Rex Stout - The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

“Indeed.”

“Indeed yes. But on the part that will do for him he was perfectly willing to oblige. For instance, with Boone there at the hotel. He entered the room and handed Boone some papers, and Boone threw it at him, what he had found out, and then told him to beat it and turned his back on him, and Kates picked up the monkey wrench and gave it to him. Kates tells us exactly what Boone said and what he said, and then carefully reads it over to be sure we got it down right. The same way with Phoebe Gunther here on your stoop. He wants the story straight. He wants it distinctly understood that he didn’t arrange to meet her and come here with her, when she phoned him, he merely waited in an areaway across the street until he saw her coming and then joined her and mounted the stoop with her. The pipe was up his sleeve with the scarf already wrapped around it. Three days before that, the first time they were here, when he swiped the scarf out of Winterhoff’s pocket, he didn’t know then what he would be using it for, he only thought there might be some way of planting it somewhere to involve Winterhoff-an NIA man.”

“Naturally.” Wolfe was contributing to the conversation just to be polite. “Anything to keep eyes away from him. Wasted effort, since my eye was already on him.”

“It was?” Cramer sounded skeptical. “What put it there?”

“Mostly two things. First, of course, that command Mr. O’Neill gave him here Friday evening, indubitably a command to one from whom he had reason to expect obedience. Second, and much more important, the wedding picture mailed to Mrs. Boone. Granted that there are men capable of that gesture, assuredly none of the five NIA men whom I had met had it in them. Miss Harding was obviously too cold-blooded to indulge in any such act of grace. Mr. Dexter’s alibi had been tested and stood. Mrs. Boone and her niece were manifestly not too suspected, not by me. There remained only Miss Gunther and Mr. Kates. Miss Gunther might conceivably have killed Mr. Boone, but not herself with a piece of pipe; and she was the only one of them who could without painful strain on probability be considered responsible for the return of the wedding picture. Then where did she get it? From the murderer. By name, from whom? As a logical and workable conjecture, Mr. Kates.”

Wolfe fluttered a hand. “All that was mere phantom-chasing. What was needed was evidence- and all the time here it was, on that bookshelf in my office. That, I confess, is a bitter pill to swallow. Will you have some beer?”

“No, thanks, I guess I won’t.” Cramer seemed to be nervous or uneasy or something. He looked at the clock and slid to the edge of the chair. “I’ve got to be going. I just dropped in.” He elevated to his feet and shook his pants legs down. “I’ve got a hell of a busy day. I suppose you’ve heard that I’m back at my desk at Twentieth Street. Inspector Ash has been moved to Richmond. Staten Island.”

“Yes, sir. I congratulate you.”

“Much obliged. So with me back at the old stand you’ll have to continue to watch your step. Try pulling any fast ones and I’ll still be on your neck.”

“I wouldn’t dream of trying to pull a fast one.”

“Okay. Just so we understand each other.” Cramer started for the door. I called after him:

“Hey, your package!”

He said over his shoulder, barely halting. “Oh, I forgot, that’s for you, Wolfe, hope you like it,” and was on his way. Judging from the time it took him to get on out and slam the door behind him, he must have double-quicked.

I went over and lifted the package from the floor, put it on Wolfe’s desk, and tore the green paper off, exposing the contents to view. The pot was a glazed sickening green. The dirt was just dirt. The plant was in fair condition, but there were only two flowers on it. I stared at it in awe.

“By God,” I said when I could speak, “he brought you an orchid.”

“Brassocattleya thorntoni,” Wolfe purred. “Handsome.”

“Nuts,” I said realistically. “You’ve got a thousand better ones. Shall I throw it out?”

“Certainly not. Take it up to Theodore.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. “Archie. One of your most serious defects is that you have no sentiment.”

“No?” I grinned at him. “You’d be surprised. At this very moment one is almost choking me-namely, gratitude for our good luck at having Cramer back, obnoxious as he is. With Ash there life wouldn’t have been worth living.”

Wolfe snorted. “Luck!”

Chapter 36

SOONER OR LATER I had to make it plain to him that I was not a halfwit. I was waiting for a fitting moment, and it came that same day, Monday afternoon, about an hour after lunch, when we received a phone call from Frank Thomas Erskine. He was permitted to speak to Wolfe, and I listened in at my desk.

The gist of it was that a check for one hundred thousand dollars would be mailed to Wolfe that afternoon, which would seem to be enough gist for one little phone call. The rest was just trivial. The NIA deeply appreciated what Wolfe had done for it and was utterly unable to understand why he had returned its money. It was paying him the full amount of the reward at once, as offered in its advertisement, in advance of the fulfillment of the specified conditions, because of its gratitude and its confidence in him, and also because Kates’s signed confession made the fulfillment of the conditions inevitable. It would be glad to pay an additional amount for expenses incurred if Wolfe would say how much. It had discussed the matter with Inspector Cramer, and Cramer had disavowed any claim to any part of the reward and insisted that it all belonged to Wolfe.

It was a nice phone call.

Wolfe said to me with a smirk, “That’s satisfactory and businesslike. Paying the reward without delay.”

I leered at him. “Yeah? Little does Mr. Erskine know.”

“Little does he know what? What’s wrong now?”

I threw one knee over the other and settled back. The time had come. “There are,” I stated, “several ways of doing this. One would be to put a hunk of butter in your mouth and see if it melted. I prefer my way, which is just to tell you. Or I should say ask you, since I’ll put it in the form of questions, only I’ll supply the answers myself.”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“No, the questions originate with me. Number one: when did you find the cylinder? Saturday afternoon, when you waddled in here in your pajamas, belittling your brains? Not a chance. You knew where it was all the time, at least for three or four days. You found it either Tuesday morning, while I was down at Cramer’s office being wrung out, or Wednesday while I was up having lunch with Nina Boone. I lean to Tuesday, but I admit it may have been Wednesday.”

“You shouldn’t,” Wolfe murmured, “leave things teetering like that.”

“Please don’t interrupt me. Number two: why, if you knew where the cylinder was, did you pester Mrs. Boone to tell you? Because you wanted to make sure she didn’t know. If she had known she might have told the cops before you decided to let loose, and the reward would have gone to her, or anyway not to you. And since Phoebe Gunther had told her a lot she might have told her that too. Also, it was part of your general plan to spread the impression that you didn’t know where the cylinder was and would give an arm and several teeth to find it.”