Rex Stout - The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

“But that’s impossible!”

“Nope. Possible and true. I’ll-”

“How do you know?”

“Dates and things. Absolutely.” I stood up. “I’m getting restless. As I say, Mr. Wolfe wants to see you first. With Cramer there’s no telling, especially when he’s hanging on by his fingernails, so let’s go. Kates can come along to protect you if you want him. I’ve got a transcription of the cylinders in my pocket and you can look at it on the way, and I’ll tell-”

A bell rang. Having, though from the outside, heard it ring twice previously, I knew what it was.

I thought goddam it. I asked her in a whisper, “You expecting anybody?”

She shook her head, and the look in her eyes, straight at mine, said plainly that I could name the tune. But of course it was hopeless. Whoever had got by the doorman had also got information. Even so, there’s nothing like trying, so I put a finger to my lips and stood there looking at them-at least I gave Kates a glance. His expression said belligerently, I’m not doing this for you , mister. We had held the tableau maybe ten seconds when a voice I knew well, the voice of Sergeant Purley Stebbins, came loud and irritated through the door.

“Come on, Goodwin, what the hell!”

I marched across and opened up. He came in past me rudely, took off his hat, and began to try to pretend he was a gentleman.

“Good afternoon, Miss Gunther. Good afternoon, Mr. Kates.” He looked at her. “Inspector Cramer would be much obliged if you’d let me drive you down to his office. He’s got some things there he wants you to look at. He told me to tell you they’re Stenophone cylinders.”

I was at his side. “You come right to the point, don’t you, Purley, huh?”

“Oh,” he said, pivoting his big fine empty head, “you still here? I supposed you was gone. The Inspector will be glad to know I ran into you.”

“Nuts.” I dropped him. “Of course you know, Miss Gunther, that you may do as you please. Some people think that when a city employee comes to take them somewhere they have to go. That’s a fallacy, unless he has a document, which he hasn’t.”

“Is that true?” She asked me.

“Yes. That’s true.”

She had stood up when Purley entered. Now she moved across right to me, facing me, and stood looking up to meet my eyes. It wasn’t much of a slant, because her eyes were only about five inches below mine, and therefore it wasn’t a strain for either of us.

“You know,” she said, “you have a way of suggesting things that appeal to me. With all I know about cops and their attitude toward people with power and position and money, and with the little I know about you, even if your boss has been hired by the NIA, I almost think I would let you hold my purse if I had to fix my garter. So you decide for me. I’ll go with you to see Mr. Wolfe, or I’ll go with this oversize sergeant, whichever you say.”

Whereupon I made a mistake. It isn’t so much that I regret it because it was a mistake, since I believe in having my share of everything on my way through life, including mistakes. The trouble was, as I now admit, that I did it not for my sake, or for Wolfe’s, or for the good of the job, but for her. I would have loved to escort her down to my car with Purley traipsing along behind growling. Wolfe liked nothing better than to rile Cramer. But I knew if I took her to Wolfe’s house Purley would camp outside, and after Wolfe finished with her she would either go on downtown for a night of it, or she would refuse to go, and she would certainly never hear the last of that. So I made the mistake because I thought Miss Gunther should have some sleep. Since she had told me herself that the tireder she got the better she looked, and there I was looking at her, it was evident that she was about all in.

So I said, “I deeply appreciate your confidence, which I deserve. You hold onto the purse while I fix the garter. For the present, I hate to say it, but it would be better to accept Cramer’s invitation. I’ll be seeing you.”

Twenty minutes later I walked into the office and told Wolfe:

“Purley Stebbins arrived at Miss Gunther’s before I could get her away, and she likes him better than she does me. She is now down at Twentieth Street.”

So not only had I made a mistake, but also I was lying to the boss.

Chapter 17

MONDAY WOULD FILL A book if I let it, and so would any other day, I suppose, if you put it all in. First thing in the morning Wolfe provided evidence of how we were doing, or rather not doing, by having Saul Panzer and Bill Gore sent up to his room during the breakfast hour for private instructions. That was one of his established dodges for trying to keep me from needling him. The theory was that if I contributed any remarks about inertia or age beginning to tell or anything like that, he could shut me up by intimating that he was working like a demon supervising Saul and Bill, and they were gathering in the sheaves. Also that it wouldn’t be safe to let me in on the secret because I couldn’t control my face. One reason that got my goat was that I knew that he knew it wasn’t true.

The sheaves they had so far delivered had not relieved the famine. The armful of words, typed, printed and mimeographed, that Bill Gore had brought in from the NIA would have kept the Time and Life research staff out of mischief for a week, and that was about all it was good for. Saul Panzer’s report of his weekend at the Waldorf was what you would expect, no man whose initials were not A.G. could have done better, but all it added up to was that no hair of a murderer’s head was to be found on the premises. What Wolfe was continuing to shell out fifty bucks a day for was, as I say, presumably none of my business.

Public Relations had tottered to its feet again, taken a deep breath, and let out a battle cry. There was a full page ad in the Times , signed by the National Industrial Association, warning us that the Bureau of Price Regulation, after depriving us of our shirts and pants, was all set to peel off our hides. While there was no mention of homicide, the implication was that since it was still necessary for the NIA to save the country from the vicious deep-laid plots of the BPR, it was silly to imagine that it had any hand in the bumping off of Cheney Boone. As strategy, the hitch in it was that it would work only with those who already agreed with the NIA regarding who or what had got the shirts and pants.

One of my Monday problems was to get my outgoing phone calls made, on account of so many coming in the other direction. I started bright and early after Phoebe Gunther and never did get her. First, from the Fifty-fifth Street apartment, I got no answer. At nine-thirty I tried the BPR office and was told she hadn’t arrived, and no one seemed to know whether she was expected. At ten-thirty I was informed that she was there, but was in with Mr. Dexter and would I call later. Twice later, before noon, she was still with Mr. Dexter. At twelve-thirty she had gone to lunch; my message for her to call me had been given to her. At one-thirty she wasn’t back yet. At two o’clock the word was that she wouldn’t be back, and no one that I got to knew where she was. That may all sound as if I am a pushover for a runaround, but I had two strikes on me all the way. Apparently there was nobody at the BPR, from switchboard girls to the Regional Director, who didn’t know that Nero Wolfe, as Alger Kates put it, was in the pay of NIA, and they reacted accordingly. When I made an attempt to get connected with Dorothy Unger, the stenographer who had phoned Don O’Neill Saturday evening to ask him to mail her the parcel check which she had enclosed in his envelope by mistake, I couldn’t even find anyone who would even admit he had ever heard of her.