Rex Stout - The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

Wolfe shook his head, his eyes still closed. “She was really extraordinary. It would be interesting to know where she concealed the case, containing the cylinders, up to Thursday afternoon. It would have been too risky to hide it in Mr. Kates’s apartment, which might have been searched by the police at any moment. Possibly she checked it in the Grand Central parcel room, though that seems a little banal for her. At any rate, she had it with her in her suitcase when she went to Washington Thursday afternoon, with Mr. Dexter and with your permission.”

“Cramer’s permission,” Hombert grumbled.

Wolfe ignored it. “I would like to emphasize,” he said with his voice up a little, “that none of this is conjecture except unimportant details of chronology and method. In Washington Miss Gunther went to her office, listened to the cylinders, and learned which one bore the message that Mr. Boone had told her about. Doubtless she wanted to know exactly what it said, but also she wanted to simplify her problem. It isn’t easy to conceal an object the size of that case from an army of expert searchers. She wanted to reduce it to one little cylinder. Another thing, she had contrived a plot. She took the nine eliminated cylinders to her Washington apartment and hid them casually in a hatbox on a closet shelf. She also took ten other cylinders that had been previously used which were there in her office, put them in the leather case, brought it with her when she returned to New York, and checked it in the Grand Central parcel room.

“That was in preparation for her plot, and she probably would have proceeded with it the next day, using the police for the mystification, if it hadn’t been for that invitation I sent around for a discussion at my office. She decided to wait for developments. Why she ignored my invitation I don’t know, and I shall intrude no guesses. That same evening, Friday, Mr. Goodwin went after her and brought her to my office. She had made a profound impression on him, and she struck me as being of uncommon quality. Evidently her opinion of us was less flattering. She formed the idea that we were more vulnerable to guile than the police; and the next day, Saturday, after she had mailed the parcel room check to Mr. O’Neill and made the phone call to him, giving the name of Dorothy Unger, she sent me a telegram, signing Mr. Breslow’s name to it, conveying the notion that observation of Mr. O’Neill’s movements might be profitable. We validated her appraisal of us. Mr. Goodwin was at Mr. O’Neill’s address bright and early Sunday morning, as Miss Gunther intended him to be. When Mr. O’Neill emerged he was followed, and you know what happened.”

“I don’t understand,” Skinner interposed, “why O’Neill was such an easy sucker for that Dorothy Unger phone call. Didn’t the damn fool suspect a plant? Or is he a damn fool or something else?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Now you’re asking for more than I’ve got. Mr. O’Neill is a headstrong and bumptious man, which may account for it; and we know that he was irresistibly tempted to learn what was on those cylinders, whether because he had killed Mr. Boone or for some other reason is yet to be discovered. Presumably Miss Gunther knew what might be expected of him. Anyhow her plot was moderately successful. It kept us all in that side alley for a day or two, it further jumbled the matter of the cylinders and the leather case, and it was one more involvement of an NIA man, without, however, the undesirable result-undesirable for Miss Gunther-of exposing him as the murderer. She was saving that-the disclosure of the murderer’s identity and the evidence she had-for the time that would best suit her purpose.”

“You’ve got pictures of all this,” Skinner said sarcastically. “Why didn’t you call her on the phone or get her in your office and lecture her on the duties of a citizen?”

“It was impractical. She was dead.”

“Oh? Then you didn’t know it all until after she had been killed?”

“Certainly not. How the devil could I? Some of it, yes, it doesn’t matter how much. But when word came from Washington that they had found in Miss Gunther’s apartment, perfunctorily concealed, nine of the cylinders Mr. Boone had dictated the afternoon of his death-nine, not ten-there was the whole story. There was no other acceptable explanation. All questions became paltry and pointless except the one question: where is the tenth cylinder?”

“Wherever you start a sentence,” Hombert complained grouchily, “it always ends on that goddam cylinder!”

Wolfe opened his eyes enough to pick Hombert out. “You try doing a sentence that makes any sense and leave the cylinder out.”

Skinner demanded, “What if she threw it in the river?”

“She didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve already told you. Because she intended to use it, when the time came, to get the murderer punished.”

“What if you’re making your first and only mistake and she did throw it in the river?”

“Drag the river. All the rivers she could reach.”

“Don’t be whimsical. Answer my question.”

Wolfe’s shoulders went perceptibly up and down. “In that case we would be licked. We’d never get him.”

“I think,” Hombert said pointedly, “that it is conceivable that you would like to sell a bill of goods. I don’t say you’re a barefaced liar.”

“I don’t say I’m not, Mr. Hombert. We all take those chances when we exchange words with other people. So I might as well go home-”

“Wait a minute,” Skinner snapped. “Do you mean that as an expert investigator you advise abandoning all lines of inquiry except the search for that cylinder?”

“I shouldn’t think so.” Wolfe frowned, considering. “Especially not with a thousand men or more at your disposal. Of course I don’t know what has been done and what hasn’t, but I know how such things go and I doubt if much has been overlooked in a case of this importance, knowing Mr. Cramer as I do. For instance, that piece of iron pipe; I suppose every possible effort has been made to discover where it came from. The matter of arrivals at my house Monday evening has of course been explored with every resource and ingenuity. The tenants of all the buildings in my block on both sides of the street have naturally been interviewed, on the slim chance, unlikely in that quiet neighborhood, that somebody saw or heard something. The question of opportunity alone, the evening of the dinner at the Waldorf, must have kept a dozen men busy for a week, and perhaps you’re still working on it. Inquiries regarding relationships, both open and concealed, the checking and rechecking of Mr. Dexter’s alibi-these and a thousand other details have unquestionably been competently and thoroughly attended to.”

Wolfe wiggled a finger. “And where are you? So sunk in a bog of futility and bewilderment that you resort to such monkey tricks as ditching Mr. Cramer, replacing him with a buffoon like Mr. Ash, and swearing out a warrant for my arrest! Over a long period I have become familiar with the abilities and performances of the New York police, and I never expected to see the day when the inspector heading the Homicide Squad would try to solve a difficult murder case by dragging me off to a cell, attacking my person, putting me in handcuffs, and threatening me with mayhem!”