Рекс Стаут - The Silent Speaker

I had to hand it to the Police Department as inviters. It was ten-forty, just an hour and ten minutes since Cramer had phoned Rowcliffe to get up a party. I stood and looked them over, checking off, and then turned to Wolfe and told him:

“It’s the same as last time, Miss Gunther just doesn’t like crowds. They’re all here except her.”

Wolfe moved his eyes over the assemblage, slowly from right to left and back again, like a man trying to make up his mind which shirt to buy. They were all seated, divided into two camps as before, except that Winterhoff and Erskine the father were standing over by the globe talking in undertones. From the standpoint of gaiety the party was a dud before it ever started. One second there would be a buzz of conversation, and the next second dead silence; then that would get on someone’s nerves and the buzz would start again. A photographer could have taken a shot of that collection of faces and called it I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.

Cramer came to my desk and used the phone and then told Wolfe, leaning over to him, “They got Miss Gunther at her apartment over an hour ago, and she said she’d come immediately.”

Wolfe shrugged. “We won’t wait. Go ahead.”

Cramer turned to face the guests, cleared his throat, and raised his voice:

“Ladies and gentlemen!” There was instant silence. “I want you to understand why you were asked to come here, and exactly what’s going on. I suppose you read the papers. According to the papers, at least some of them, the police are finding this case too hot to handle on account of the people involved, and they’re laying down on the job. I think every single person here knows how much truth there is in that. I guess all of you feel, or nearly all of you, that you’re being pestered and persecuted on account of something that you had nothing to do with. The newspapers have their angle, and you have yours. I suppose it was an inconvenience to all of you to come here this evening, but you’ve got to face it that there’s no way out of it, and you’ve got to blame that inconvenience not on the police or anybody else except one person, the person who killed Cheney Boone. I’m not saying that person is in this room. I admit I don’t know. He may be a thousand miles from here—”

“Is that,” Breslow barked, “what you got us here to listen to? We’re heard all that before!”

“Yeah, I know you have.” Cramer was trying not to sound sour. “We didn’t get you here to listen to me. I am now turning this over to Mr. Wolfe, and he will proceed, after I say two things. First, you got the request to come here from my office, but from here on it is not official. I am responsible for getting you here and that’s all. As far as I’m concerned you can all get up and go if you feel like it. Second, some of you may feel that this is improper because Mr. Wolfe has been engaged to work on this case by the National Industrial Association. That may be so. All I can say is, if you feel that way you can stay here and keep that in mind, or you can leave. Suit yourselves.”

He looked around. Nobody moved or spoke. Cramer waited ten seconds and then turned and nodded at Wolfe.

Wolfe heaved a deep sigh and opened up with a barely audible murmur:

“One thing Mr. Cramer mentioned, the inconvenience you people are being forced to endure, requires a little comment. I ask your forbearance while I make it. It is only by that kind of sacrifice on the part of persons, sometimes many persons, who are themselves wholly blameless—”

I hated to disturb his flow, because I knew from long experience that at last he was really working. He had resolved to get something out of that bunch if he had to keep them there all night. But there was no help for it, on account of the expression on Fritz’s face. A movement out in the hall had caught my eye, and Fritz was standing there, four feet back from the door to the office, which was standing open, staring wide-eyed at me. When he saw I was looking at him he beckoned to me to come, and the thought popped into my mind that, with guests present and Wolfe making an oration, that was precisely how Fritz would act if the house was on fire. The whole throng was between him and me, and I circled around behind them for my exit. Wolfe kept on talking. As soon as I made the hall I closed the door behind me and asked Fritz:

“Something biting you?”

“It’s — it’s—” He stopped and set his teeth on his lip. Wolfe had been trying to train Fritz for twenty years not to get excited. He tried again: “Come and I’ll show you.”

He dived for the kitchen and I followed, thinking it was some culinary calamity that he couldn’t bear up under alone, but he went to the door to the back stairs, the steps that led down to what we called the basement, though it was only three feet below the street level. Fritz slept down there in the room that faced the street. There was an exit through a little hall to the front; first a heavy door out to a tiny vestibule which was underneath the stoop, and then an iron gate, a grill, leading to a paved areaway from which five steps mounted to the sidewalk. It was in the tiny vestibule that Fritz stopped and I bumped into him.

He pointed down. “Look.” He put his hand on the gate and gave it a little shake. “I came to see if the gate was locked, the way I always do.”

There was an object huddled on the concrete of the areaway, up against the gate, so that the gate couldn’t be opened without pushing the object aside. I squatted to peer. The light there was dim, since the nearest street lamp was on the other side of the stoop, thirty paces away, but I could see well enough to tell what the object was, though not for certain who it was.

“What the hell did you bring me here for?” I demanded, pushing past Fritz to re-enter the basement. “Come with me.”

He was at my heels as I mounted the stairs. In the kitchen I detoured to jerk open a drawer and get a flashlight, and then went down the main hall to the front door, out to the stoop and down to the sidewalk, and down the five steps to the areaway. There, on the same side of the gate as the object, I squatted again and switched on the flashlight. Fritz was beside me, bending over.

“Shall I—” His voice was shaking and he had to start again. “Shall I hold the light?”

After half a minute I straightened up, told him, “You stay right here,” and headed for the stoop. Fritz had pulled the front door shut, and when I found myself fumbling to get the key in the hole I stood erect to take a deep breath and that stopped the fumbling. I went down the hall to the kitchen, to the phone there, and dialed the number of Dr. Vollmer, who lived down the street only half a block away. There were six buzzes before he answered.

“Doc? Archie Goodwin. Got your clothes on? Good. Get here as fast as you can. There’s a woman lying in our areaway, by the gate to the basement, been hit on the head, and I think she’s dead. There’ll be cops on it, so don’t shift her more than you have to. Right now? Okay.”

I took another breath, filling my chest, then took Fritz’s pad and pencil and wrote:

Phoebe Gunther is in our areaway dead. Hit on the head. Have phoned Vollmer .

I tore off the sheet and went to the office. I suppose I had been gone six minutes, not more, and Wolfe was still doing a monologue, with thirteen pairs of eyes riveted on him. I sidled around to the right, got to his desk, and handed him the note. He got it at a glance, gave it a longer glance, flashed one at me, and spoke without any perceptible change in tone or manner:

“Mr. Cramer. If you please. Mr. Goodwin has a message for you and Mr. Stebbins. Will you go with him to the hall?”

Cramer and Stebbins got up. As we went out Wolfe’s voice was resuming behind us: