Рекс Стаут - The Silent Speaker

“It was impractical. She was dead.”

“Oh? Then you didn’t know it all until after she had been killed?”

“Certainly not. How the devil could I? Some of it, yes, it doesn’t matter how much. But when word came from Washington that they had found in Miss Gunther’s apartment, perfunctorily concealed, nine of the cylinders Mr. Boone had dictated the afternoon of his death — nine, not ten — there was the whole story. There was no other acceptable explanation. All questions became paltry and pointless except the one question: where is the tenth cylinder?”

“Wherever you start a sentence,” Hombert complained grouchily, “it always ends on that goddam cylinder!”

Wolfe opened his eyes enough to pick Hombert out. “You try doing a sentence that makes any sense and leave the cylinder out.”

Skinner demanded, “What if she threw it in the river?”

“She didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve already told you. Because she intended to use it, when the time came, to get the murderer punished.”

“What if you’re making your first and only mistake and she did throw it in the river?”

“Drag the river. All the rivers she could reach.”

“Don’t be whimsical. Answer my question.”

Wolfe’s shoulders went perceptibly up and down. “In that case we would be licked. We’d never get him.”

“I think,” Hombert said pointedly, “that it is conceivable that you would like to sell a bill of goods. I don’t say you’re a barefaced liar.”

“I don’t say I’m not, Mr. Hombert. We all take those chances when we exchange words with other people. So I might as well go home—”

“Wait a minute,” Skinner snapped. “Do you mean that as an expert investigator you advise abandoning all lines of inquiry except the search for that cylinder?”

“I shouldn’t think so.” Wolfe frowned, considering. “Especially not with a thousand men or more at your disposal. Of course I don’t know what has been done and what hasn’t, but I know how such things go and I doubt if much has been overlooked in a case of this importance, knowing Mr. Cramer as I do. For instance, that piece of iron pipe; I suppose every possible effort has been made to discover where it came from. The matter of arrivals at my house Monday evening has of course been explored with every resource and ingenuity. The tenants of all the buildings in my block on both sides of the street have naturally been interviewed, on the slim chance, unlikely in that quiet neighborhood, that somebody saw or heard something. The question of opportunity alone, the evening of the dinner at the Waldorf, must have kept a dozen men busy for a week, and perhaps you’re still working on it. Inquiries regarding relationships, both open and concealed, the checking and rechecking of Mr. Dexter’s alibi — these and a thousand other details have unquestionably been competently and thoroughly attended to.”

Wolfe wiggled a finger. “And where are you? So sunk in a bog of futility and bewilderment that you resort to such monkey tricks as ditching Mr. Cramer, replacing him with a buffoon like Mr. Ash, and swearing out a warrant for my arrest! Over a long period I have become familiar with the abilities and performances of the New York police, and I never expected to see the day when the inspector heading the Homicide Squad would try to solve a difficult murder case by dragging me off to a cell, attacking my person, putting me in handcuffs, and threatening me with mayhem!”

“That’s a slight exaggeration. This is not a cell, and I don’t—”

“He intended to,” Wolfe asserted grimly. “He would have. Very well. You have asked me my advice. I would continue, within reason, all lines of inquiry that have already been started, and initiate any others that offer any promise whatever, because no matter what the cylinder gives you — if and when you find it — you will almost certainly need all available scraps of support and corroboration. But the main chance, the only real hope, is the cylinder. I suggest you try this. You both met Miss Gunther? Good. Sit down and shut your eyes and imagine it is last Thursday afternoon, and you are Miss Gunther, sitting in your office in the BPR headquarters in Washington. You have decided what you are going to do with the leather case and the nine eliminated cylinders; forget all that. In your hand is the cylinder, and the question is what to do with it. Here’s what you’re after: you want to preserve it against any risk of damage, you want it easily accessible should you need it on short notice, and you want to be certain that no matter how many people look for it, or who, with whatever persistence and ingenuity, it will not be found.”

Wolfe looked from one to the other. “There’s your little problem, Miss Gunther. Anything so simple, for example, as concealing it there in the BPR office is not even to be considered. Something far above that, something really fine, must be conceived. Your own apartment would be merely ridiculous; you show that you are quite aware of that by disposing of the other nine cylinders as you do. Perhaps the apartment of a friend or colleague you can trust? This is murder; this is of the utmost gravity and of ultimate importance; would you trust any other human being that far? You are ready now to leave, to go to your apartment first and then take a plane to New York. You will probably be in New York some days. Do you take the cylinder with you or leave it in Washington? If so, where? Where? Where?”

Wolfe flipped a hand. “There’s your question, gentlemen. Answer it the way Miss Gunther finally answered it, and your worries are ended.” He stood up. “I am spending a thousand dollars a day trying to learn how Miss Gunther answered it.” He was multiplying by two and it wasn’t his money he was spending, but at least it wasn’t a barefaced lie. “Come, Archie. I want to go home.”

They didn’t want him to go, even then, which was the best demonstration to date of the pitiable condition they were in. They certainly were stymied, flummoxed, and stripped to the bone. Wolfe magnanimously accommodated them by composing a few more well-constructed sentences, properly furnished with subjects, predicates, and subordinate clauses, none of which meant a damn thing, and then marched from the room with me bringing up the rear. He had postponed his exit, I noticed, until after a clerk had entered to deliver some papers to Hombert’s desk, which had occurred just as Wolfe was telling the P.C. and D.A. to shut their eyes and pretend they were Miss Gunther.

Driving back home he sat in the back seat, as usual, clutching the toggle, because of his theory that when — not if and when, just when — the car took a whim to dart aside and smash into some immovable object, your chances in back, hopeless as they were, were slightly better than in front. On the way down to Centre Street I had, on request, given him a sketch of my session with Nina Boone, and now, going home, I filled in the gaps. I couldn’t tell whether it contained any morsel that he considered nutritious, because my back was to him and his face wasn’t in my line of vision in the mirror, and also because the emotions that being in a moving vehicle aroused in him were too overwhelming to leave any room for minor reactions.

As Fritz let us in and we entered the hall and I attended to hat and coat disposal, Wolfe looked almost good-humored. He had beaten a rap and was home safe, and it was only six o’clock, time for beer. But Fritz spoiled it at once by telling us that we had a visitor waiting in the office. Wolfe scowled at him and demanded in a ferocious whisper:

“Who is it?”

“Mrs. Cheney Boone.”

“Good heavens. That hysterical gammer?”

Which was absolutely unfair. Mrs. Boone had been in the house just twice, both times under anything but tranquil circumstances, and I hadn’t seen the faintest indication of hysteria.