Rex Stout: The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

“It seems to me,” Erskine said in a grieved tone, “that this is a mistake. The first principle-”

“I,” Wolfe said, in a tone used by NIA men only to people whose names were never on the letterhead, “am handling the investigation.”

I started banging the typewriter, and since the telegrams were urgent, and since Wolfe took long walks only in emergencies, Fritz was sent for to escort them to the door. All I was typing was the text of the telegram and a list of the names and addresses, because the phone was the quickest way to send them. Some of the addresses were a problem. Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, not to be bothered about trivialities, so I called Lon Cohen on the city desk at the Gazette and got the addresses from him. He knew everything. They had come up from Washington for the big speech that was never delivered and had not gone back. Mrs. Boone and the niece were at the Waldorf, Alger Kates was staying with friends on Eleventh Street, and Phoebe Gunther, who had been Boone’s confidential secretary, had a room-and-bath on East Fifty-fifth Street.

When I had that job done I asked Wolfe who else he wanted to invite. He said no one. I stood up and stretched, and looked at him.

“I presume,” I observed, “that the rest is merely routine collection of evidence. Ed Erskine has calluses on his hands. Will that help?”

“Confound it.” He sighed clear down. “I was going to finish that book this evening. Now this infernal mishmash.”

He heaved the bulk forward and rang for beer.

I, standing at the cabinet filing the germination records that Theodore had brought down from the plant rooms, was compelled to admit that he had earned my admiration. Not for his conception of the idea of digging up a paying customer; that was merely following precedent in times of drought. Not for the method he had adopted for the digging; I could have thought that up myself. Not for the execution, his handling of the NIA delegation; that was an obvious variation of the old hard-to-get finesse. Not for the gall of those telegrams; admiring Wolfe’s gall would be like admiring ice at the North Pole or green leaves in a tropical jungle. No. What I admired was his common sense. He wanted to get a look at those people. What do you do when you want to get a look at a man? You get your hat and go where he is. But what if the idea of getting your hat and going outdoors is abhorrent to you? You ask the man to come where you are. What makes you think he’ll come? That was where the common sense entered. Take Inspector Cramer. Why would he, the head of the Homicide Squad, come? Because he didn’t know how long Wolfe had been on the case or how deep he was in it, and therefore he couldn’t afford to stay away.

At four sharp Wolfe had downed the last of his beer and taken the elevator up to the plant rooms. I finished the filing and gathered up miscellaneous loose ends around the office, expecting to be otherwise engaged for at least a day or two, and then settled down at my desk with a stack of newspaper clippings to make sure I hadn’t missed anything important in my typed summary of the Boone situation. I was deep in that when the doorbell rang, and I went to the front and opened up, and found confronting me a vacuum cleaner salesman. Or anyhow he should have been. He had that bright, friendly, uninhibited look. But some of the details didn’t fit, as for example his clothes, which were the kind I would begin buying when my rich uncle died.

“Hello!” he said cheerfully. “I’ll bet you’re Archie Goodwin. You came to see Miss Harding yesterday. She told me about you. Aren’t you Archie Goodwin?”

“Yep,” I said. It was the easiest way out. If I had said no or tried to evade he would have cornered me sooner or later.

“I thought so,” he was gratified. “May I come in? I’d like to see Mr. Wolfe. I’m Don O’Neill, but of course that doesn’t mean anything to you. I’m president of O’Neill and Warder, Incorporated, and a member of that godforsaken conglomeration of antiques, the NIA. I was Chairman of the Dinner Committee for that affair we had at the Waldorf the other evening. I guess I’ll never live that one down. Chairman of a Dinner Committee, and let the main speaker get murdered!”

Of course my reaction was that I had got along fairly well for something like thirty years without knowing Don O’Neill and saw no reason for a change in policy, but my personal feelings could not be permitted to dominate. So I let him in and steered him to the office and into a chair before I even explained that he would have to wait half an hour because Wolfe was engaged. For a brief moment he seemed irritated, but he realized instantly that that was no way to sell vacuum cleaners and said sure, that was all right, he didn’t mind waiting.

He was delighted with the office and got up and went around looking. Books-what a selection! The big globe was marvelous, just what he had always wanted and never took the trouble to get one, now he would…

Wolfe entered, saw him, and gave me a dirty look. It was true that I was supposed to inform him in advance of any waiting caller and never let him come in cold like that, but it was ten to one that if I had told him about O’Neill he would have refused to see him and had me invite him for the nine o’clock party, and I saw no necessity for another three-hour rest for Wolfe’s brains. He was so sore that he pretended he didn’t believe in shaking hands, acknowledged the introduction with a nod that wouldn’t have spilled a drop if he had had ajar of water on his head, sat down and regarded the visitor unsympathetically, and asked curtly:

“Well, sir?”

O’Neill wasn’t at all taken aback. He said, “I was admiring your office.”

“Thank you. But I assume that wasn’t what you came for.”

“Oh, no. Being the Chairman of that Dinner Committee, I’m in the middle of this thing whether I like it or not-this business of Boone’s murder. I wouldn’t say I’m involved, that’s too strong a word-make it concerned. I’m certainly concerned.”

“Has anyone suggested that you are involved?”

“Suggested?” O’Neill looked surprised. “That’s putting it mildly. The police are taking the position that everyone connected with the NIA is involved. That’s why I claim that the line the Executive Committee is taking is sentimental and unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Wolfe.” He took time out for a friendly glance at me, to include me in the Society of United Citizens for Not Getting Don O’Neill Wrong. “I am one of the most progressive members of the NIA. I was a Willkie man. But this idea of co-operating with the police the way they’re acting, and even spending our own money to investigate, that’s unrealistic. We ought to say to the police, all right, there’s been a murder, and as good citizens we hope you catch the guilty man, but we had nothing to do with it and it’s none of our business.”

“And tell them to quit bothering you.”

“That’s right. That’s exactly right.” O’Neill was pleased to find a kindred spirit. “I was at the office when they came back an hour ago with the news that they had engaged you to investigate. I want to make it plain that I am not doing anything underhanded. I don’t work that way. We had another argument, and I told them I was coming to see you.”

“Admirable.” Wolfe’s eyes were open, which meant that he was bored and was getting nothing out of it. Either that, or he was refusing to turn on the brain until nine o’clock. “For the purpose of persuading me to call it off?”