Рекс Стаут - The Silent Speaker

“Who the hell does this man think he is?” Dexter demanded of Cramer.

Cramer, scowling at Wolfe, didn’t reply. After some seconds he arose and, without any alteration in the scowl, came to my desk. By the time he arrived I had lifted the receiver and started to dial Watkins 9–8242. He took it, sat on the corner of the desk, and went on scowling.

“Horowitz? Inspector Cramer, talking from Nero Wolfe’s office. Give me Lieutenant Rowcliffe. George? No, what do you expect, I just got here. Anything from on high? Yeah. Yeah? File it under C for crap. No. You’ve got a list of the people who were here at Wolfe’s Friday evening. Get some help on the phones and call all of them and tell them to come to Wolfe’s office immediately. I know that, but tell them. You’d better include Phoebe Gunther. Wait a minute.”

He turned to Wolfe. “Anyone else?” Wolfe shook his head and Cramer resumed:

“That’s all. Send Stebbins here right away. Wherever they are, find them and get them here. Send men out if you have to. Yeah, I know, all right, they raise hell, what’s the difference how I lose my job if I lose it? Wolfe says I’m desperate, and you know Wolfe, he reads faces. Step on it.”

Cramer went back to the red leather chair, sat, pulled out a cigar and sank his teeth in it, and rasped, “There. I never thought I’d come to this.”

“Frankly,” Wolfe muttered, “I was surprised to see you. With what Mr. Goodwin and I furnished you yesterday I would have guessed you were making headway.”

“Sure,” Cramer chewed the cigar. “Headway in the thickest damn fog I ever saw. That was a big help, what you and Goodwin furnished. In the first place—”

“Excuse me,” Dexter put in. He stood up. “I have some phone calls to make.”

“If they’re private,” I told him, “there’s a phone upstairs you can use.”

“No, thanks.” He looked at me impolitely. “I’ll go and find a booth.” He started out, halted to say over his shoulder that he would be back in half an hour, and went. I moseyed to the hall to see that he didn’t stumble on the sill, and after the door had closed behind him returned to the office. Cramer was talking:

“... and we’re worse off than we were before. Zeros all the way across. If you care for any details, take your pick.”

Wolfe grunted. “The photograph and car license mailed to Mrs. Boone. The envelope. Will you have some beer?”

“Yes, I will. Fingerprints, all the routine, nothing. Mailed midtown Friday eight P.M. HOW would you like to check sales of envelopes in the five-and-dimes?”

“Archie might try it.” It was a sign we were all good friends when Wolfe, speaking to Cramer, called me Archie. Usually it was Mr. Goodwin. “What about those cylinders?”

“They were dictated by Boone on March 19th and typed by Miss Gunther on the 20th. The carbons are in Washington and the FBI has checked them. Miss Gunther can’t understand it, except on the assumption that Boone picked up the wrong case when he left his office Tuesday afternoon, and she says he didn’t often make mistakes like that. But if that was it the case containing the cylinders he dictated Tuesday afternoon ought to be still in his office in Washington, and it isn’t. No sign of it. There’s one other possibility. We’ve asked everyone concerned not to leave the city, but on Thursday the BPR asked permission for Miss Gunther to go to Washington on urgent business, and we let her. She flew down and back. She had a suitcase with her.”

Wolfe shuddered. The idea of people getting on airplanes voluntarily was too much for him. He flashed a glance at Cramer. “I see you have eliminated nothing. Was Miss Gunther alone on her trip?”

“She went down alone. Dexter and two other BPR men came back with her.”

“She has no difficulty explaining her movements?”

“She has no difficulty explaining anything. That young woman has no difficulty explaining period.”

Wolfe nodded. “I believe Archie agrees with you.” The beer had arrived, escorted by Fritz, and he was pouring. “I suppose you’ve had a talk with Mr. O’Neill.”

“A talk?” Cramer raised his hands, one of them holding a glass of beer. “Saint Agnes! Have I had a talk with that bird!”

“Yes, he talks. As Archie told you, he was curious about what was on those cylinders.”

“He still is.” Cramer had half emptied his glass and hung onto it. “The damn fool thought he could keep that envelope. He wanted to have a private dick, not you, investigate it, so he said.” He drank again. “Now there’s an example of what this case is like. Would you want a better lead than an envelope like that? BPR stock, special delivery, one stamp canceled and the others not, typewritten address? Shall I tell you in detail what we’ve done, including trying a thousand typewriters?”

“I think not.”

“I think not too. It would only take all night to tell you. The goddam post office says it’s too bad they can’t help us, but with all the new girls they’ve got, stamps canceled, stamps not canceled, you never can tell.” Cramer emptied the bottle into the glass. “You heard that crack I made to Rowcliffe about my losing my job.”

“That?” Wolfe waved it away.

“Yeah I know,” Cramer agreed. “I’ve made it before. It’s a habit. All inspectors tell their wives every evening that they’ll probably be captains tomorrow. But this time I don’t know. From the standpoint of a Homicide Squad inspector, an atom bomb would be a baby firecracker compared to this damn thing. The Commissioner has got St. Vitus’s Dance. The D.A. is trying to pretend his turn doesn’t come until it’s time to panel a jury. The Mayor is having nightmares, and he must have got it in a dream that if there wasn’t any Homicide Squad there wouldn’t be any murders, at least not any involving big-time citizens. So it’s all my fault. I mustn’t get tough with refined people who have got to the point where they employ tax experts to make sure they’re not cheating the government. On the other hand, I must realize that public sentiment absolutely demands that the murderer of Cheney Boone shall not go unpunished. It’s six days since it happened, and here by God I sit beefing to you.”

He drank his glass empty, put it down, and used the back of his hand for a napkin. “That’s the situation, my fat friend, as Charlie McCarthy said to Herbert Hoover. Look what I’m doing, letting you take the wheel is what it amounts to, at least long enough for you to run me in a ditch if you happen to need to. I know damn well that no client of yours has ever been convicted of murder, and in this case your clients—”

“No man is my client,” Wolfe interposed. “My client is an association. An association can’t commit murder.”

“Maybe not. Even so, I know how you work. If you thought it was necessary, in the interest of the client — I guess here he comes or here it comes.”

The doorbell had rung. I went to answer it, and found that Cramer’s guess was right. This first arrival was a piece of our client, in the person of Hattie Harding. She seemed out of breath. There in the hall she gripped my arm and wanted to know:

“What is it? Have they — what is it?”

I used the hand of my other arm to pat her shoulder. “No, no, calm down. You’re all tense. We’ve decided to have these affairs twice a week, that’s all.”

I took her to the office and put her to helping me with chairs.

From then on they dribbled in, one by one. Purley Stebbins arrived and apologized to his boss for not making it quicker, and took him aside to explain something. G. G. Spero of the FBI was third and Mrs. Boone fourth. Along about the middle Solomon Dexter returned, and finding the red leather chair unoccupied at the moment, copped it for himself. The Erskine family came separately, a quarter of an hour apart, and so did Breslow and Winterhoff. On the whole, as I let them in, they returned my greeting as a fellow member of the human race, one word or none, but there were two exceptions. Don O’Neill looked straight through me and conveyed the impression that if I touched his coat it would have to be sent to the cleaners, so I let him put it on the rack himself. Alger Kates acted as if I was paid to do the job, so no embraces were called for. Nina Boone, who came late, smiled at me. I didn’t imagine it; she smiled right at me. To repay her, I saw to it that she got the same position she had had before, the chair next to mine.