Rex Stout: The Squirt and the Monkey

Wolfe glared at him in astonishment. “Do you really dare, sir, in front of me, to my face, to cling to that fantastic tale you told the police? That rigmarole?”

“You’re damn right I do!”

“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “I had hoped, here together, we were prepared to get down to reality. It would have been better to adopt your suggestion to take my information to the police. Perhaps—”

“I made no such suggestion!”

“In this room, Mr. Koven, some fifteen minutes ago?”

“No!”

Wolfe made a face. “I see,” he said quietly. “It’s impossible to get on solid ground with a man like you, but I still have to try. Archie, bring the tape from the kitchen, please?”

I went. I didn’t like it. I thought he was rushing it. Granting that he had been jostled off his stride by Cramer’s arrival, I felt that it was far from one of his best performances, and this looked like a situation where nothing less than his best would do. So I went to the kitchen, passing Cramer in his nook without a glance, told Fritz to stop the machine and wind, and stood and scowled at it turning. When it stopped I removed the wheel and slipped it into a carton and, carton in hand, returned to the office.

“We’re waiting,” Wolfe said curtly.

That hurried me. There was a stack of similar cartons on my desk, and in my haste I knocked them over as I was putting down the one I had brought. It was embarrassing with all eyes on me, and I gave them a cold look as I crossed to the cabinet to get the player. It needed a whole corner of my desk, and I had to shove the tumbled cartons aside to make room. Finally I had the player in position and connected, and the wheel of tape, taken from the carton, in place.

“All right?” I asked Wolfe.

“Go ahead.”

I flipped the switch. There was a crackle and a little spitting, and then Wolfe’s voice came:

“It’s not that, Mr. Koven, not at all. I only doubt if it’s worth it to you, considering the size of my minimum fee, to hire me for anything so trivial as finding a stolen gun, or even discovering the thief. I should think—”

“No!” Wolfe bellowed.

I switched it off. I was flustered. “Excuse it,” I said. “The wrong one.”

“Must I do it myself?” Wolfe asked sarcastically.

I muttered something, turning the wheel to rewind. I removed it, pawed among the cartons, picked one, took out the wheel, put it on, and turned the switch. This time the voice that came on was not Wolfe’s but Koven’s — loud and clear.

“This time you can’t cook up a fancy lie with Goodwin. There are witnesses.”

Then Wolfe’s: “We won’t get anywhere that way, Mr. Koven. We’re all tangled up, and it will take more than blather to get us loose. You don’t want to pay me a million dollars. I don’t want to lose my license. The police don’t want to add another unsolved murder to the long list. The central and dominant factor is the violent death of Mr. Getz, and I propose to deal with that at length. If we can get that settled—”

Koven’s: “You told Miss Lowell you know who killed him. If so, why don’t you tell the police? That ought to settle it.”

Wolfe: “You don’t mean that, Mr. Koven—”

Koven: “You’re damn right I mean it!”

Wolfe: “Then there’s a misunderstanding. I heard Miss Lowell’s talk with you on the phone, both ends of it. I got the impression that my threat to inform the police—”

“That’s enough!” Wolfe called. I turned it off. Wolfe looked at Koven. “I would call that,” he said dryly, “a suggestion that I take my information to the police. Wouldn’t you?”

Koven wasn’t saying. Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Wouldn’t you, Miss Lowell?”

She shook her head. “I’m not an expert on suggestions.”

Wolfe left her. “We won’t quarrel over terms, Mr. Koven. You heard it. Incidentally, about the other tape you heard the start of through Mr. Goodwin’s clumsiness, you may wonder why I haven’t given it to the police to refute you. Monday evening, when Inspector Cramer came to see me, I still considered you as my client and I didn’t want to discomfit you until I heard what you had to say. Before Mr. Cramer left he had made himself so offensive that I was disinclined to tell him anything whatever. Now you are no longer my client. We’ll discuss this matter realistically or not at all. I don’t care to badger you into an explicit statement that you lied to the police; I’ll leave that to you and them; I merely insist that we proceed on the basis of what we both know to be the truth. With that understood—”

“Wait a minute,” Pat Lowell put in. “The gun was in the drawer Sunday morning. I saw it.”

“I know you did. That’s one of the knots in the tangle, and we’ll come to it.” His eyes swept the arc. “We want to know who killed Adrian Getz. Let’s get at it. What do we know about him or her? We know a lot.

“First, he took Koven’s gun from the drawer sometime previous to last Friday and kept it somewhere. For that gun was put back in the drawer when Goodwin’s was removed shortly before Getz was killed, and cartridges from it were placed in Goodwin’s gun.

“Second, the thought of Getz continuing to live was for some reason so repugnant to him as to be intolerable.

“Third, he knew the purpose of Koven’s visit here Saturday evening, and of Goodwin’s errand at the Koven house on Monday, and he knew the details of the procedure planned by Koven and Goodwin. Only with—”

“I don’t know them even yet,” Hildebrand squeaked.

“Neither do I,” Pete Jordan declared.

“The innocent can afford ignorance,” Wolfe told them. “Enjoy it if you have it. Only with that knowledge could he have devised his intricate scheme and carried it out.

“Fourth, his mental processes are devious but defective. His deliberate and spectacular plan to make it appear that Goodwin had killed Getz, while ingenious in some respects, was in others witless. Going to Koven’s office to get Goodwin’s gun from the drawer and placing Koven’s gun there, transferring the cartridges from Koven’s gun to Goodwin’s, proceeding to the room below to find Getz asleep, shooting him in the head, using a pillow to muffle the sound — all that was well enough, competently conceived and daringly executed, but then what? Wanting to make sure that the gun would be quickly found on the spot, a quite unnecessary precaution, he slipped it into the monkey’s cage. That was probably improvisation and utterly brainless. Mr. Goodwin couldn’t possibly be such a vapid fool.

“Fifth, he hated the monkey deeply and bitterly, either on its own account or because of its association with Getz. Having just killed a man, and needing to leave the spot with all possible speed, he went and opened a window, from only one conceivable motive. That took a peculiar, indeed an unexampled, malevolence. I admit it was effective. Miss Lowell tells me the monkey is dying.

“Sixth, he placed Koven’s gun in the drawer Sunday morning and, after it had been seen there, took it out again. That was the most remarkable stratagem of all. Since there was no point in putting it there unless it was to be seen, he arranged that it should be seen. Why? It could only have been that he already knew what was to happen on Monday when Mr. Goodwin came, he had already conceived his scheme for framing Goodwin for the homicide, and he thought he was arranging in advance to discredit Goodwin’s story. So he not only put the gun in the drawer Sunday morning, he also made sure its presence would be noted — and not, of course, by Mr. Koven.”

Wolfe focused on one of them. “You saw the gun in the drawer Sunday morning, Mr. Hildebrand?”