Рекс Стаут - The Silent Speaker

It proved to be the one other person.

“Goodwin talking.”

“Archie. Get down here at once.”

“What for?”

“Without delay!”

“But listen. We’re just leaving, to see Mrs. Boone. I’ve got her to agree to see me. I’ll put her through a—”

“I said get down here.”

There was no use arguing. He sounded as if six tigers were crouching before him, lashing their tails, ready to spring. I went back to the table and told Nina that our afternoon was ruined.

Having delivered Nina at the Waldorf entrance, with my pet bribee on our tail in a taxi, and having crowded the lights and the congested traffic down and across to West Thirty-fifth Street, I was relieved to see, as I reached my destination and braked to a stop at the curb, that the house wasn’t on fire. There were only two foreign items visible: a police car parked smack in front of the address, and a man on the stoop. He was seated on the top step, hunched over, looking gloomy and obstinate.

This one I knew by name, one Quayle. He was on his feet by the time I had mounted the steps, and accosted me with what was meant to be cordiality.

“Hello, Goodwin! This is a piece of luck. Don’t anybody ever answer the bell here when you’re away? I’ll just go in with you.”

“Unexpected pleasure,” I told him, and used my key, turned the knob, and pushed. The door opened two inches and stopped. The chain bolt was on, as it often was during my absence. My finger went to the button and executed my private ring. In a minute Fritz’s step came down the hall and he spoke to me through the crack:

“Archie, that’s a policeman. Mr. Wolfe doesn’t—”

“Of course he doesn’t. Take off the bolt. Then keep your eye on us. This officer eagerly performing his duty might lose his balance and fall down the stoop, and I may need you as a witness that I didn’t push him. He must be twice my age.”

“You witty son of a bitch,” Quayle said sadly, and sat down on the step again. I entered, marched down the hall to the office, and saw Wolfe there alone behind his desk, sitting up straight as a ramrod, his lips pressed together in a thin straight line, his eyes wide open, his hands resting on the desk before him with the fingers curved ready for a throat.

His eyes darted at me. “What the devil took you so long?”

“Now just a minute,” I soothed him. “Aware that you were having a fit, I made it as fast as I could in the traffic. Is it a pinch?”

“It is insufferable. Who is Inspector Ash?”

“Ash? You remember him. He was a captain under Cramer from 1938 to ’43. Now in charge of Homicide in Queens. Tall guy, face all bones, plastic eyes, very incorruptible and no sense of humor. Why, what has he done?”

“Is the car in good condition?”

“Certainly. Why?”

“I want you to drive me to Police Headquarters.”

“My God.” So it was something not only serious, but drastic. Leaving the house, getting in the car, incurring all the outdoor risks, visiting a policeman; and besides all that, which was unheard of, almost certainly standing up the orchids for the regular four o’clock date. I dropped onto a chair, speechless, and gawked at him.

“Luckily,” Wolfe said, “when that man arrived the door was bolted. He told Fritz that he had come to take me to see Inspector Ash. When Fritz gave him the proper reply he displayed a warrant for me as a material witness regarding the murder of Miss Gunther. He pushed the warrant in through the crack in the door and Fritz pushed it out again and closed the door, and, through the glass panel, saw him walk toward the corner, presumably to telephone, since he left his car there in front of my house.”

“That alone,” I remarked, “leaving his car in front of your house, shows the kind of man he is. It’s not even his car. It belongs to the city.”

Wolfe didn’t even hear me. “I called Inspector Cramer’s office and was told he was not available. I finally succeeded in reaching some person who spoke in behalf of Inspector Ash, and was told that the man they had sent here had reported by telephone, and that unless I admitted him, accepted service of the warrant, and went with him, a search warrant would be sent without delay. I then, with great difficulty, got to the Police Commissioner. He has no guts. He tried to be evasive. He made what he called a concession, stating that I could come to his office instead of Inspector Ash’s. I told him that only by using physical force could I be transported in any vehicle not driven by you, and he said they would wait for me until half-past three but no longer. An ultimatum with a time limit. He also said that Mr. Cramer has been removed from the Boone-Gunther case and relieved of his command and has been replaced by Inspector Ash. That’s the situation. It is unacceptable.”

I was staring incredulously. “Cramer got the boot?”

“So Mr. What’s-his-name said.”

“Who, Hombert? The Commissioner?”

“Yes. Confound it, must I repeat the whole thing for you?”

“For God’s sake, don’t. Try to relax. I’ll be damned. They got Cramer.” I looked at the clock. “It’s five past three, and that ultimatum has probably got narrow margins. You hold it a minute and try to think of something pleasant.”

I went to the front and pulled the curtain aside for a look through the glass, and saw that Quayle had acquired a colleague. The pair were sitting on the stoop with their backs to me. I opened the door and inquired affably:

“What’s the program now?”

Quayle twisted around. “We’ve got another paper. Which we’ll show when the time comes. The kind of law that opens all doors from the mightiest to the humblest.”

“To be shown when? Three-thirty?”

“Go suck a pickle.”

“Aw, tell him,” the colleague growled. “What do you expect to get out of it, fame?”

“He’s witty,” Quayle said petulantly. He twisted back to me. “At three-thirty we phone in again for the word.”

“That’s more like it,” I declared approvingly. “And what happens if I emerge with a large object resembling Nero Wolfe and wedge him into my car and drive off? Do you flash your first paper and interfere?”

“No. We follow you if it’s straight to Centre Street. If you try detouring by way of Yonkers that’s different.”

“Okay. I’m accepting your word of honor. If you forget what you said and try to grab him I’ll complain to the Board of Health. He’s sick.”

“What with?”

“Sitzenlust. Chronic. The opposite of wanderlust. You wouldn’t want to jeopardize a human life, would you?”

“Yes.”

Satisfied, I closed the door and returned to the office and told Wolfe, “All set. In spite of our having outriders I’m game either for Centre Street or for a dash for Canada, however you feel. You can tell me after we’re in the car.”

He started to get erect, his lips compressed tighter than ever.

You are not an attorney,” Inspector Ash declared in an insulting tone, though the statement was certainly not an insult in itself. “Nothing that has been said or written to you by anyone whatever has the status of a privileged communication.”

It was not a convention as I had expected. Besides Wolfe and me the only ones present were Ash, Police Commissioner Hombert, and District Attorney Skinner, which left Hombert’s spacious and well-furnished corner office looking practically uninhabited, even considering that Wolfe counted for three. At least he was not undergoing downright physical hardship, since there had been found available a chair large enough to accommodate his beam without excessive squeezing.

But he was conceding nothing. “That remark,” he told Ash in his most objectionable tone, “is childish. Suppose I have been told something that I don’t want you to know about. Would I admit the fact and then refuse to tell you about it on the ground that it was a privileged communication? Pfui! Suppose you kept after me. I would simply tell you a string of lies and then what?”