Rex Stout: The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

I did so. I sipped some milk, put the glass down, and said, "If you can break a rule so can I. It's like this."

I gave him the whole crop-the talk with Mrs Bruner, the hundred-grand retainer, the evening with Lon Cohen, my talk with Mrs Bruner and Sarah Dacos, my day on Evers Electronics and Ernst Muller and Julia Fenster, my sleeping on the couch in the office. I didn't report it all verbatim, but I covered all the points and answered questions along the way. By the time I finished the milk glass was empty and he had a cigar between his teeth. He doesn't smoke cigars, he merely mangles them.

He removed the cigar and said, "So the hundred grand is his, no matter what happens."

I nodded. "And a check for me, personally. Didn't I mention that?"

"You did. I'm not surprised at Wolfe. With his ego, there's no one and nothing he wouldn't take on if you paid him. But I'm surprised at you. You know damn well the FBI can't be bucked. Not even by the White House. And you're hopping around pecking at people's scabs. You're asking for it and you'll get it. You're off your hinges."

I poured milk. "You're absolutely right," I said. "From any angle, you're dead right. An hour ago I would have said amen. But you know, I feel different about it now. Did I mention something Mr Wolfe said last night? He said some sting may have stirred someone to action. All right, they were stung into needling Perazzo, and he was stung into calling the Commissioner, and he was stung into calling you, and you were stung into getting me here without company and treating me to a quart of milk, which is completely incredible. If one incredible thing can happen, so can another one. Will you answer a question?"

"Ask it."

"You don't exactly love Nero Wolfe, and you certainly don't love me. Why do you want to make a report to the Commissioner that will make it tough to take our licenses?"

"I haven't said I do."

"Nuts." I tapped the milk carton. "This says it. Getting me here the way you did says it. Why?"

He left the chair and moved. He tiptoed to the door, smooth and silent considering his age and bulk, jerked the door open, and stuck his head out. Evidently he wasn't as sure he was loose as I was that I was. He shut the door and went to the bathroom, and I heard water spurting from a faucet, and in a minute he came with a glass of water. He drank it, in no hurry, put the glass on the table, sat, and narrowed his eyes at me.

"I've been a cop for thirty-six years," he said, "and this is the first time I've ever passed the buck to an outsider."

I had my eyes smile a little. "I'm flattered. Or Mr Wolfe is."

"Balls. He wouldn't know flattery if it had labels pasted all over it, and neither would you. Goodwin, I'm going to tell you something that's for you and Wolfe, and that's all. No Lou Cohen or Saul Panzer or Lily Rowan. Is that understood?"

"I don't know why you drag in Miss Rowan, she's merely a personal friend. And there's no point in telling me something if we can't use it."

"You'll use it all right. But it did not come from me. Never, to anybody."

"Okay. Mr Wolfe isn't here to cinch it by giving you his word of honor, so I'll do it for him. For us. Our word of honor."

"That'll have to do. You won't have to take notes, with your tape-recorder memory. Does the name Morris Althaus mean anything to you?" He spelled it.

I nodded. "I read the papers. One that you haven't cracked. Shot. In the chest. Late November. No gun."

"Friday night, November twentieth. The body was found the next morning by a cleaning woman. Died between eight p.m. Friday and three a.m. Saturday. One shot, in at his chest and through the middle of his pump and on out at the back, denting a rib. The bullet went on and hit the wall forty-nine inches above the floor, but it was spent and only nicked it. He was on his back, legs stretched out, left arm straight at his side and right arm crossing his chest. Dressed but no jacket, in his shirtsleeves. No disorder, no sign of a struggle. As you said, no gun. Am I going too fast?"

"No."

"Stop me if you have questions. It was the living room of his apartment on the third floor at Sixty-three Arbor Street-two rooms, kitchenette, and bath. He had been living there three years, alone, single, thirty-six years old. He was a free-lance writer, and in the last four years he had done seven articles for Tick-Tock magazine. He was going to be married in March to a girl named Marian Hinckley, twenty-four, on the staff of Tick-Tock. Of course I could go on. I could have brought the file. But there's nothing in it about his movements or connections or associates that would help. It hasn't helped us."

"You left out a little detail, the caliber of the bullet."

"I didn't leave it out. There was no bullet. It wasn't there."

My eyes widened. "Well. A damned neat murderer."

"Yeah. Neat and coolheaded. Judging from the wound, it was a thirty-eight or bigger. Now two facts. One: for three weeks Althaus had been collecting material for an article on the FBI for Tick-Tock magazine, and not a sign of it, nothing, was there in the apartment. Two: about eleven o'clock that Friday night three FBI men left the house at Sixty-three Arbor Street and went around the corner to a car and drove off."

I sat and looked at him. There are various reasons for keeping your mouth shut, but the best one is that you have nothing to say.

"So they killed him," Cramer said. "Did they go there to kill him? Certainly not. There are several ways to figure it. The one I like best is that they rang his number and he wasn't answering the phone, so they thought he was out. They went and rang his bell and he wasn't answering that either, so they opened the door and went in for a bag job. He pulled a gun, and one of them shot before he did. They train them good in that basement in Washington. They looked for what they wanted and got it and left, taking the bullet because it was from one of their guns."

I was listening. I never listened better. I asked, "Did he have a gun?"

"Yes. S and W thirty-eight. He had a permit. It wasn't there. They took it, you'd have to ask them why. There was a box of cartridges, nearly full, in a drawer."

I sat and looked some more, then said, "So you have cracked it. Congratulations."

"You'd clown in the hot seat, Goodwin. Do I have to describe it?"

"No. But, after all- Who saw them?"

He shook his head. "I'll give you everything but that. He couldn't help you anyway. He saw them leave the house and go to the car and drive off, and he got the license number. That's how we know and all we know. We're hogtied. Even if we could name them, where would that get us? I've seen plenty of murderers I could name, but so what, if I couldn't prove it. But this one, that goddam outfit, I'd give a year's pay to hook them and make it stick. This isn't their town, it's mine. Ours. The New York Police Department. They've had us gritting our teeth for years. Now, by God, they think they can break and enter people's houses and commit homicide in my territory, and laugh at me!"

"Did they? Laugh?"

"Yes. I went to Sixty-ninth Street myself and saw Wragg. I told him that of course they had known that Althaus was collecting material for a piece, and maybe they had had a stake-out on him the night he was killed, and if so I would appreciate some cooperation. He said he would like to help if he could, but they had too many important things to do to bother about a hack muckraker. I didn't tell him they had been seen. He would have laughed."