Рекс Стаут - Gambit

“I offer no apology,” Wolfe said, no hard feeling. “You had no appointment.”

Cramer uttered a word that I omit, out of respect for his rank and his long and faithful public service. He was short on sleep too, and his eyes showed it. But he went on, “Appointment my ass. In the kitchen lapping up beer?” His hand went to his inside breast pocket and came out with a piece of paper. “This is to you, but it was found on the body of a man who died by violence, so it’s evidence and I’m keeping it. Shall I read it to you?”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up an eighth of an inch. “As you please. I would return it.”

“When?”

“As soon as Mr. Goodwin makes a copy of it.”

Cramer looked at me. Apparently he decided that I would probably eat it, for he shook his head and said, “I’ll read it.” He unfolded the paper. “Printed at the top is ‘From the desk of Daniel Kalmus.’ It’s dated yesterday, February 14, 1962. It says, written by hand, in ink: ‘To Nero Wolfe: I hereby engage your professional services in my behalf and will pay you a reasonable fee plus necessary expenses. My attorney, Daniel Kalmus, will explain what I wish investigated, and you will work in collaboration with him and at his direction.’ It’s signed, ‘Matthew Blount’.” He looked at me. “I see you’ve got it down.”

“Sure,” I said, and closed my notebook.

He returned the paper to his pocket. “All right,” he told Wolfe, “I want to know. Monday you announced through Goodwin that you had been hired on behalf of Blount. Kalmus denied it. Tuesday you told me you had been hired but wouldn’t say who had hired you. Wednesday, yesterday, Kalmus comes to you and, according to Goodwin, tells you that he wants to hire you but he has to get Blount’s okay first. Last night Kalmus is murdered, and in his pocket is this note to you from Blount. I want to know and you’re going to tell me. First, if you were hired Monday who hired you?”

Wolfe’s brows went up. “Didn’t Mr. Goodwin tell you?”

“You know damn well he didn’t. He told us damn little. I wanted to hold him as a material witness, but the DA said no. Who hired you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Wolfe turned a hand over. “Since she went there with Mr. Goodwin last evening, and I hadn’t yet been engaged by Mr. Kalmus or Mr. Blount? Surely you can add two and two. Miss Blount, of course.”

Cramer nodded. “Yeah, I can add. Now that you know I already know, you tell me. I also know she has been here since Monday night, and she’s here now. I want to see her.”

“She’s under a doctor’s care and you must have his permission. Dr. Edwin A. Voll—”

“Nuts. She discovered a dead body and left before the police arrived. Where is she, in the kitchen?”

“Mr. Goodwin discovered the body and you kept him all night.” Wolfe turned to me. “Tell Miss Blount to bolt the door.”

I swiveled to get the house phone, but Cramer roared, “Your goddam clowning!” and I swiveled back and grinned at him, and told Wolfe, “I hate to disturb her. If he starts upstairs there’ll be time enough.”

“That’s the first thing you wanted to know,” Wolfe told Cramer. “Miss Blount was and is my client. Now her father is too if I accept the engagement. Next?”

Cramer had his fingers curled over the chair arms, regaining control. He must have told himself many times over the years never to let Wolfe get him roaring, and here he had done it again. I expected him to get out a cigar and give it a massage, but Fritz saved him the trouble and expense by coming with my orange juice and coffee on a tray, and by the time he had put it on my desk and gone, and I had picked up the glass and taken a sip, Cramer had himself in hand.

He cleared his throat. “You remember,” he said, a little hoarse, “that I said Tuesday I knew damn well you hadn’t been hired. Okay, maybe I was wrong. But I also said that I thought you had got hold of something, some piece of information or evidence, that you thought would spring Blount, or at least might, and now I’m sure of it. It’s a fair guess that you got it from the daughter. You used it to get Kalmus here. You told him what it was, or gave him a good hint, good enough so he told Blount and advised him to hire you, and Blount wrote you this note.” He tapped his chest. “But Kalmus went ahead and did something with that piece of information himself without calling you in, and he got himself killed, and you learned about it or suspected it, and when Goodwin went there last night, taking the daughter along to get him in, he expected to find a corpse.”

He paused for breath. “You and your goddam tricks. You probably told Kalmus to try something. I’d bet a dollar to a dime that you know who killed him. All right, you’ve jockeyed yourself into a fee, and Kalmus is dead, but your client is still in jail. Can you pry him loose or can’t you? I’m not going to tell you for the twentieth time that if and when the DA thinks he can get you for obstructing justice by withholding evidence I’ll do all I can to make it stick, and it looks as if this is it. Do I have to get a warrant for the arrest of Sarah Blount as a material witness?”

Wolfe, leaning back, took in air, all he had room for, which was plenty, and let it out. “Day before yesterday,” he said, “I told you that you were incomparably better acquainted than I was with all the circumstances surrounding the death of Paul Jerin. That was true, and it still is, and it is equally true of the circumstances surrounding the death of Daniel Kalmus. You’ve had your army working at it for twelve hours, and I have merely read the morning paper. I have had no report from Mr. Goodwin. As for his expecting to find a corpse when he went there last night, at that time he was of the opinion, and so was I, that Kalmus had probably murdered Paul Jerin.”

Cramer again uttered a word that I omit, the same one, and this time he added nothing.

“Not an opinion based on evidence,” Wolfe said, “only on a suspicion held by a person I had spoken with, now of course discredited. You know Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather.”

“I ought to. What about them?”

“I hired them yesterday. Their assignment was to find evidence that Kalmus procured or possessed arsenic in some form prior to Tuesday evening, January thirtieth. When Mr. Panzer telephoned this morning I told him to drop it. Naturally.”

Cramer was staring. “That’s not your kind of lie. Three men would have to back it up.”

“Nor ordinarily, I hope, my kind of truth — admission of error. Two hundred dollars of Miss Blount’s money wasted.”

Cramer still stared. “Kalmus was Blount’s lawyer. You thought he had put arsenic in the chocolate? Why?”

“I considered that the most likely alternative. I reserve the why ; as I said, it wasn’t based on evidence. Now for the only alternatives left — Hausman, Yerkes, and Farrow — since Blount is excluded. Don’t you too exclude him now? Your elaborate theory of my trickery was at fault, but one of its assumptions, that Kalmus was killed by the man who killed Jerin, is surely sound, and Blount is in jail. Should you keep him there?”

Cramer looked at me. I had the orange juice down and was on the second cup of coffee. “You lied in that statement,” he said. “You said you went to Kalmus’s place to find out if Blount had okayed hiring Wolfe, and what you really went for was to search it to try to find—” He cut it off short. “Oh, nuts.” He got up. “This is the first time I ever left here,” he told Wolfe, “thinking you may have grabbed a bear’s tail and can’t let go. You may have. If you actually thought at ten o’clock last night that Kalmus had killed Jerin where are you now? Who comes next? Huh?”