Rex Stout - The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

“No, sir,” I said loudly and firmly. “Don’t try it! When I saw how tough this was going to be, and then when I read that note you left for me last night, it was obvious you would try to blame it on me. Nothing doing. I admit I didn’t know how desperate it was until I heard you telling Saul and Bill to dive into the holes the cops have already cleaned out. You don’t have to admit you’re licked. You can wriggle out. I’ll draw a check to the NIA for their ten thousand, and you can dictate a letter to them saying that on account of having caught the mumps, or perhaps it would be better-”

“Shut up,” he growled. “How can I return money I haven’t received?”

“But you have. The check was in the morning mail and I’ve deposited it.”

“Good God. It’s in the bank?”

“Yes, sir.”

He pushed the button, savagely, for beer. He was as close to being in a panic as I remembered seeing him.

“So you have nothing,” I said without mercy. “Nothing whatever?”

“Certainly I have something.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Something Mr. O’Neill said yesterday afternoon. Something very peculiar.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Not for you. I’ll put Saul or Bill on it tomorrow.”

I didn’t believe a word of it. For ten minutes I went over in my mind everything I remembered Don O’Neill saying, and then believed it less than ever.

All day Saturday he had no jobs for me connected with the Boone case, not even a phone call to make. The calls all came the other way, and there were plenty of those. Most of them, from newspapers and Cramer’s office and so on, were nothing but blah. Two of them were merely comic relief:

Winterhoff, the Man of Distinction, phoned around noon. He wanted something for his money right away. The cops were after him. Many hours of questioning about fourteen people had got it settled that it was he who had suggested the little room near the stage for Boone’s privacy and had escorted him there, and he was being harassed. He had explained that his knowledge of the room had come from his participation in previous affairs on those premises, but they weren’t satisfied. He wanted Wolfe to certify to his innocence and instruct the police to let him alone. His order wasn’t filled.

Just before lunch there was a call from a man with an educated voice who said his name was Adamson, of counsel for the NIA. His tone implied that he wasn’t very crazy about Wolfe’s being hired anyway, and he wanted practically everything, including a daily report of all actions. He insisted on speaking to Wolfe, which was a mistake on his part, because if he had been willing to talk with me I might at least have treated him with common courtesy.

Another thing the NIA wanted the very day we got their retainer check was something we couldn’t have furnished even if we had felt like it. This request was brought by their Hattie Harding in person, in the middle of the afternoon, just after Wolfe went up to the orchids. I took her to the office and we sat on the couch. She was still well put together and well dressed, and her eyes were still competent, but the strain was telling on her. She looked much nearer forty-eight than twenty-six.

She had come to yell for help, though she didn’t put it that way. To hear her tell it, there was hell to pay from coast to coast and the end of the world was expected any minute. Public Relations was on its last legs. Hundreds of telegrams were pouring into the NIA office, from members and friends all over the country, telling of newspaper editorials, of resolutions passed by Chambers of Commerce and all sorts of clubs and groups, and of talk in the street. Even-this was strictly off the record-eleven resignations had been received from members, one a member of the Board of Directors. Something had to be done.

I asked what.

Something, she said.

“Like catching the murderer?”

“That, of course.” She seemed to regard that as a mere detail. “But something to stop this insane hullabaloo. Perhaps a statement signed by a hundred prominent citizens. Or telegrams urging sermons tomorrow-tomorrow is Sunday-”

“Are you suggesting that Mr. Wolfe should send telegraphs to fifty thousand preachers and priests and rabbis?”

“No, of course.” Her hands fluttered. “But something-something-”

“Listen, P.R.” I patted her on the knee to quiet her. “You are stricken, I appreciate that. But the NIA seems to think this is a department store. Who you want is not Nero Wolfe but Russell Birdwell or Eddie Bernays. This is a specialty shop. All we’re going to do is catch the murderer.”

“Oh, my God,” she said. Then she added, “I doubt it.”

“Doubt what?” I stared at her. “That we’re going to catch him?”

“Yes. That anyone is.”

“Why?”

“I just doubt it.” She met my gaze, competently. Then her eyes changed. “Look, this is off the record?”

“Sure, you and me. And my boss, but he never tells anybody anything.”

“I’m fed up.” She worked her jaw like a man, no lip trembling. “I’m going to quit and get a job sewing on buttons. The day anyone catches the murderer of Cheney Boone, finds him and proves it on him, it will rain up instead of down. In fact it will-”

I nodded encouragingly. “What else will it do?”

She abruptly got to her feet. “I’m talking too much.”

“Oh, no, not enough. You’ve just started. Sit down.”

“No, thank you.” Her eyes were competent again. “You’re the first man I’ve collapsed in front of for a long, long time. For heaven’s sake, don’t get the idea that I know secrets and try to dig them out of me. It’s just that this thing is more than I can handle and I’ve lost my head. Don’t bother to let me out.”

She went.

When Wolfe came down to the office at six o’clock I reported the conversation in full. At first he decided not to be interested, then changed his mind. He wanted my opinion and I gave it to him, that I doubted if she knew anything that would help much, and even if she did she was through collapsing in front of me, but he might have a go at her.

He grunted. “Archie. You are transparent. What you mean is that you don’t want to bother with her, and you don’t want to bother with her because Miss Gunther has got you fidgeting.”

I said coldly, “I don’t fidget.”

“Miss Gunther has got you on a string.”

Usually I stay right with him when he takes that line, but there was no telling how far he might go in the case of Phoebe Gunther and I didn’t want to resign in the middle of a murder job, so I cut it off by going to the front door for the evening papers.

We get two of each, to avoid friction, and I handed him his share and sat at my desk with mine. I looked at the Gazette first, and on the front page saw headlines that looked like news. It was. Mrs. Boone had got something in the mail.

One detail that I believe I haven’t mentioned before was Boone’s wallet. I haven’t mentioned it because its being taken by the murderer provided no new angle on the crime or the motive, since he hadn’t carried money in it. His money had been in a billfold in his hip pocket and hadn’t been touched. He had carried the wallet in the breast pocket of his coat and used it for miscellaneous papers and cards, and it had not been found on the body, and therefore it was presumed that the murderer had taken it. The news in the Gazette was that Mrs. Boone had received an envelope in the mail that morning, with her name and address printed on it with a lead pencil, and in it had been two objects that Boone had always carried in the wallet: his automobile license and a photograph of Mrs. Boone in her wedding dress. The Gazette article remarked that the sender must be both a sentimentalist and a realist; sentimental, because the photo was returned; realist, because the auto license, which was still of use, had been returned, while Boone’s operator’s license, which he had also kept in the wallet, had not been. The Gazette writer was picturesque about it, saying that the operator’s license had been canceled with a monkey wrench.