The Gun with Wings

V

For nine months of the year Inspector Cramer of Homicide, big and broad and turning gray, looked the part well enough, but in the summertime the heat kept his face so red that he was a little gaudy. He knew it and didn’t like it, and as a result he was some harder to deal with in August than in January. If an occasion arises for me to commit a murder in Manhattan I hope it will be winter.

Tuesday at noon he sat in the red leather chair and looked at Wolfe with no geniality. Detained by another appointment, he hadn’t been able to make it at eleven, the hour when Wolfe adjourns the morning session with his orchids up in the plant rooms. Wolfe wasn’t exactly beaming either, and I was looking forward to some vaudeville. Also I was curious to see how Wolfe would go about getting dope on a murder from Cramer without spilling it that there had been one, as Cramer was by no means a nitwit.

“I’m on my way uptown,” Cramer grumbled, “and haven’t got much time.”

That was probably a barefaced lie. He merely didn’t want to admit that an inspector of the NYPD would call on a private detective on request, even though it was Nero Wolfe and I had told him we had something hot.

“What is it,” he grumbled on, “the Dickinson thing? Who brought you in?”

Wolfe shook his head. “No one, thank heaven. It’s about the murder of Alberto Mion.”

I goggled at him. This was away beyond me. Right off he had let the dog loose, when I had thought the whole point was that there was no dog on the place.

“Mion?” Cramer wasn’t interested. “Not one of mine.”

“It soon will be. Alberto Mion, the famous opera singer. Four months ago, on April nineteenth. In his studio on East End Avenue. Shot—”

“Oh.” Cramer nodded. “Yeah, I remember. But you’re stretching it a little. It was suicide.”

“No. It was first-degree murder.”

Cramer regarded him for three breaths. Then, in no hurry, he got a cigar from his pocket, inspected it, and stuck it in his mouth. In a moment he took it out again.

“I have never known it to fail,” he remarked, “that you can be counted on for a headache. Who says it was murder?”

“I have reached that conclusion.”

“Then that’s settled.” Cramer’s sarcasm was usually a little heavy. “Have you bothered any about evidence?”

“I have none.”

“Good. Evidence just clutters a murder up.” Cramer stuck the cigar back in his mouth and exploded, “When did you start keeping your sentences so goddam short? Go ahead and talk!”

“Well—” Wolfe considered. “It’s a little difficult. You’re probably not familiar with the details, since it was so long ago and was recorded as suicide.”

“I remember it fairly well. As you say, he was famous. Go right ahead.”

Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes. “Interrupt me if you need to. I had six people here for a talk last evening.” He pronounced their names and identified them. “Five of them were present at a conference in Mion’s studio which ended two hours before he was found dead. The sixth, Miss James, banged on the studio door at a quarter past six and got no reply, presumably because he was dead then. My conclusion that Mion was murdered is based on things I have heard said. I’m not going to repeat them to you — because it would take too long, because it’s a question of emphasis and interpretation, and because you have already heard them.”

“I wasn’t here last evening,” Cramer said dryly.

“So you weren’t. Instead of ‘you,’ I should have said the Police Department. It must all be in the files. They were questioned at the time it happened, and told their stories as they have now told them to me. You can get it there. Have you ever known me to have to eat my words?”

“I’ve seen times when I would have liked to shove them down your throat.”

“But you never have. Here are three more I shall not eat: Mion was murdered. I won’t tell you, now, how I reached that conclusion; study your files.”

Cramer was keeping himself under restraint. “I don’t have to study them,” he declared, “for one detail — how he was killed. Are you saying he fired the gun himself but was driven to it?”

“No. The murderer fired the gun.”

“It must have been quite a murderer. It’s quite a trick to pry a guy’s mouth open and stick a gun in it without getting bit. Would you mind naming him?”

Wolfe shook his head. “I haven’t got that far yet. But it isn’t the objection you raise that’s bothering me; that can be overcome; it’s something else.” He leaned forward and was earnest. “Look here, Mr. Cramer. It would not have been impossible for me to see this through alone, deliver the murderer and the evidence to you, and flap my wings and crow. But first, I have no ambition to expose you as a zany, since you’re not; and second, I need your help. I am not now prepared to prove to you that Mion was murdered; I can only assure you that he was and repeat that I won’t have to eat it — and neither will you. Isn’t that enough, at least to arouse your interest?”

Cramer stopped chewing the cigar. He never lit one. “Sure,” he said grimly. “Hell, I’m interested. Another first-class headache. I’m flattered you want me to help. How?”

