Rex Stout: The Zero Clue

“We sure did.” Cramer came forward in his chair with a hand stretched. “Let me have it.”

It was a demand, not a request, and Wolfe reacted impulsively. If he had taken a second to think he would have realized that if he claimed it he would have to earn it, or at least pretend to, but Cramer’s tone of voice was the kind of provocation he would not take. He returned the bills to the envelope and put it in his pocket.

“It’s mine,” he stated.

“It’s evidence,” Cramer growled, “and I want it.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Evidence of what? As an officer of the law, you should be acquainted with it.” He tapped his pocket with a fingertip. “My property. Connect it, or connect me, with a crime.”

Cramer was controlling himself, which wasn’t easy under the circumstances. “I might have known,” he said bitterly. “You want to be connected with a crime? Okay. I don’t know how many times I’ve sat in this chair and listened to you making assumptions. I’m not saying you never make good on them, I just say you’re strong on assumptions. Now I’ve got some of my own to offer, but first here are a few facts. In that building on Thirty-seventh Street, Heller lived on the fourth floor and worked on the fifth, the top floor. At five minutes to ten this morning, on good evidence, he left his living quarters to go up to his office. Goodwin says he entered that office at ten-twenty-eight, so if the body was in the closet when Goodwin was there — and it almost certainly was — Heller was killed between nine-fifty-five and ten-twenty-eight. We can’t find anyone who heard the shot, and the way that room is proofed we probably never will. We’ve tested it.”

Cramer squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, a trick of his. “Very well. From the doorman we’ve got a list of everyone who entered the place during that period, and most of them have been collected, and we’re getting the others. There were six of them. The nurse, Susan Maturo, left before Goodwin went up, and the other five left later, at intervals, when they got tired waiting for Heller to show up — according to them. As it stands now, and I don’t see what could change it, one of them killed Heller. Any of them, on leaving the elevator at the fifth floor, could have gone to Heller’s office and shot him, and then to the waiting room.”

Wolfe muttered, “Putting the body in the closet?”

“Of course, to postpone its discovery. If someone happened to see the murderer leaving the office, he had to be able to say he had gone in to look for Heller and Heller wasn’t there, and he couldn’t if the body was there in sight. There are marks on the floor where the body — and Heller was a featherweight — was dragged to the closet. In leaving, he left the door ajar, to make it more plausible, if someone saw him, that he had found it that way. Also—”

“Fallacy.”

“I’ll tell him you said so the first chance I get. Also, of course, he couldn’t leave the building. Knowing that Heller started to see callers at eleven o’clock, those people had all come early so as not to have a long wait. Including the murderer. He had to go to the waiting room and wait with the others. One of them did leave, the nurse, and she made a point of telling Goodwin why she was going, and it’s up to her to make it stick under questioning.”

“You were going to connect me with a crime.”

“Right.” Cramer was positive. “First one more fact. The gun was in the closet with the body, under it on the floor. It’s an old Gustein flug, a nasty little short-nose, and there’s not a chance in a thousand of tracing it, though we’re trying. Now here are my assumptions. The murderer went armed to kill, pushed the button at the door of Heller’s office, and was admitted. Since Heller went to his desk and sat, he couldn’t—”

“Established?”

“Yes. He couldn’t have been in fear of a mortal attack. But after some conversation, which couldn’t have been more than a few minutes on account of the timetable as verified, he was not only in fear, he felt that death was upon him, and in that super-soundproofed room he was helpless. The gun had been drawn and was aimed at him. He knew it was all up. He talked, trying to stall, not because he had any hope of living, but because he wanted to leave a message to be read after he was dead. Shaking with nervousness, with a trembling hand, perhaps a pleading one, he upset the jar of pencils on his desk, and then he nervously fumbled with them, moving them around on the desk in front of him, all the while talking. Then the gun went off, and he wasn’t nervous any more. The murderer circled the desk, made sure his victim was dead, and dragged the body to the closet. It didn’t occur to him that the scattered pencils had been arranged to convey a message — if it had, one sweep of a hand would have taken care of it. It was desperately urgent for him to get out of there and into the waiting room.”

Cramer stood up. “If you’ll let me have eight pencils I’ll show you how they were.”

Wolfe opened his desk drawer, but I got there first with a handful taken from my tray. Cramer moved around to Wolfe’s side, and Wolfe, making a face, moved his chair to make room.

“I’m in Heller’s place at his desk,” Cramer said, “and I’m putting them as he did from where he sat.” After getting the eight pencils arranged to his satisfaction, he stepped aside. “There it is, take a look.”

Wolfe inspected it from his side, and I from mine. It was like this from Wolfe’s side:

“You say,” Wolfe inquired, “that was a message?”

“Yes,” Cramer asserted. “It has to be.”

“By mandate? Yours?”

“Blah. You know damn well there’s not one chance in a million those pencils took that pattern by accident. Goodwin, you saw them. Were they like that?”

“Approximately,” I conceded. “I didn’t know there was a corpse in the closet at the time, so I wasn’t as interested in it as you were. But since you ask me, the pencil points were not all in the same direction, and an eraser from one of them was there in the middle.” I put a fingertip on the spot. “Right there.”

“Fix it as you saw it.”

I went around and joined them at Wolfe’s side of the desk and did as requested, removing an eraser from one of the pencils and placing it as I had indicated. Then it was like this:

“Of course,” I said, “you had the photographer shoot it. I don’t say that’s exact, but they were pointing in different directions, and the eraser was there.”

“Didn’t you realize it was a message?”

“Nuts. Someday you’ll set a trap that’ll catch me, and I’ll snarl. Sure, I thought it was Heller’s way of telling me he had gone to the bathroom and would be back in eight minutes. Eight pencils, see? Pretty clever. Isn’t that how you read it?”

“It is not.” Cramer was emphatic. “I think Heller turned it sideways to make it less likely that his attacker would see what it was. Move around here, please. Both of you. Look at it from here.”

Wolfe and I joined him at the left end of the desk and looked as requested. One glance was enough. You can see what we saw by turning the page a quarter-turn counterclockwise.

Cramer spoke. “Could you ask for a plainer NW?”

“I could,” I objected. “Why the extra pencil on the left of the W?”

“He put it there deliberately, for camouflage, to make it less obvious, or it rolled there accidentally, I don’t care which. It is unmistakably NW.” He focused on Wolfe. “I promised to connect you with a crime.”