Rex Stout - The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

“This has some bearing on what we’ve been discussing. Our men and the Washington police have completed their search of Miss Gunther’s apartment in Washington-one large room, bath, and kitchenette. In a hatbox on a shelf in a closet they found nine Stenophone cylinders-”

“Confound it!” Wolfe burst out. “Nine?” He was as indignant and irritated as if he had been served a veal cutlet with an egg perched on it. Everyone stared at him.

“Nine,” said Travis curtly. He was justifiably annoyed at having his scene stolen. “Nine Stenophone cylinders. A BPR man was with them, and they are now at the BPR office running them off and making a transcription.” He looked coldly at Wolfe. “What’s wrong with nine?”

“For you,” Wolfe said offensively, “apparently nothing. For me, nine is no better than none. I want ten.”

“That’s a damn shame. I apologize. They should have found ten.” Having demolished Wolfe, he reported to the others, “They’ll call again as soon as they get something we might use.”

“Then they won’t call,” Wolfe declared, and shut his eyes again, leaving the discussion of the new development to the others. He was certainly being objectionable, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. The howling insolence of committing a murder on his own stoop would alone have been enough, but in addition to that his house was filled from top to bottom with uninvited guests and he was absolutely powerless. That was dead against his policy, his practice, and his personality. Seeing that he was really in a bad way, and thinking it might be a good plan for him to keep himself at least partially informed of what was going on, since he was supposed to have an interest in the outcome, I went to the kitchen to get some beer for him. Evidently he was in too bad a humor even to remember to send for beer, since there were no signs of any.

Fritz and about a dozen assorted dicks were there drinking coffee. I told them:

“You sure are cluttering up the place, but I don’t blame you. It isn’t often that members of the lower classes get a chance to drink coffee made by Fritz Brenner.”

There was a subdued, but close to unanimous, concert of Bronx cheers. One said, “Goodwin the gentleman. One, two, three, laugh.”

Another said, “Hey, you know everything. What’s the lowdown on this NIA-BPR stuff? Is it a feud or not?”

I was putting six bottles and six glasses on a tray, with Fritz’s help. “I’m glad to explain,” I said generously. “The NIA and the BPR are in one respect exactly like the glorious PD, or Police Department. They have esprit de corps. Repeat it after me-no, don’t bother. That is a French term, the language spoken by Frenchmen, the people who live in France, the literal translation of which is ‘spirit of the body.’ In our language we have no precise equivalent-”

The cheers had begun again, and the tray was ready, so I left them. Fritz came to the hall with me, closed the kitchen door, held my sleeve, and told my ear:

“Archie, this is awful. I just want to say I know how awful it is for you. Mr. Wolfe told me when I took up his breakfast this morning that you had formed a passion for Miss Gunther and she had you wound around her finger. She was a beautiful girl, very beautiful. This is awful, what happened here.”

I said, “Go to hell,” jerked my arm to free my sleeve, and took a step. Then I turned to him and said, “All I meant was, this is a hell of a night and it will take you a week to clean up the joint. Go back and finish that lesson in French I was giving them.”

In the office they were as before. I peddled beer around, making three sales to outsiders, leaving three bottles for Wolfe, which was about as I had calculated, went back to the kitchen and got myself a sandwich and a glass of milk, and returned to my desk with them. The strategy council was going on and on, with Wolfe still aloof in spite of the beer. The sandwich made me hungry and I went and got two more. Long after they were gone the council was still chewing the fat.

They were handicapped, of course, by continual interruptions, both by phone and by personal appearances. One of the phone calls was for Travis from Washington, and when he was through with it his face displayed no triumph. The nine cylinders had all been listened to, and there was nothing for us to bite on. They contained plenty of evidence that they had been dictated by Boone at his Washington office on Tuesday afternoon, but no evidence at all that would help to uncover a murderer. The BPR was trying to hang onto the transcriptions, but the Washington FBI promised to send a copy to Travis, and he agreed to let Cramer see it.

“So,” Travis said aggressively, daring us to hint that we were no better off than before, “that proves that Miss Gunther was lying about them. She had them all the time.”

“Nine.” Wolfe grunted in disgust. “Pfui.”

That was his only contribution to their discussion of the cylinders.

It was five minutes past three Tuesday morning when Phillips, the expert with less than his share of chin, entered the office with objects in his hands. In his right was a gray topcoat, and in his left was a silk scarf with stripes of dark brown and terra cotta. It was obvious that even an expert is capable of having feelings. His face showed plainly that he had something.

He looked at Wolfe and me and asked, “Do I report here, Inspector?”

“Go ahead.” Cramer was impatient. “What is it?”

“This scarf was in the right-hand pocket of this coat. It was folded as it is now. Unfolding one fold exposes about forty square inches of its surface. On that surface are between fifteen and twenty particles of matter which in our opinion came from that piece of pipe. That is our opinion. Laboratory tests-”

“Sure.” Cramer’s eyes were gleaming. “You can test from hell to breakfast. You’ve got a microscope up there, and you know what I want right now. Is it good enough to act on, or isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, it is. We made sure before-”

“Whose coat is it?”

“The tag says Alger Kates.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s Kates’s coat.”

Chapter 22

SINCE THEY WERE A strategy council, naturally they didn’t send for Kates immediately. They had to decide on strategy first-whether to circle him and get him tangled, or slide it into him gently, or just hit him on the head with it. What they really had to decide was who was going to handle it; that would determine the method, and they started to wrangle about it. The point was, as it always is when you’ve got a crusher like that scarf in his pocket, which way of using it was most likely to crumble him and get a confession? They hadn’t been going long when Travis interposed:

“With all this top authority present, and me not in it officially anyhow, I hesitate to make a suggestion.”

“So what is it?” the D.A. asked tartly.

“I would suggest Mr. Wolfe for it. I have seen him operate, and if it means anything I freely admit that he is my superior at it.”

“Suits me,” Cramer said at once.

The other two looked at each other. Neither liked what he was looking at, and neither liked Travis’s suggestion, so simultaneously they said nothing.