The Gun with Wings

VI

I was at my desk in the office at 10:40 the next morning when the phone rang. I got it and told the transmitter, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“I want to talk to Mr. Wolfe.”

“He won’t be available until eleven o’clock. Can I help?”

“This is urgent. This is Weppler, Frederick Weppler. I’m in a booth in a drugstore on Ninth Avenue near Twentieth Street. Mrs. Mion is with me. We’ve been arrested.”

“Good God!” I was horrified. “What for?”

“To ask us about Mion’s death. They had material-witness warrants. They kept us all night, and we just got out on bail. I had a lawyer arrange for the bail, but I don’t want him to know about — that we consulted Wolfe, and he’s not with us. We want to see Wolfe.”

“You sure do,” I agreed emphatically. “It’s a damn outrage. Come on up here. He’ll be down from the plant rooms by the time you arrive. Grab a taxi.”

“We can’t. That’s why I’m phoning. We’re being followed by two detectives and we don’t want them to know we’re seeing Wolfe. How can we shake them?”

It would have saved time and energy to tell him to come ahead, that a couple of official tails needn’t worry him, but I thought I’d better play along.

“For God’s sake,” I said, disgusted. “Cops give me a pain in the neck. Listen. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Go to the Feder Paper Company, Five-thirty-five West Seventeenth Street. In the office ask for Mr. Sol Feder. Tell him your name is Montgomery. He’ll conduct you along a passage that exits on Eighteenth Street. Right there, either at the curb or double-parked, will be a taxi with a handkerchief on the door handle. I’ll be in it. Don’t lose any time climbing in. Have you got it?”

“I think so. You’d better repeat the address.”

I did so, and told him to wait ten minutes before starting, to give me time to get there. Then, after hanging up, I phoned Sol Feder to instruct him, got Wolfe on the house phone to inform him, and beat it.

I should have told him to wait fifteen or twenty minutes instead of ten, because I got to my post on Eighteenth Street barely in time. My taxi had just stopped, and I was reaching out to tie my handkerchief on the door handle, when here they came across the sidewalk like a bat out of hell. I swung the door wide, and Fred practically threw Peggy in and dived in after her.

“Okay, driver,” I said sternly, “you know where,” and we rolled.

As we swung into Tenth Avenue I asked if they had had breakfast and they said yes, not with any enthusiasm. The fact is, they looked as if they were entirely out of enthusiasm. Peggy’s lightweight green jacket, which she had on over a tan cotton dress, was rumpled and not very clean, and her face looked neglected. Fred’s hair might not have been combed for a month, and his brown tropical worsted was anything but natty. They sat holding hands, and about once a minute Fred twisted around to look through the rear window.

“We’re loose all right,” I assured him. “I’ve been saving Sol Feder just for an emergency like this.”

It was only a five-minute ride. When I ushered them into the office Wolfe was there in his big custom-made chair behind his desk. He arose to greet them, invited them to sit, asked if they had breakfasted properly, and said that the news of their arrest had been an unpleasant shock.

“One thing,” Fred blurted, still standing. “We came to see you and consult you in confidence, and forty-eight hours later we were arrested. Was that pure coincidence?”

Wolfe finished getting himself re-established in his chair. “That won’t help us any, Mr. Weppler,” he said without resentment. “If that’s your frame of mind you’d better go somewhere and cool off. You and Mrs. Mion are my clients. An insinuation that I am capable of acting against the interest of a client is too childish for discussion. What did the police ask you about?”

But Fred wasn’t satisfied. “You’re not a double-crosser,” he conceded. “I know that. But what about Goodwin here? He may not be a double-crosser either, but he might have got careless in conversation with someone.”

Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Archie. Did you?”

“No, sir. But he can postpone asking my pardon. They’ve had a hard night.” I looked at Fred. “Sit down and relax. If I had a careless tongue I wouldn’t last at this job a week.”

“It’s damn funny,” Fred persisted. He sat. “Mrs. Mion agrees with me. Don’t you, Peggy?”

Peggy, in the red leather chair, gave him a glance and then looked back at Wolfe. “I did, I guess,” she confessed. “Yes, I did. But now that I’m here, seeing you—” She made a gesture. “Oh, forget it! There’s no one else to go to. We know lawyers, of course, but we don’t want to tell a lawyer what we know — about the gun. We’ve already told you. But now the police suspect something, and we’re out on bail, and you’ve got to do something!”

