Rex Stout - The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

It was a dirty crack, but Cramer ignored it.

“We’ll give him a chance,” he declared. “Plenty. I’ve got to sort this out. It’s not absolutely tight that it was Birch in the car with the woman. Suppose it wasn’t? Suppose the man in the car was one of the poor devils they had their hooks into. The woman was the one in the racket, the one that phones Egan the leads. She thought the man was going to kill her, so she told the boy to get a cop. Somehow she got out of it, but that night she got hold of Birch, who was running the racket, and killed him. Then he knew the boy could identify him-he might even have killed the woman, and her body hasn’t been found-so the next day he killed the boy. Then he knew Mrs. Fromm was the head of that Association, so he killed her. My God, this makes it wide open, this racket and Horan in it. People like that are desperate, and there are thousands of them in New York-people here illegally and afraid of getting kicked out. They’re soup for blackmailers. There must be a list somewhere of the ones these bastards were nicking, and I wish I had it. I would make it even money that the name of the murderer is on it. Would you?”

“No.”

“Anything to be contrary. Why not?”

“You haven’t done enough sorting, Mr. Cramer. But your snatching at a blackmail victim as the culprit shows that you’re hard up. There have been three murders. Assuming, to keep it tidy, that there is only one murderer, have all the handy ones been eliminated?”

“No.”

“Who has been?”

“Crossed off, nobody. Of course there are complications. For instance, Mrs. Horan says that Friday night her husband returned to the apartment ten minutes after he left with Mrs. Fromm to take her down to her car, and he went to bed and stayed there, but that’s a wife corroborating a husband. If you’re ready to nominate a candidate don’t let me stop you. Have you got one?”

“Yes.”

“The hell you have. Name him.”

“The question was, have I a candidate, not am I ready to nominate. I may be ready in an hour, or in a week, but not now.”

Cramer grunted. “Either you’re grandstanding, which would be nothing new, or you’re holding out. I admit you’ve made a haul-this racket, and Egan, and, by luck, Horan too-and much obliged. Okay. None of that names the murderer. What else? If you’re after a deal, here I am. I’ll give you anything and everything we’ve got, ask me anything you want to-of course that’s what you’re after-if you’ll reciprocate and give me all you’ve got.”

Stebbins made a noise and then tried to look as if he hadn’t.

“That,” Wolfe said, “is theoretically a fair and forthright proposal, but practically it’s pointless. Because first, I’ve given you all I’ve got; and second, you have nothing I want or need.”

Cramer and Stebbins gawked at him, both surprised and suspicious.

“You’ve already told me,” Wolfe went on, “that no one has been eliminated, more than three days since Mrs. Fromm was killed. That will do for me. By now you have tens of thousands of words of reports and statements, and I admit it’s possible that buried somewhere in them is a fact or a phrase I might think cogent, but even if you cart it all up here I don’t intend to wade through it. For example, how many pages have you on the background and associates and recent comings and goings of Miss Angela Wright?”

“Enough,” Cramer growled.

“Of course. I don’t decry it. Such lines of inquiry often get you an answer, but manifestly in this case they haven’t even hinted at one or you wouldn’t be here. Would I find in your dossier the answer to this question: Why did the man who killed the boy in broad daylight, with people around on the street, dare to run the risk of later identification by one or more onlookers? Or to this one: How to account for the log of the earrings-bought by Mrs. Fromm on May eleventh, worn by another woman on May nineteenth, and worn by Mrs. Fromm on May twenty-second? Have you found any trace of the earrings beyond that? Worn by anyone at any time?”

“No.”

“So I have provided my own answers, but since I can’t expound them without naming my candidate, that will have to wait. Meanwhile-”

He halted because the door to the hall was opening. It swung halfway, enough for Fred Durkin to slip past the edge and signal to me to come.

I arose, but Wolfe asked him, “What is it, Fred?”

“A message for Archie from Saul.”

“Deliver it. We’re sharing everything with Mr. Cramer.”

“Yes, sir. Horan wants to speak with you. Now. Urgent.”

“Does he know Mr. Cramer and Mr. Stebbins are here?”

“No, sir.”

Wolfe went to Cramer. “This man Horan is a hyena, and he irritates me. I should think you would prefer to deal with him on your own premises-and also the other two. Why don’t you take them?”

Cramer regarded him. He took the cigar from his mouth, held it half a minute, and put it back between his teeth. “I would have thought,” he said, not positively, “that I have seen you work all the dodges there are, but this is new. I’m damned if I get it. You had Horan and that lawyer Maddox here, and you chased them. The same with Paul Kuffner. Now Horan and the other two, there in your front room, and you don’t even want to see them, and still you claim you’re after the murderer. I know you too well to ask you why, but by God I’d like to find out.” He swiveled his head around to Fred. “Bring Horan in here.”

Fred, not moving, looked at Wolfe. Wolfe heaved a sigh. “All right, Fred.”

Chapter 14

For a second I thought Dennis Horan was actually going to turn and scoot. He came wheeling in like a man with a purpose, stopped short when he saw we had company, forward marched four steps, recognized Cramer, and stopped short again. That was when I thought he was going to skedaddle.

“Oh,” he said. “I don’t want to butt in.”

“Not at all,” Cramer assured him. “Sit down. We were just talking about you. If you’ve got something to say, go right ahead. I’ve been told how you happen to be here.”

Considering the atmosphere and circumstances, including the hard night he had been through, Horan did pretty well. He had to make a snap decision whether to make any change in his program because of the unexpected presence of the law, and apparently he managed it while he was placing a chair between Stebbins and Cramer and putting himself on it. Seated, he glanced from Cramer to Wolfe and back to Cramer.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

“So am I,” Cramer rumbled.

“Because,” Horan went on, “you may feel that I owe you an apology, though I may not agree.” The tenor was down a couple of notches. “You may think I should have told you about a talk I had Friday evening with Mrs. Fromm.”

Cramer was giving him a hard eye. “You have told us about it.”

“Yes, but not all of it. I had to make an extremely difficult decision, and I thought I made it right, but now I’m not so sure. Mrs. Fromm had told me something that might prove damaging to the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons if it were made public. She was the president of the Association, and I was its counsel, and therefore what she told me was a privileged communication. Ordinarily, of course, it is improper for an attorney to divulge such a communication, but I had to decide whether this was a case where the public interest prevails. I decided that the Association had a right to rely on my discretion.”