Rex Stout - Prisoner's Base

“Hold it,” I said urgently, and he stopped, I appealed to him. “I’ve given you all I’ve got. I want something — not much. I want to see Inspector Cramer, and now. He’s busy, and I don’t know where he is, and it might take me until tomorrow to get to him. You fix it for me.”

He was alert. “Is it about this case?”

“Yes.”

“Why won’t I do?”

“Because he can say yes to this, and you can’t.”

He might have been disposed to debate it if he hadn’t been late for another customer. He glanced at his wrist again, went to the phone, and got busy. Even for him, the assistant DA on the Eads and Fomos case, it proved to be a job, but after ten minutes on the phone he told me, “He’s in a conference at the Commissioner’s office. Go there and send your name in and wait.”

I thanked him as he rushed out.

I had had no lunch, and on the way to Centre Street, which wasn’t much of a walk, I bought four nice ripe bananas and took them to a soda fountain and washed them down with a pint of milk.

At the office of Police Commissioner Skinner things did not look too promising. Not because there was an assortment of citizens in the large and busy anteroom, which was only normal, but because I couldn’t find out who Mandelbaum had spoken to and I couldn’t even get anyone to admit that Cramer was within. The trouble was that there was another door out of Skinner’s office, around a corner of the corridor, and covering them both wasn’t easy. However, I tried. I went outside and to the corner of the corridor — and there, standing by the other door, was Sergeant Purley Stebbins. At sight of me he started growling automatically.

I went up to him. “When did I ever ask you for a favor?”

“Never.” He was hoarse, but he always was. “You’re not that dumb.”

“Not until now. I’m going to jump Inspector Cramer when he comes out, and ask him for five minutes, and you will kindly keep your trap shut. You can spoil it if you want to, but why should you want to? I’m a citizen, I pay taxes, and I’ve only been in jail nine times.”

“He’s busy.”

“So am I.”

“What do you want to ask him?”

I had the reply ready but didn’t get to use it. The door opened, and Cramer came through and was with us. He was going to move right on, so preoccupied that he didn’t even see me, until I stepped to cut him off.

“You?” He didn’t like it. He darted a glance at Purley. “What’s this?”

I got in. “My idea, Inspector. I’ve got something to say. If there’s a room nearby we can use, five minutes ought to do it.”

“I haven’t got time.”

“Make it four minutes.”

He was scowling. “Wolfe sent you.”

“No. My idea.”

“What is it? Right here will do.”

He moved to the wall, and I faced him. Purley made it a triangle. “At the DA’s office,” I said, “they told me to go on home. Instead, I came here to find you. You heard Mr. Wolfe there Tuesday, saying that I was his client. That was a swell gag, but also he more or less meant it — enough so that he sent me out to see if I could start some fur flying, and with luck I did, and last night they all came—”

“I know all about that.”

“Okay. I felt some responsibility about Priscilla Eads. I grant it was only bad luck that my using her for a stunt ended like that, but naturally I wanted to put a hand on the bastard that arranged the ending—”

“I know about that too. Get to it.”

“I’m getting. This Sarah Jaffee is something else. It wasn’t just bad luck. While she was telling me on the phone about her keys being gone, he was there in the closet waiting for her. I undertook to tell her what to do. Thinking that there was maybe one chance in a hundred that he was somewhere in the apartment — not more than that because I didn’t know any reason for anyone wanting her dead, and I still don’t — I told her what to do. I could have told her to run to an open window and start screaming, and that might have saved her. Or I could have told her to grab something to fight with — there was a stool right there at the phone — and back up to a wall and start yelling and pounding on the wall until someone came. That might not only have saved her but caught him. But I didn’t. I had something better. I didn’t want to put him to the trouble of sneaking up on her, so I told her to go to him. I told her to go to the foyer and cross to the outside door, because that would take her within a few feet of the closet where he was hiding, and as he heard her approaching and passing, he could swing the door and take just one step, and wham. I told her just how to do it, and she followed instructions, though she had admitted to me that she was a coward. Hell, that wasn’t just luck.”

“What do you want, a medal?” Cramer rasped.

“No, thanks. I want a chance to touch him. Feeling as I do, I will not go home and sit on my ass while waiting for Mr. Wolfe to have a fit of genius, and go to bed at bedtime. It happens that I can help, and I would like to. For instance, of course everyone who was there last night has been questioned, but you won’t finish with them until and unless it has been cracked. It was at Mr. Wolfe’s office last night that her keys were taken. That must have been while my back was turned, because I have good eyes and I was using them last night. If one of them is being questioned now, I suggest that I be allowed to sit in and to offer comments if and when my memory says that one is needed, and that we go on that way until you get him. I claim to be qualified by the fact that I was present last night, with my eyes open, and I know more about when the keys could have been taken and when they couldn’t than anybody could learn in a month of questioning. Also I will be glad to help in any other way that may be useful, except that I will not take Lieutenant Rowcliff’s hand to lead him across the street.”

He grunted. “A typical Wolfe approach.”

“No. My one talk with Mr. Wolfe was at nine this morning with a lieutenant standing by and a sergeant listening in. This is strictly personal, as described, purely because I don’t expect to feel like sleeping for a while.”

He went to Purley. “He was there, and he could help. You know him as well as I do. What about it? Is this straight?”

“It’s possible,” the sergeant granted. “His head’s been swelling a long time now, and it got a bad jolt, and he can’t stand it. I’d buy it. We can always toss him out.”

Cramer came to me. “If this is a dodge, I’ll hook you good. Nothing goes to Wolfe, not a damn word, and nothing to the press or anyone else.”

“Right.”

“This was already a big noise, as you know, and now with this third one, another strangling, everybody in town has joined in. Two dozen copies have been made of your full report, and the Commissioner himself is studying one of them right now. Deputy Commissioner Wade is in a room down the hall with Brucker. At the DA’s, Bowen is with Miss Duday, and Mandelbaum was to start again on Hagh, the ex-husband, when he finished with you. You can join any one of them, and I’ll phone that you’re coming, or you can come with Stebbins and me. We’re going to do a retake with Helmar.”

“I’ll go with you for a starter.

“Come on.” He moved.

My first appearance as an informal adjunct of the NYPD, seated at the left of Inspector Cramer as he interviewed Perry Helmar, lasted for five hours. It was by no means the first time I had seen and heard Cramer perform, but the circumstances were new, because I was all for him with no reservations. As a spectator at a quiz job I am probably as hard to please as anybody around, after the countless times I have watched Wolfe work, and I thought Cramer was good with Helmar. He couldn’t have read my report more than once, with the full day he had had, but his picture of the meeting at Wolfe’s office was clear and accurate. I made no great contribution to the performance, supplying a few interpositions and a couple of suggestions, none of which made a noticeable whoosh. At nine o’clock Helmar was sent home without escort, after being told that he would probably be wanted again in the morning.