jimmie had finished above the ears and was doing the back, so Wolfe’s head was tilted forward.

“Your assumptions?” Cramer asked.

“Yes. I was saying, the first is that Wallen found something in the car that led him to this shop. It couldn’t have been something he was told, for there was no one to tell him anything. It was some object. I asked you not to challenge me, but I didn’t mean to exclude contradictions. If there are facts that repudiate this assumption, or any other, I want them.”