“I want you to arrest two people as material witnesses, question them, and let them out on bail.”

“Which two? Why not all six?” I warned you his sarcasm was hefty.

“But” — Wolfe ignored it — “under clearly defined conditions. They must not know that I am responsible; they must not even know that I have spoken with you. The arrests should be made late this afternoon or early evening, so they’ll be kept in custody all night and until they arrange for bail in the morning. The bail need not be high; that’s not important. The questioning should be fairly prolonged and severe, not merely a gesture, and if they get little or no sleep so much the better. Of course this sort of thing is routine for you.”

“Yeah, we do it constantly.” Cramer’s tone was unchanged. “But when we ask for a warrant we like to have a fairly good excuse. We wouldn’t like to put down that it’s to do Nero Wolfe a favor. I don’t want to be contrary.”

“There’s ample excuse for these two. They are material witnesses. They are indeed.”

“You haven’t named them. Who are they?”

“The man and woman who found the body. Mr. Frederick Weppler, the music critic, and Mrs. Mion, the widow.”

This time I didn’t goggle, but I had to catch myself quick. It was a first if there ever was one. Time and again I have seen Wolfe go far, on a few occasions much too far, to keep a client from being pinched. He regards it as an unbearable personal insult. And here he was, practically begging the law to haul Fred and Peggy in, when I had deposited her check for five grand only the day before!

“Oh,” Cramer said. “Them?”

“Yes, sir,” Wolfe assured him cooperatively. “As you know or can learn from the files, there is plenty to ask them about it. Mr. Weppler was there for lunch that day, with others, and when the others left he remained with Mrs. Mion. What was discussed? What did they do that afternoon; where were they? Why did Mr. Weppler return to the Mion apartment at seven o’clock? Why did he and Mrs. Mion ascend together to the studio? After finding the body, why did Mr. Weppler go downstairs before notifying the police, to get a list of names from the doorman and elevator man? An extraordinary performance. Was it Mion’s habit to take an afternoon nap? Did he sleep with his mouth open?”

“Much obliged,” Cramer said not gratefully. “You’re a wonder at thinking of questions to ask. But even if Mion did take naps with his mouth open, I doubt if he did it standing up. And after the bullet left his head it went up to the ceiling, as I remember it. Now.” Cramer put his palms on the arms of the chair, with the cigar in his mouth tilted up at about the angle the gun in Mion’s mouth had probably been. “Who’s your client?”

“No,” Wolfe said regretfully. “I’m not ready to disclose that.”

“I thought not. In fact, there isn’t one single damn thing you have disclosed. You’ve got no evidence, or if you have any you’re keeping it under your belt. You’ve got a conclusion you like, that will help a client you won’t name, and you want me to test it for you by arresting two reputable citizens and giving them the works. I’ve seen samples of your nerve before, but this is tops. For God’s sake!”

“I’ve told you I won’t eat it, and neither will you. If—”

“You’d eat one of your own orchids if you had to earn a fee!”

That started the fireworks. I have sat many times and listened to that pair in a slugging match and enjoyed every minute of it, but this one got so hot that I wasn’t exactly sure I was enjoying it. At 12:4 °Cramer was on his feet, starting to leave. At 12:45 he was back in the red leather chair, shaking his fist and snarling. At 12:48 Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut, pretending he was deaf. At 12:52 he was pounding his desk and bellowing.

At ten past one it was all over. Cramer had taken it and was gone. He had made a condition, that there would first be a check of the record and a staff talk, but that didn’t matter, since the arrests were to be postponed until after judges had gone home. He accepted the proviso that the victims were not to know that Wolfe had a hand in it, so it could have been said that he was knuckling under, but actually he was merely using horse sense. No matter how much he discounted Wolfe’s three words that were not to be eaten — and he knew from experience how risky it was to discount Wolfe just for the hell of it — they made it fairly probable that it wouldn’t hurt to give Mion’s death another look; and in that case a session with the couple who had found the body was as good a way to start as any. As a matter of fact, the only detail that Cramer choked on was Wolfe’s refusal to tell who his client was.

As I followed Wolfe into the dining room for lunch I remarked to his outspread back, “There are already eight hundred and nine people in the metropolitan area who would like to poison you. This will make it eight hundred and eleven. Don’t think they won’t find out sooner or later.”

“Of course they will,” he conceded, pulling his chair back. “But too late.”

The rest of that day and evening nothing happened at all, as far as we knew.