Rex Stout - The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

He reached in his pants pocket, pulled out a little scrap of paper, and read from it: “Connecticut, Y,Y, nine, four, three, two.”

“Excellent.” Wolfe returned his empty cup to the saucer. “Have you given that to the police?”

“Me?” Pete was scornful. “The cops? Look, am I screwy? I go to the precinct and tell a flattie, or even say I get to a sarge and tell him, and what? First he don’t believe me and then he chases me and then I’m marked. It don’t hurt you to be marked, because you’re a private eye with a license and you’ve got something on a lot of inspectors.”

“I have? What?”

“Don’t ask me. But everybody knows you’re loaded with dirt on some big boys or you’d have been rubbed out long ago. But a kid like me can’t risk it to be marked even if I’m straight. I hate cops, but you don’t have to be a crook to hate cops. I keep telling my mother I’m straight, and I am straight, but I’m telling you it takes a lot of guts. What do you think of this case I got?”

Wolfe considered. “It seems a little-uh-hazy.”

“Yeah, that’s why I came to you. I went to a place I go to when I want to think, and I went all over it. I saw it was a swell case if I handled it right. The car was a Caddy, a dark gray fifty-two Caddy. The man looked mean, but he looked like dough, he looked like he might have two or three more Caddies. The woman did too. She wasn’t as old as my mother, but I guess I can’t go by that because my mother has done a lot of hard work, and I bet she never did work. She had a scratch on her face, on her left cheek, and her face was all twisted saying that to me, ‘Help, get a cop’; but, thinking it over, I decided she was a good-looker. She had big gold spiders for earrings, spiders with their legs stretched out. Pure gold.”

Wolfe grunted.

“Okay,” Pete conceded, “they looked like gold. They wasn’t brass. Anyhow, the whole layout said dough, and what I was thinking went like this: I got a case with people with dough, and how do I handle it so I’ll get some? There might be up to fifty dollars in it if I handle it right. If he kills her I can identify him and get the reward. I can tell what she said to me and how he jabbed the gun in her-”

“You didn’t see a gun.”

“That’s a detail. If he didn’t kill her, if he just made her do something or tell him something or give him something, I can go and put it up to him, either he comes across with fifty bucks, or maybe a hundred, or I hang it on him.”

“That would be blackmail.”

“Okay.” Pete brushed cookie crumbs from his fingers onto the tray. “That’s why I decided I had to see you after I thought it over. I saw I couldn’t handle it alone and I’d have to cut you in, but you understand it’s my case. Maybe you think I was a sap to tell you that license number before we made a deal, but I don’t. If you get onto him and corner him and try to cross me and hog it, I’ll still have to identify him, so it will be up to me. If blackmail’s out, you can figure it so it’s not blackmail. What do you say we split fifty-fifty?”

“I’ll tell you, Pete.” Wolfe pushed his chair back and got his bulk comfortably settled in a new position. “If we are to join hands on your case I think I should tell you a few things about the science and art of detection. Mr. Goodwin will of course take it down, and when he types it he will make a copy for you. But first he’ll make a phone call. Archie, you have that license number. Call Mr. Cramer’s office and give them that number. Say that you have information that that car, or its owner or operator, may have been involved in a violation of a law in this city in the past two hours, and suggest a routine check. Do not be more definite. Say that our information is unverified and inquiry should be discreet.”

“Hey,” Pete demanded, “who’s Mr. Cramer? A cop?”

“A police inspector,” Wolfe told him. “You yourself suggested the possibility of murder. If there was a murder there is a corpse. If there is a corpse it should be found. Unless and until it is found, where’s your case? We have no idea where to look for it, so we’ll trick the police into finding it for us. I often make use of them that way. Archie. Of course you will not mention Pete’s name, since he doesn’t want to be marked.”

As I went across to the office, to my desk, and dialed the number of Manhattan Homicide West, I was reflecting that of all Wolfe’s thousand techniques for making himself obnoxious the worst was when he thought he was being funny. When I finished talking to Sergeant Purley Stebbins and hung up, I was tempted to just walk out and go up to watch Mosconi and Watrous handle their cues, but of course that wouldn’t do because it would have been admitting he had called me good, and he would merely have shooed Pete out and settled down with a book and a satisfied smirk.

So I marched back to the dining room, sat down and took up my pen, and said brightly, “All right, they’re alerted. Shoot the lecture on detection, and don’t leave anything out.”

Wolfe leaned back, put his elbows on the chair arms, and matched his fingertips. “You understand, Pete, that I shall confine myself to the problems and methods of the private detective who works at his profession for a living.”

“Yeah.” Pete had a fresh bottle of Coke. “That’s what I want, how to rake in the dough.”

“I had remarked that tendency in you. But you must not permit it to smother other considerations. It is desirable that you should earn your fees, but it is essential that you feel you have earned them, and that depends partly on your ego. If your ego is healthy and hardy, as mine is, you will seldom have difficulty-”

“What’s my ego?”

“There are various definitions, philosophical, metaphysical, psychological, and now psychoanalytical, but as I am using the term it means the ability to play up everything that raises your opinion of yourself and play down everything that lowers it. Is that clear?”

“I guess so.” Pete was frowning in concentration. “You mean, do you like yourself or don’t you.”

“Not precisely, but that’s close enough. With a robust ego, your feeling-”

“What’s robust?”

Wolfe made a face. “I’ll try to use words you have met before, but when I don’t, when one of them is a stranger to you, kindly do not interrupt. If you are smart enough to be a good detective, you are smart enough to guess accurately the meaning of a new word by the context-which means the other words I use with it. Also there is usually a clue. A moment ago I spoke of a healthy and hardy ego, and then, after your interruption, I spoke of a robust ego in the same connection. So obviously ‘robust’ means ‘healthy and hardy,’ and if you have the stuff of a good detective in you, you should have spotted it. How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“Then I should make allowances, and do. To continue: with a robust ego, your feeling about earning your fees can safely be left to your intelligence and common sense. Never collect or accept a fee that you feel you haven’t earned; if you do, your integrity crumbles and your ego will have worms. With that one reservation, get all you can. As you must not take what you feel you haven’t earned, so must you get what you feel you have earned. Don’t even discuss a case with a prospective client until you know about his ability to pay. So much-”