“What did you find out Monday evening?” Fred demanded. “You stalled when I phoned yesterday. What did they say?”

“They recited facts,” Wolfe replied. “As I told you on the phone, I made some progress. I have nothing to add to that — now. But I want to know, I must know, what line the police took with you. Did they know what you told me about the gun?”

They both said no.

Wolfe grunted. “Then I might reasonably ask that you withdraw your insinuation that I or Mr. Goodwin betrayed you. What did they ask about?”

The answers to that took a good half an hour. The cops hadn’t missed a thing that was included in the picture as they knew it, and, with instructions from Cramer to make it thorough, they hadn’t left a scrap. Far from limiting it to the day of Mion’s death, they had been particularly curious about Peggy’s and Fred’s feelings and actions during the months both prior and subsequent thereto. Several times I had to take the tip of my tongue between my teeth to keep from asking the clients why they hadn’t told the cops to go soak their heads, but I really knew why: they had been scared. A scared man is only half a man. By the time they finished reporting on their ordeal I was feeling sympathetic, and even guilty on behalf of Wolfe, when suddenly he snapped me out of it.

He sat a while tapping the arm of his chair with a fingertip, and then looked at me and said abruptly, “Archie. Draw a check to the order of Mrs. Mion for five thousand dollars.”

They gawked at him. I got up and headed for the safe. They demanded to know what the idea was. I stood at the safe door to listen.

“I’m quitting,” Wolfe said curtly. “I can’t stand you. I told you Sunday that one or both of you were lying, and you stubbornly denied it. I undertook to work around your lie, and I did my best. But now that the police have got curious about Mion’s death, and specifically about you, I refuse longer to risk it. I am willing to be a Quixote, but not a chump. In breaking with you, I should tell you that I shall immediately inform Inspector Cramer of all that you have told me. If, when the police start the next round with you, you are fools enough to contradict me, heaven knows what will happen. Your best course will be to acknowledge the truth and let them pursue the investigation you hired me for; but I would also warn you that they are not simpletons and they too will know that you are lying — at least one of you. Archie, what are you standing there gaping for? Get the checkbook.”

I opened the safe door.

Neither of them had uttered a peep. I suppose they were too tired to react normally. As I returned to my desk they just sat, looking at each other. As I started making the entry on the stub, Fred’s voice came.

“You can’t do this. This isn’t ethical.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe snorted. “You hire me to get you out of a fix, and lie to me about it, and talk of ethics! Incidentally, I did make progress Monday evening. I cleared everything up but two details, but the devil of it is that one of them depends on you. I have got to know who put that gun on the floor beside the body. I am convinced that it was one of you, but you won’t admit it. So I’m helpless and that’s a pity, because I am also convinced that neither of you was involved in Mion’s death. If there were—”

“What’s that?” Fred demanded. There was nothing wrong with his reaction now. “You’re convinced that neither of us was involved?”

“I am.”

Fred was out of his chair. He went to Wolfe’s desk, put his palms on it, leaned forward, and said harshly, “Do you mean that? Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me! Do you mean that?”

“Yes,” Wolfe told him. “Certainly I mean it.”

Fred gazed at him another moment and then straightened up. “All right,” he said, the harshness gone. “I put the gun on the floor.”

A wail came from Peggy. She sailed out of her chair and to him and seized his arm with both hands. “Fred! No! Fred!” she pleaded. I wouldn’t have thought her capable of wailing, but of course she was tired to begin with. He put a hand on top of hers and then decided that was inadequate and took her in his arms. For a minute he concentrated on her. Finally he turned his face to Wolfe and spoke.

“I may regret this, but if I do you will too. By God, you will.” He was quite positive of it. “All right, I lied. I put the gun on the floor. Now it’s up to you.” He held the other client closer. “I did, Peggy. Don’t say I should have told you — maybe I should — but I couldn’t. It’ll be all right, dearest, really it will—”

“Sit down,” Wolfe said crossly. After a moment he made it an order. “Confound it, sit down!”

Peggy freed herself, Fred letting her go, and returned to her chair and dropped into it. Fred perched on its arm, with a hand on her far shoulder, and she put her hand up to his. Their eyes, suspicious, afraid, defiant, and hopeful all at once, were on Wolfe.

