Рекс Стаут - The Doorbell Rang

“I’ve been a cop for thirty-six years,” he said, “and this is the first time I’ve ever passed the buck to an outsider.”

I had my eyes smile a little. “I’m flattered. Or Mr. Wolfe is.”

“Balls. He wouldn’t know flattery if it had labels pasted all over it, and neither would you. Goodwin, I’m going to tell you something that’s for you and Wolfe, and that’s all. No Lon Cohen or Saul Panzer or Lily Rowan. Is that understood?”

“I don’t know why you drag in Miss Rowan, she’s merely a personal friend. And there’s no point in telling me something if we can’t use it.”

“You’ll use it all right. But it did not come from me. Never, to anybody.”

“Okay. Mr. Wolfe isn’t here to cinch it by giving you his word of honor, so I’ll do it for him. For us. Our word of honor.”

“That’ll have to do. You won’t have to take notes, with your tape-recorder memory. Does the name Morris Althaus mean anything to you?” he spelled it.

I nodded. “I read the papers. One that you haven’t cracked. Shot. In the chest. Late November. No gun.”

“Friday night, November twentieth. The body was found the next morning by a cleaning woman. Died between eight p.m. Friday and three a.m. Saturday. One shot, in at his chest and through the middle of his pump and on out at the back, denting a rib. The bullet went on and hit the wall forty-nine inches above the floor, but it was spent and only nicked it. He was on his back, legs stretched out, left arm straight at his side and right arm crossing his chest. Dressed but no jacket, in his shirtsleeves. No disorder, no sign of a struggle. As you said, no gun. Am I going too fast?”

“No.”

“Stop me if you have questions. It was the living room of his apartment on the third floor at Sixty-three Arbor Street — two rooms, kitchenette, and bath. He had been living there three years, alone, single, thirty-six years old. He was a free-lance writer, and in the last four years he had done seven articles for Tick-Tock magazine. He was going to be married in March to a girl named Marian Hinckley, twenty-four, on the staff of Tick-Tock. Of course I could go on. I could have brought the file. But there’s nothing in it about his movements or connections or associates that would help. It hasn’t helped us.”

“You left out a little detail, the caliber of the bullet.”

“I didn’t leave it out. There was no bullet. It wasn’t there.”

My eyes widened. “Well. A damned neat murderer.”

“Yeah. Neat and coolheaded. Judging from the wound, it was a thirty-eight or bigger. Now two facts. One: for three weeks Althaus had been collecting material for an article on the FBI for Tick-Tock magazine, and not a sign of it, nothing, was there in the apartment. Two: about eleven o’clock that Friday night three FBI men left the house at Sixty-three Arbor Street and went around the corner to a car and drove off.”

I sat and looked at him. There are various reasons for keeping your mouth shut, but the best one is that you have nothing to say.

“So they killed him,” Cramer said. “Did they go there to kill him? Certainly not. There are several ways to figure it. The one I like best is that they rang his number and he wasn’t answering the phone, so they thought he was out. They went and rang his bell and he wasn’t answering that either, so they opened the door and went in for a bag job. He pulled a gun, and one of them shot before he did. They train them good in that basement in Washington. They looked for what they wanted and got it and left, taking the bullet because it was from one of their guns.”

I was listening. I never listened better. I asked, “Did he have a gun?”

“Yes. S & W thirty-eight. He had a permit. It wasn’t there. They took it, you’d have to ask them why. There was a box of cartridges, nearly full, in a drawer.”

I sat and looked some more, then said, “So you have cracked it. Congratulations.”

“You’d clown in the hot seat, Goodwin. Do I have to describe it?”

“No. But, after all— Who saw them?”

He shook his head. “I’ll give you everything but that. He couldn’t help you anyway. He saw them leave the house and go to the car and drive off, and he got the license number. That’s how we know and all we know. We’re hogtied. Even if we could name them, where would that get us? I’ve seen plenty of murderers I could name, but so what, if I couldn’t prove it. But this one, that goddam outfit, I’d give a year’s pay to hook them and make it stick. This isn’t their town, it’s mine. Ours. The New York Police Department. They’ve had us gritting our teeth for years. Now, by God, they think they can break and enter people’s houses and commit homicide in my territory, and laugh at me!”

“Did they? Laugh?”

“Yes. I went to Sixty-ninth Street myself and saw Wragg. I told him that of course they had known that Althaus was collecting material for a piece, and maybe they had had a stake-out on him the night he was killed, and if so I would appreciate some cooperation. He said he would like to help if he could, but they had too many important things to do to bother about a hack muckraker. I didn’t tell him they had been seen. He would have laughed.”

His jaw was working. “Of course it has been discussed in the Commissioner’s office. Several times. I’m hogtied. We wouldn’t like anything better than hanging it on that bunch of grabbers, but what have we got for a jury, and what could we get? So we lay off. So I say this: I’ll not only write a report on Wolfe and you for the Commissioner, I’ll see him and talk to him. I don’t think you’ll lose your licenses. But I won’t tell him about seeing you.”

He rose and went to the bed and came back with his hat and coat. “You might as well finish the milk. And I hope that Mrs. Bruner gets her money’s worth.” He put out a hand. “Happy New Year.”

“The same to you.” I got up and shook. “Could he identify them if it came to that?”

“For God’s sake, Goodwin. Three against one?”

“I know. But if it were needed just for a frill, could he?”

“Possibly. He thinks he could. I’ve given you all I’ve got. Don’t come and don’t phone. Give me a few minutes to get out.” He started for the door, turned and said, “Give Wolfe my regards,” and went.

I finished the milk standing up.

It was twenty minutes past noon when I stepped out of the lobby of the Westside Hotel. I felt like walking. For one thing, I was still loose, and it was nice to walk without wondering if I had company. For another thing, I didn’t want to think hard on top, and when I walk the hard thinking, if any, is down where it doesn’t use words. And for a third thing, I wanted to do some sightseeing. It was a nice sunny winter day, not much wind, and I crossed town to Sixth Avenue and turned south.

To show the kind of thinking that comes on top with no effort when I’m walking, as I crossed Washington Square I was thinking that it was a coincidence that Arbor Street was in the Village and Sarah Dacos lived in the Village. That couldn’t be called a hard thought, since a quarter of a million people lived in the Village, more or less, and I have known fancier coincidences, but it’s a fair sample of what my mind does when I’m walking.

I had been in Arbor Street before, no matter why for this report. It’s narrow and only three blocks long, with an assortment of old brick houses on either side. Number 63, which was near the middle, had nothing distinctive about it. I stood across the street and looked it over. The windows on the third floor, where Morris Althaus had lived and died, had tan drapes that were drawn. I went to the corner around which the G-men had parked their car. As I said, sightseeing, loose. Actually, of course, I was professionally observing the scene of a crime which might be going to have my attention. It helps somehow. Helps me, not Wolfe; he wouldn’t go to the window to see the scene of a crime. I would have liked to go up to the third floor for a look at the living room, but I wanted to get home in time for lunch, so I backtracked to Christopher Street and flagged a taxi.