Rex Stout - The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

“Hit him, Archie. Knock him down.”

By that time Hombert was there and Skinner was hovering. Seeing that they were voting against bloodshed, and not caring to be tossed in the coop for manhandling an inspector, I backed away. Wolfe glared at me and said, still through his teeth:

“I am under arrest. You are not. Telephone Mr. Parker to arrange for bail immed-”

“Goodwin is staying right here.” Ash’s eyes were really nasty. I had never had an impulse to send him a birthday greeting card, but I was surprised to learn how mean he was. “Or rather you’re both going with me-”

“Now listen.” Skinner had his hands spread out patting air, like a pleader calming a mob. “This is ridiculous. We all want-”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Oh, forget that! Technically I suppose-”

“Then I am. You can all go to the devil.” Wolfe went back to the big chair and sat down. “Mr. Goodwin will telephone our lawyer. If you want me out of here send for someone to carry me. If you want me to discuss anything with you, if you want a word out of me, vacate those warrants and get rid of Mr. Ash. He jars me.”

“I’ll take him,” Ash snapped. “He struck an officer.”

Skinner and Hombert looked at each other. Then they looked at Wolfe, then at me, and then at each other again. Skinner shook his head emphatically. Hombert regarded Wolfe once more and then turned his gaze on Ash.

“Inspector,” he said, “I think you had better leave this to the District Attorney and me. You haven’t been in charge of this case long enough to-uh-digest the situation, and while I consented to your proposal to get Wolfe down here, I doubt if you’re sufficiently aware of-uh-all the aspects. I have described to you the sources of the strongest pressure to take Inspector Cramer off of the case, which meant also removing him from his command, and therefore it is worth considering that Wolfe’s client is the National Industrial Association. Whether we want to consider it or not, we have to. You’d better return to your office, give the reports further study, and continue operations. Altogether, at this moment, there are nearly four hundred men working on this case. That’s enough of a job for one man.”

Ash’s jaw was working and his eyes were still glittering. “It’s up to you, sir,” he said with an effort. “As I told you, and as you already knew, Wolfe has been getting away with murder for years. If you want him to get away with calling one of your subordinates an imbecile and physically assaulting him, in your own office…”

“At the moment I don’t care a damn who gets away with what.” Hombert was a little exasperated. “I care about just one thing, getting this case solved, and if that doesn’t happen soon I may not have any subordinates. Get back on the job and phone me if there’s anything new.”

“Yes, sir.” Ash crossed to Wolfe, who was seated, until their toes touched. “Some day,” he promised, “I’ll help you lose some weight.” Then he strode out of the room.

I returned to my chair. Skinner had already returned to his. Hombert stood looking at the door that had closed behind the Inspector, ran his fingers through his hair, shook his head slowly a few times, moved to his own chair behind his desk, sat, and lifted a receiver from its cradle. In a moment he spoke into the transmitter:

“Bailey? Have that warrant for the arrest of Nero Wolfe as a material witness vacated. Right away. No, just cancel it. Send me-”

“ And the search warrant,” I put in.

“Also the search warrant for Nero Wolfe’s house. No, cancel that too. Send the papers to me.”

He hung up and turned to Wolfe. “All right, you got away with it. Now what do you know?”

Wolfe sighed deep. A casual glance at his bulk might have given the impression that he was placid again, but to my experienced eye, seeing that he was tapping the arm of his chair with his middle finger, it was evident that there was still plenty of turmoil.

“First,” he muttered, “I would like to learn something. Why was Mr. Cramer demoted and disgraced?”

“He wasn’t.”

“Nonsense. Whatever you want to call it, why?”

“Officially, for a change of scene. Off the record, because he lost his head, considering who the people are that are involved, and took on a bigger load than the Department could handle. Whether you like it or not, there’s such a thing as sense of proportion. You cannot treat some people like a bunch of waterfront hoodlums.”

“Who brought the pressure?”

“It came from everywhere. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m giving no names. Anyhow, that wasn’t the only reason. Cramer was muffing it. For the first time since I’ve known him he got tangled up. Here at a conference yesterday morning he couldn’t even discuss the problem intelligently. He had got his mind fixed on one aspect of it, one little thing, and that was all he could think of or talk about-that missing cylinder, the tenth cylinder that may or may not have been in the leather case Boone gave to Miss Gunther just before he was murdered.”

“Mr. Cramer was concentrating on that?”

“Yes. He had fifty men looking for it, and he wanted to assign another fifty to it.”

“And that was one of your reasons for removing him?”

“Yes. Actually the main reason.”

Wolfe grunted. “Hah. Then you’re an imbecile too. I didn’t know Mr. Cramer had it in him to see that. This doubles my admiration and respect for him. Finding that cylinder, if not our only chance, is beyond all comparison our best one. If it is never found the odds are big that we’ll never get the murderer.”

A loud disgusted snort came from Skinner. “That’s you all right, Wolfe! I suspected it was only fireworks. You said you’ve already got him.”

“I said nothing of the sort.”

“You said you know who it is.”

“No.” Wolfe was truculent. Having been aroused to the point of committing assault and battery, he had by no means calmed down again. “I said I know something that gives me a good clear idea of the murderer’s identity, and I also said that you people know it too. You know many things that I don’t know. Don’t try to pretend that I bulldozed you into ejecting Mr. Ash and releasing me from custody by conveying the impression that I am prepared to name the culprit and supply the evidence. I am not.”

Hombert and Skinner looked at each other. There was a silence.

“You impervious bastard,” Skinner said, but wasting no energy on it.

“In effect, then,” Hombert said resentfully, “you are saying that you have nothing to tell us, that you have nothing to offer, that you can’t help us any.”

“I’m helping all I can. I am paying a man twenty dollars a day to explore the possibility that Miss Gunther broke that cylinder into little pieces and put it in the rubbish receptacle in her apartment in Washington. That’s going to an extreme, because I doubt if she destroyed it. I think she expected to use it some day.”

Hombert shifted impatiently in his chair as if the idea of hunting for a lousy cylinder, possibly broken anyhow, only irritated him. “Suppose,” he said, “you tell us what it is we all know that gives you a good clear idea of who the murderer is, including the who. Off the record.”