Rex Stout - The Golden Spiders

“Then you’re withholding evidence!”

“Pfui. I have reported it to the police. In writing, signed.”

“Then why not to me?”

“Because I’m not a simpleton. I have reason to think that the conversation was one of the links in a chain that led to Mrs. Fromm’s death, and if that is so, the person most eager to know what she said to me is probably her murderer.”

“I’m not her murderer.”

“That remains to be seen.”

For a moment I thought Maddox was going to choke. His throat swelled visibly. But a veteran lawyer has had lots of practice controlling his reactions, and he managed it. “That’s worse than stupidity, it’s drivel.”

“I disagree. Have the police talked with you?”

“Certainly.”

“How many of them?”

“Two — no, three.”

“Would you mind telling me who they were?”

“A Captain Bundy, and a sergeant, and Deputy Commissioner Youmans. Also Assistant District Attorney Mandelbaum.”

“Did any of them tell you what Mrs. Fromm consulted me about yesterday?”

“No. We didn’t get onto that.”

“I suggest that you see someone at the District Attorney’s office — preferably someone you know well — and ask him to tell you. If he does so, or if any other official does, without important reservations, I’ll disgorge — your word — the money Mrs. Fromm paid me.”

Maddox was looking as if someone were trying to persuade him that his nose was on upside down.

“I assure you,” Wolfe went on, “that I am not ass enough to withhold evidence in a capital crime, especially not one as sensational as this. Indeed, I am meticulous about it. Unless the police have information about you that is unknown to me I doubt if they have hitherto regarded you as a likely suspect, but you may now find them a nuisance, after I have reported that you were so zealous to learn what Mrs. Fromm said to me that you went to all this trouble. That, of course, is my duty. This time it will also be my pleasure.”

“You are—” He was about to choke again. “You are threatening to report this interview.”

“Not a threat. Merely informing you that I will do so as soon as you leave.”

“I’m leaving now.” He was up. “I’ll replevy that ten thousand dollars.”

He wheeled and marched out. I followed to go and open the door for him, but he beat me to it, though he had to dive into the front room for his hat. When I returned to the office Horan was on his feet looking down at Wolfe, but no words were passing. Wolfe told me, “Get Mr. Cramer’s office, Archie.”

“Wait a minute.” Horan’s thin tenor was urgent. “You’re making a mistake, Wolfe. If you really intend to investigate the murder. Investigate how? You had two of the persons closest to Mrs. Fromm and her affairs here in your office, and you have chased one of them out. Is that sensible?”

“Bosh.” Wolfe was disgusted. “You won’t even tell me whether Mrs. Fromm told you she came to me.”

“The context of your question was offensive.”

“Then I’ll try being affable. Will you give me the substance of what was said at the gathering at your home last evening?”

Horan’s long eyelashes fluttered. “I doubt if I should. Of course I have told the police all about it, and they have urged me to be discreet.”

“Naturally. But will you?”

“No.”

“Will you describe, fully and frankly, the nature and course of your relations with Mrs. Fromm?”

“Certainly not.”

“If I send Mr. Goodwin to the office of the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons, for which you are counsel, will you instruct the staff to answer his questions fully and freely?”

“No.”

“So much for affability.” Wolfe turned. “Get Mr. Cramer’s office, Archie.”

I swiveled and dialed WA 9-8241, and got a prompt response, but then it got complicated. None of our dear friends or enemies was available, and I finally had to settle for a Sergeant Griffin, and so informed Wolfe, who took his instrument and spoke.

“Mr. Griffin? Nero Wolfe speaking. This is for the information of Mr. Cramer, so please see that he gets it. Mr. James Albert Maddox and Mr. Dennis Horan, both attorneys-at-law, called on me this evening. You have the names correctly? Yes, I suppose they are familiar. They asked me to tell them about my conversation with Mrs. Damon Fromm when she came to my office yesterday. I refused, and they insisted. I won’t go so far as to say that Mr. Maddox tried to bribe me, but I got the impression that if I told him about the conversation he wouldn’t press me to return the money Mrs. Fromm paid me; otherwise, he would. Mr. Horan concurred, at least tacitly. When Mr. Maddox left in a huff, Mr. Horan told me I was making a mistake. Will you please see that this reaches Mr. Cramer? No, that’s all now. If Mr. Cramer wants details or a signed statement I’ll oblige him.”

Wolfe hung up and muttered at the lawyer, “Are you still here?”

Horan was going, but in three steps he turned to say, “You may not know law, but you know how to skirt the edges of slander. After this performance I wonder how you got your reputation.”

He went, and I got to the hall in time to see him emerge from the front room with his hat and depart. After chain-bolting the door, I went back to the office and observed enthusiastically, “Well, you certainly pumped them good! Milked ‘em and stripped ‘em. Congratulations!”

“Shut up,” he told me, and picked up a book, not to throw.

I had been scheduled to leave Saturday afternoon for a weekend jaunt to Lily Rowan’s fourteen-room shack in Westchester, but of course that had been knocked in the head — or rather, run over by a car. And my Sunday was no Sunday at all. Items:

Sergeant Purley Stebbins came bright and early, when Wolfe was still up in his room with his breakfast tray, to get filled in on the invasion by the lawyers. I accommodated him. He was suspicious when he arrived, and more suspicious when he left. Though I explained that my employer was a genius and time would show that his stiff-arming them was a brilliant stroke, Purley refused to believe that Wolfe would have those two corralled in his office and not do his damndest to get a needle in. He did accept five or six crescents and two cups of coffee, but that was only because no man who has ever tasted Fritz’s Sunday-morning crescents could possibly turn them down.

Wolfe and I both read every word of the accounts in the morning papers. Not that we hoped to get any hot leads, but at least we knew what the DA and Cramer had seen fit to release, and there were a few morsels to file for reference. Angela Wright, the Executive Secretary of Assadip, had formerly worked for Damon Fromm, and had been put in the Assadip job by him. Mrs. Fromm had supported more than forty charities and worthy causes, but Assadip had been her pet. Vincent Lipscomb, the publisher who had been at the dinner party at Horan’s apartment, had run a series of articles on displaced persons in his magazine, Modern Thought , and was planning another. Mrs. Dennis Horan had formerly been a movie star — well, anyhow, she had acted in movies. Paul Kuffner handled public relations for Assadip as a public service without remuneration, but he had also been professionally engaged in the interest of Mrs. Fromm personally. Dennis Horan was an authority on international law, belonged to five clubs, and had a reputation as an amateur chef.

There still wasn’t a word about the flap from Matthew Birch’s pocket that had been retrieved from the chassis of the car that had killed Pete Drossos. The police were hanging onto that one. But because of the similarity of the manner of the killings, the Birch murder was getting a play too.