Rex Stout - The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

I was hungry. “Okay, if that’s the basis, then what?”

“Then the presumption is that Wolfe knew about this blackmail racket before he sent you to make that offer. He was assuming that Miss Estey would be vitally interested in knowing whether Mrs. Fromm had told Wolfe about it. I don’t expect you to admit that; we’ll see what Wolfe tells Bonino. But I want to know what Miss Estey’s reaction was-exactly what she said.”

I shook my head. “It would give you a wrong impression if I discussed it on that basis. Let me suggest a basis.”

“Go ahead.”

“Let’s say that Mr. Wolfe knew nothing about any racket but merely wanted to stir them up. Say he didn’t single out Miss Estey, she was just first on the list. Say I made the offer not only to her, but also to Mrs. Horan, Angela Wright, and Vincent Lipscomb, and would have gone on if Mr. Wolfe hadn’t called me in because Paul Kuffner was at the office accusing me of putting the bee on Miss Wright. Wouldn’t that be a more interesting basis?”

“It certainly would. Uh-huh. I see. In that case I want to know what they all said. Start with Miss Estey.”

“I’d have to invent it.”

“Sure, you’re good at that. Go ahead.”

So there went the best part of another hour. When I was all through inventing, including answers to a lot of bright questions, Mandelbaum got up to leave and asked me to wait there. I said I would go get something to eat, but he said no, he wanted me on hand. I agreed to wait, and there went another twenty minutes. When he finally returned he said Bowen wanted to see me again, and would I kindly go to his room. He, Mandelbaum, had something else on.

When I got to Bowen’s room there was no one there. More waiting. I had been sitting awhile, thinking of pigs’ knuckles, when the door opened to admit a young man with a tray, and I thought hooray, someone in this joint is human after all; but without even glancing at me he went to Bowen’s desk, put the tray down on the desk blotter, and departed. When the door had closed behind him I stepped to the desk and lifted the napkin, and saw and smelled an attractive hot corned-beef sandwich and a slab of cherry pie. There was also a pint bottle of milk. The situation required presence of mind, and I had it. It took me maybe eighteen seconds to get back to my chair, settle the tray in my lap, and bite off a healthy segment from the sandwich. It was barely ready for swallowing when the door opened and the District Attorney entered.

To save him any embarrassment, I spoke up immediately. “It was darned thoughtful of you to have this sent in, Mr. Bowen. Not that I was hungry, but you know the old saying, we must keep the body up with the boy. Bowen for mayor!”

He showed the stuff he was made of. A lesser man would either have grabbed the tray from me or gone to his desk and phoned that a punk had swiped his lunch and he wanted another one, but he merely gave me a dirty look and turned and went. In three minutes he was back with another tray, which he took to his desk. I don’t know whose he confiscated.

What he wanted was to clear up eighty-five or ninety points about the report Mandelbaum had just given him.

So it was nearly three o’clock when I arrived, escorted, at 240 Centre Street, and going on four when I was ushered into the private office of Police Commissioner Skinner. The next hour was a little choppy. You might have thought that, with a citizen as important as me to talk with, Skinner would have passed the order that he wasn’t to be disturbed for anything less than a riot, but no. Between interruptions he did manage to ask me a few vital questions, such as was it raining when I got to the garage, and had any glances of recognition been exchanged by Horan and Egan, but mostly, when he wasn’t answering one of the four phones on his desk, or making a call himself, or speaking with some intruder, or taking a look at papers just brought in, he was pacing up and down the room, which is spacious, high-ceilinged, and handsomely furnished.

Around five, District Attorney Bowen walked in, accompanied by two underlings with bulging briefcases. Apparently there was to be a high-level conference. That might be educational, if I didn’t get bounced, so I unobtrusively left my chair near Skinner’s desk and went to a modest one over by the wall. Skinner was too occupied to notice me, and the others evidently thought he was saving me for dessert. They gathered chairs around the big desk and went to it. I have a good natural memory, and it has been well trained in the years I have been with Nero Wolfe, so I could give a full and accurate report of what I heard in the next half-hour, but I’m not going to. If I did I would go sailing out the next time I tried being a wallflower at a meeting of the big brains, and anyway who am I to destroy the confidence of the people in their highly placed public servants?

But something did happen that must be reported. They were in the middle of a hot discussion of what should and what should not be told to the FBI when an interruption came. First a phone rang and Skinner spoke into it briefly, and then a door opened to admit a visitor. It was Inspector Cramer. As he strode across to the desk he darted a glance at me, but his mind was on higher things. He confronted them and blurted, “That man Witmer that thought he could identify the driver of the car that killed the Drossos boy. He just picked Horan out of a line. He thinks he’d swear to it.”

They stared at him. Bowen muttered, “I’ll be damned.”

“Well?” Skinner demanded crossly.

Cramer frowned down at him. “I don’t know, I just this minute got it. If we take it, it twists us around again. It couldn’t have been Horan in the car with the woman Tuesday. We couldn’t budge his Tuesday alibi with a bulldozer, and anyway we’re assuming it was Birch. Then why did Horan kill the boy? Now that we’ve got that racket glued to him, of course we can work on him, but if he’s got murder on his mind we’ll never crack him. We’ve got to take this and dig at it, but it balls it up worse than ever. I tell you, Commissioner, there ought to be a law against eyewitnesses.”

Skinner stayed cross. “I think that’s overstating it, Inspector. Eyewitnesses are often extremely helpful. This may prove to be the break we’ve all been hoping for. Sit down and we’ll discuss it.”

As Cramer was pulling up a chair a phone rang. Skinner got it-the red one, first on the left-talked to it a little, and then looked up at Cramer.

“Nero Wolfe for you. He says it’s important.”

“I’ll take it outside.”

“No, take it here. He sounds smug.”

Cramer circled around the desk to Skinner’s elbow and got it, “Wolfe? Cramer speaking. What do you want?”

From there on it was mostly listening at his end. The others sat and watched his face, and so did I. When I saw its red slowly deepening, and his eyes getting narrower and narrower, I wanted to bounce out of my chair and beat it straight for Thirty-fifth Street, but thought it unwise to call attention to myself. I sat it out. When he finally hung up he stood with his jaw clamped and his nose twitching.

“That fat sonofabitch,” he said. He backed off a step. “He’s smug all right. He says he’s ready to earn the money Mrs. Fromm paid him. He wants Sergeant Stebbins and me. He wants the six people chiefly involved. He wants Goodwin and Panzer and Durkin. He wants three or four policewomen, not in uniform, between thirty-five and forty years old. He wants Goodwin immediately. He wants Egan. That’s all he wants.”