Rex Stout - The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret the necessity of giving you this news, thus abruptly, but I must explain why no one can be allowed to leave this room…”

It was an hour later when she finally got to the reception room, and the leather case was gone.

Boone had told her the case contained cylinders he had dictated in his Washington office that afternoon, and that was all she knew. It wasn’t remarkable that he hadn’t told her what the dictation was about, because he seldom did. Since he used other stenographers for all routine stuff, it was understood that any cylinders he turned over to her personally were important and probably confidential. There were twelve such cases in use in Boone’s office, each holding ten cylinders, and they were constantly going back and forth among him and her and other stenographers, since Boone had done nearly all of his dictating on the machine. They were numbered, stamped on top, and this one had been number four. The machine that Boone had used was the Stenophone.

Miss Gunther admitted that she had made a mistake. She had not mentioned the missing case to anyone until Wednesday morning, when the police had asked her what had been in the leather case which she had had with her when she came to the reception room for a cocktail. Some NIA louse had of course told the police about it. She had told the police that she had been ashamed to confess her negligence, and anyway her silence had done no harm, since the case could have had no connection with the murder.

“Four people,” Wolfe murmured, “say that you took the case with you from the reception room to the ballroom.”

Phoebe Gunther nodded, unimpressed. She was drinking Bourbon and water and smoking a cigarette. “You believe them or you believe me. It wouldn’t surprise me if four of that kind of people said they looked through the keyhole and saw me kill Mr. Boone. Or even forty.”

“You mean NIA people. But Mrs. Boone isn’t one.”

“No,” Phoebe agreed. She lifted her shoulders, kept them up a second, and let them down. “Mr. Kates told me what she said. Mrs. Boone doesn’t like me. Yet-I rather doubt if that’s true-I think maybe she does like me, but she hated having her husband depend on me. You notice she didn’t actually lie about it; she didn’t say she saw me have the case when I left the reception room.”

“What did Mr. Boone depend on you for?”

“To do what he told me to.”

“Of course.” Wolfe was merely murmuring. “But what did he get from you? Intelligent obedience? Loyalty? Comfortable companionship? Happiness? Ecstasy?”

“Oh, for the lord’s sake.” She looked mildly disgusted. “You sound like a congressman’s wife. What he got was first-class work. I’m not saying that during the two years I worked for Mr. Boone I was always fresh out of ecstasy, but I never took it to the office with me, and anyway I was saving it up until I met Mr. Goodwin.” She gestured. “You’ve been reading old-fashioned novels too. If you want to know whether I was on terms of sinful intimacy with Mr. Boone, the answer is no. For one thing, he was too busy, and so was I, and anyhow he didn’t strike me that way. I merely worshiped him.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I did.” She gave the impression that she meant it. “He was irritable and he expected too much, he was overweight and he had dandruff, and he nearly drove me crazy trying to keep his schedule under control, but he was honest clear through and the best man in Washington, and he was up against the dirtiest gang of pigs and chiselers on earth. So since I was born weak-minded to begin with, I merely worshiped him, but where he was getting ecstasy I really don’t know.”

That would seem to cover the ecstasy angle. It was around that point, as I filled page after page in my notebook, that I took a sounding of how much of it I believed, and when I found my credibility gauge mounting up into the nineties and still ascending, I disqualified myself for bias.

She had a definite opinion about the murder. She doubted if any number of NIA members were in cahoots on it, probably not even two of them, because they were too cagey to conspire to commit a murder that would be a nationwide sensation. Her idea was that some one member had done it himself or hired it done, and it had to be one whose interests had been so damaged or threatened by Boone that he was willing to disregard the black eye the NIA would get. She accepted Wolfe’s theory that it was now desirable, from the standpoint of the NIA, that the murderer be caught.

“Then doesn’t it follow,” Wolfe asked, “that you and the BPR would prefer not to have him caught?”

“It may follow,” she admitted. “But I’m afraid that personally I’m not that logical, so I don’t feel that way.”

“Because you worshiped Mr. Boone? That’s understandable. But in that case, why didn’t you accept my invitation to come and discuss it last evening?”

She either had it ready or didn’t need to get it ready. “Because I didn’t feel like it. I was tired and I didn’t know who would be here. Between the police and the FBI, I have answered a thousand questions a thousand times each and I needed a rest.”

“But you came with Mr. Goodwin.”

“Certainly. Any girl who needed a rest would go anywhere with Mr. Goodwin, because she wouldn’t have to use her mind.” She didn’t even toss me a glance, but went on, “However, I didn’t intend to stay all night, and its after two, and what about my turn?”

That was when Wolfe looked at the clock and sighed and told her to go ahead.

She shifted in the chair to change pressure, took a couple of sips from her glass and put it down, leaned her head back against the red leather, getting a very nice effect, and asked as if it didn’t matter much one way or the other:

“Who approached you from the NIA, what did they say, what have you agreed to do, and how much are they paying you?”

Wolfe was so startled he almost blinked at her. “Oh, no, Miss Gunther, nothing like that.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “Then it wasn’t a bargain at all.”

He considered, realizing what he had let himself in for. “Very well,” he said, “let’s see. Mr. Erskine and his son, and Mr. Breslow and Mr. Winterhoff came to see me. Later Mr. O’Neill also came. They said many things, but the upshot was that they hired me to investigate. I have agreed to do so and to attempt to catch the murderer. What-”

“No matter who it is?”

“Yes. Don’t interrupt. What they pay will depend on the expenses incurred and what I decide to charge. It will be adequate. I don’t like the NIA. I’m an anarchist.”

He had decided to make the best of it by being whimsical. She ignored that.

“Did they try to persuade you that the murderer is not an NIA member?”

“No.”

“Did you get the impression that they suspect any particular person?”

“No.”

“Do you think one of the five who came to see you committed the murder?”

“No.”

“Do you mean you are satisfied that none of them did commit it?”

“No.”

She made a gesture. “This is silly. You aren’t playing fair. You say nothing but no.”