Rex Stout - The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

“I’m answering your questions. And so far I haven’t told you a lie. I doubt if you could say as much.”

“Why, what did I tell you that wasn’t true?”

“I have no idea. Not yet. I will have. Go ahead.”

I broke in, to Wolfe. “Excuse me, but I have no precedent for this, you being grilled by a murder suspect. Am I supposed to take it down?”

He ignored me and repeated to her, “Go ahead. Mr. Goodwin was merely making an opportunity to call you a murder suspect.”

She was concentrating and also ignored me. “Do you think,” she asked, “that the use of the monkey wrench, which no one could have known would be there, proves that the murder was unpremeditated?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the murderer could have come armed, have seen the wrench, and decided to use it instead.”

“But it might have been unpremeditated?”

“Yes.”

“Has any NIA man said anything to you that indicated that he or any of them might know who took that leather case or what happened to it?”

“No.”

“Or where it is now?”

“No.”

“Have you any idea who the murderer is?”

“No.”

“Why did you send Mr. Goodwin after me? Why me, instead of-oh, anyone?”

“Because you had stayed away and I wanted to find out why.”

She stopped, sat erect, sipped at her glass again, draining it, and brushed her hair back.

“This is a lot of nonsense,” she said emphatically. “I could go on asking you questions for hours, and how would I know that a single thing you told me was the truth? For instance, I would give I don’t know what for that case. You say that as far as you know no one knows what happened to it or where it is, and it may be in this room right now, there in your desk.” She looked at the glass, saw it empty, and put it down on the check-writing table.

Wolfe nodded. “That is always the difficulty. I was under the same handicap with you.”

“But I have nothing to lie about!”

“Pfui. Everybody has something to lie about. Go ahead.”

“No.” She stood up and saw to her skirt. “It’s perfectly useless. I’ll go home and go to bed. Look at me. Do I look like a played-out hag?”

That startled him again. His attitude toward women was such that they rarely asked him what they looked like.

He muttered, “No.”

“But I am,” she declared. “That’s the way it always affects me. The tireder I get the less I look it. Tuesday I got the hardest blow I ever got in my life, and since then I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep, and look at me.” She turned to me. “Would you mind showing me which way to go for a taxi?”

“I’ll run you up,” I told her. “I have to put the car away anyhow.”

She told Wolfe good night, and we got our things on and went out and climbed in. She let her head fall back against the cushion and closed her eyes for a second, then opened then, straightened up, and flashed a glance at me.

“So you took Nero Wolfe on,” I remarked, as to a comparative stranger.

“Don’t be aloof,” she said. She reached to put her fingers around my arm, three inches below the shoulder, and press. “Don’t pay any attention to that. It doesn’t mean anything. Once in a while I like to feel a man’s arm, that’s all.”

“Okay, I’m a man.”

“So I suspected.”

“When this is over I’d be glad to teach you how to play pool or look up words in the dictionary.”

“Thanks.” I thought she shivered. “When this is all over.”

When we stopped for a light in the upper Forties she said, “You know, I believe I’m going to be hysterical. But don’t pay attention to that either.”

I looked at her, and there certainly wasn’t any sign of it in her voice or her face. I never saw anyone act less hysterical. When I pulled up at the curb at her address, she hopped out before I could move and stuck her hand in.

“Good night. Or what is the protocol? Does a detective shake hands with one of the suspects?”

“Sure.” We shook. It fitted nicely. “To get her off her guard.”

She disappeared inside, probably to give the doorman a brief glance on her way to the elevator, to strengthen his motive.

When I got back home, after putting the car away, and stopped in the office to make sure the safe was locked, there was a scribbled note lying on my desk:

Archie: Do not communicate further with Miss Gunther except on my order. A woman who is not a fool is dangerous. I don’t like this case and shall decide tomorrow whether to abandon it and refund the retainer. In the morning get Panzer and Gore here. NW

Which gave me a rough idea of the state of confusion he was in, the way the note contradicted itself. Saul Panzer’s rate was thirty bucks a day, and Bill Gore’s was twenty, not to mention expenses, and his committing himself to such an outlay was absolute proof that there would be no retainer refund. He was merely appealing for my sympathy because he had taken on such a hard job. I went up two flights to my room, glancing at the door of his as I passed it on the first landing, and noting that the little red light was on, showing that he had flipped the switch for the alarm connection.

Chapter 12

I REALIZED ALL THE more how hard the job was likely to be when, the next morning after Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock, I heard him giving Saul Panzer and Bill Gore their instructions.

To anyone seeing him but not knowing him, Saul Panzer was nothing but a little guy with a big nose who never quite caught up with his shaving. To the few who knew him, Wolfe and me for instance, those details meant nothing. He was the one free-lance operative in New York who, year in and year out, always had at least ten times more jobs offered him than he had the time or inclination to take. He never turned Wolfe down if he could possibly help it. That morning he sat with his old brown cap on his knee, taking no notes because he never had to, while Wolfe described the situation and told him to spend as many hours or days at the Waldorf as might be necessary, milking and gathering eggs. He was to cover everything and everybody.

Bill Gore was full size and unpolished, and one glance at the top of his head showed that he was doomed. He would be bald in another five years. His immediate objective was the NIA office, where he was to compile certain lists and records. Erskine had been phoned to and had promised co-operation.

After they had departed I asked Wolfe, “Is it really as bad as that?”

He frowned at me. “As bad as what?”

“You know darned well what. Fifty dollars a day for the dregs. Where is there any genius in that?”

“Genius?” His frown became a scowl. “What can genius do with this confounded free-for-all? A thousand people, all with motive and opportunity, and the means at hand! Why the devil I ever let you persuade me-”