Rex Stout - If Death Ever Slept

I was on the last bite of toast and honey and the last inch of coffee when the sound of Wolfe’s elevator came, and by the time I was through swallowing and got to the office he was there behind his desk. We said good morning.

“So,” I said, “it wasn’t a prankster.”

“Apparently not.” With the edge of a blotter he was flipping from his desk pad dust that wasn’t there. “Get Mr. Cramer.”

I got at the phone and dialed, and soon had him, and Wolfe took it. I held my receiver an inch from my ear, expecting a blast, but it had gone beyond that. Cramer’s voice was merely hoarse with fury.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

“I’m on an errand, no matter where. I’m calling to ask about the bullet I sent you. Does it match the others?”

“You know damn well it does. You knew it when you sent it. This is the rawest—”

“No, I suspected it, but I didn’t know it. That was what I had to know before I divulged where it came from. That was why I arranged to keep its source anonymous until I knew. I would like to have it explicitly. Was the bullet I sent you fired from the same gun as those that killed Eber and Brigham?”

“By God.” Cramer knew darned well he shouldn’t use profanity on the phone, so he must have been upset. “You arranged! I’ll arrange you! I’ll arrange for you to—”

“Mr. Cramer! This is ridiculous. I’m supplying the solution of an extremely bothersome case, and you sputter at me. If you must sputter, wait until you have the facts. Will you please answer my question?”

“The answer is yes.”

“Then I’m ready to deliver the murderer and the weapon, but there is the matter of procedure to consider. I can invite the district attorney to my house and give him the weapon and two excellent witnesses, and let him get the culprit. Or I can do that with you. I don’t like either of those because I have been at considerable expense and I have earned a fee, and I want to be paid, and there is plenty of money in that family. I want the family to know what I have done, and how, and the most effective and impressive way to inform them is to have them present when I produce the weapon and identify the murderer. If I invite them they won’t come. You can bring them. If you’ll — please let me finish. If you’ll have them at my house at eleven o’clock, all of them, I’ll be there to receive you, and you’ll get all you need and more. Three hours from now. I hope you’ll oblige me because I like dealing with you better than with the district attorney.”

“I ought to appreciate that,” Cramer said, hoarser than ever. “You’re home now. You’ve been home all night. You knew damn well the bullet would match, and you knew as soon as we checked it we’d be on you, and you didn’t want to be bothered until morning so you could spring this on me. In half an hour we’ll have a search warrant for your house, and we’ll have warrants for you and Goodwin as material witnesses.”

“Indeed. Then forgive me if I ring off. I have a call to make.”

“Yeah. You would. By God, you would. I let you have those reports and this is what I get for it. Who do you want there?”

“The five people named Jarrell, and Miss Kent and Mr. Foote. At eleven o’clock.”

“Sure, I know. Until eleven you’ll be up with your goddamn orchids. We mustn’t interfere with that.”

He hung up. So did we.

“You know,” I said, “I think the orchids irritate him. I’ve noticed it before. Maybe you should get rid of them. Do I answer the phone now?”

“Yes. Miss Bonner and Saul and Fred and Orrie are going to call between nine and nine-thirty. Tell them to come at eleven. If the Jarrells are to be properly impressed they should see all of them.”

“Okay. But it wouldn’t hurt if I knew in advance which one to keep an eye on. I know darned well it’s not Roger Foote.”

He looked up at the wall clock. “It’s early. Very well.”

I had turned over the doorman-and-usher job to Saul and Orrie because I was otherwise engaged. Cramer, with Stebbins, had arrived twenty minutes early and insisted on seeing Wolfe, and I had taken them to the dining room and stayed to keep them company. They didn’t want my company, they wanted Wolfe’s, but I told them that if they climbed three flights to the plant rooms they would find the door locked. I offered to pass the time by telling them the story about the chorus girl and the anteater, but it didn’t seem to appeal to them.

When Wolfe opened the dining-room door and said, “Good morning, gentlemen,” and Cramer told him to come in and shut the door, a wrangle seemed unavoidable, but Wolfe avoided it by saying, “In the office, please,” and turning and going. Cramer and Stebbins followed, and I brought up the rear.

On the three previous occasions that Otis Jarrell had been in that office he had had the seat of honor, the red leather chair, but this time Saul, following instructions, had kept it for Inspector Cramer, and the ex-client was in the front row of the audience with his wife, his son, and his daughter-in-law. Behind them were Lois, Nora Kent, Roger Foote, and Saul Panzer. On the couch, at my back when I got to my desk, were Sally Colt, of Dol Bonner’s staff, and Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather. Purley Stebbins’ chair was where he always put it himself if we didn’t, against the wall at arm’s length from Cramer.

Actually, for that particular party, the red leather chair was not the seat of honor. The seat of honor was one of the yellow chairs which had been placed at the other end of Wolfe’s desk, on his right, and in it was Dol Bonner, a very attractive sight for a female dick, with her home-grown long black lashes making a curling canopy from her caramel-colored eyes. I had warned Fritz she would be there. She had once been invited to dine at the table he cooks for, and he suspects every woman who ever crosses the threshold of wanting to take over his kitchen, not to mention the rest of the house.

Inspector Cramer, standing, faced the audience and spoke. “Nero Wolfe is going to say something and you can listen along with me. You’re here on police orders, so I want to make one thing clear. Any questions Wolfe asks you are his questions and not mine. Answer them or not as you please. Wolfe is not acting for the police or speaking for the police.”

“I have nothing to ask, Mr. Cramer,” Wolfe said. “Not a single question. I have only to report and expound.”

“All right, go ahead.” Cramer sat down.

“What I wish to report,” Wolfe told the audience, “is how I found the weapon that killed two men, and how its finding revealed the identity of the killer. After you people left here on Monday, eight days ago, and after I had given Mr. Cramer the information I had told you I would give him, I was without a client and had no assigned function in this affair. But my curiosity was alive, my self-esteem was involved, and I wanted to be paid for the time I had spent and the ignominy I had endured. I resolved to pursue the matter.”

He cleared his throat, “You people were no longer available to me for inquiry. You were through with me. I had neither the personnel nor the facilities for the various lines of routine investigation, and besides, the police were seeing to that. But there was one established fact that offered possibilities: the bullets that killed Eber and Brigham had been fired by the same gun. Assuming that they had also been fired by the same person, obviously the gun had been in his possession from Thursday afternoon, when Eber was killed, to Sunday afternoon, when Brigham was killed — or at least it had been kept where he could get it again. Where had it been kept?”

His eyes went to Cramer and back to them. “Mr. Cramer obliged me by permitting Mr. Goodwin access to the reports of your movements during that period. I was and am deeply appreciative of his cooperation; it would be churlish to suppose that he let me learn the contents of the reports only because he wanted to know what I was going to do with them. Here they are.”