He stayed cross. “I assume,” he said, “that you see how it is. You haven’t impressed me. I already knew one of you had put the gun there. How could anyone else have entered the studio during those few minutes? The truth you have told me will be worse than useless, it will be extremely dangerous, unless you follow it with more truth. Try another lie and there’s no telling what will happen; I might not be able to save you. Where did you find it?”

“Don’t worry,” Fred said quietly. “You’ve screwed it out of me and you’ll get it straight. When we went in and found the body I saw the gun where Mion always kept it, on the base of Caruso’s bust. Mrs. Mion didn’t see it; she didn’t look that way. When I left her in her bedroom I went back up. I picked the gun up by the trigger guard and smelled it; it had been fired. I put it on the floor by the body, returned to the apartment, went out, and took the elevator to the ground floor. The rest was just as I told you Sunday.”

Wolfe grunted. “You may have been in love, but you didn’t think much of her intelligence. You assumed that after killing him she hadn’t had the wit to leave the gun where he might have dropped—”

“I did not, damn you!”

“Nonsense. Of course you did. Who else would you have wanted to shield? And afterward it got you in a pickle. When you had to agree with her that the gun hadn’t been there when you and she entered, you were hobbled. You didn’t dare tell her what you had done because of the implication that you suspected her, especially when she seemed to be suspecting you. You couldn’t be sure whether she really did suspect you, or whether she was only—”

“I never did suspect him,” Peggy said firmly. It was a job to make her voice firm, but she managed it. “And he never suspected me, not really. We just weren’t sure — sure all the way down — and when you’re in love and want it to last you’ve got to be sure.”

“That was it,” Fred agreed. They were looking at each other. “That was it exactly.”

“All right, I’ll take this,” Wolfe said curtly. “I think you’ve told the truth, Mr. Weppler.”

“I know damn well I have.”

Wolfe nodded. “You sound like it. I have a good ear for the truth. Now take Mrs. Mion home. I’ve got to work, but first I must think it over. As I said, there were two details, and you’ve disposed of only one. You can’t help with the other. Go home and eat something.”

“Who wants to eat?” Fred demanded fiercely. “We want to know what you’re going to do!”

“I’ve got to brush my teeth,” Peggy stated. I shot her a glance of admiration and affection. Women’s saying things like that at times like that is one of the reasons I enjoy their company. No man alive, under those circumstances, would have felt that he had to brush his teeth and said so.

Besides, it made it easier to get rid of them without being rude. Fred tried to insist that they had a right to know what the program was, and to help consider the prospects, but was finally compelled to accept Wolfe’s mandate that when a man hired an expert the only authority he kept was the right to fire. That, combined with Peggy’s longing for a toothbrush and Wolfe’s assurance that he would keep them informed, got them on their way without a ruckus.

When, after letting them out, I returned to the office, Wolfe was drumming on his desk blotter with a paperknife, scowling at it, though I had told him a hundred times that it ruined the blotter. I went and got the checkbook and replaced it in the safe, having put nothing on the stub but the date, so no harm was done.

“Twenty minutes till lunch,” I announced, swiveling my chair and sitting. “Will that be enough to hogtie the second detail?”

No reply.

I refused to be sensitive. “If you don’t mind,” I inquired pleasantly, “what is the second detail?”

Again no reply, but after a moment he dropped the paperknife, leaned back, and sighed clear down.

“That confounded gun,” he growled. “How did it get from the floor to the bust? Who moved it?”

I stared at him. “My God,” I complained, “you’re hard to satisfy. You’ve just had two clients arrested and worked like a dog, getting the gun from the bust to the floor. Now you want to get it from the floor to the bust again? What the hell!”

“Not again. Prior to.”

“Prior to what?”

“To the discovery of the body.” His eyes slanted at me. “What do you think of this? A man — or a woman, no matter which — entered the studio and killed Mion in a manner that would convey a strong presumption of suicide. He deliberately planned it that way: it’s not as difficult as the traditional police theory assumes. Then he placed the gun on the base of the bust, twenty feet away from the body, and departed. What do you think of it?”

“I don’t think; I know. It didn’t happen that way, unless he suddenly went batty after he pulled the trigger, which seems far-fetched.”

“Precisely. Having planned it to look like suicide, he placed the gun on the floor near the body. That is not discussible. But Mr. Weppler found it on the bust. Who took it from the floor and put it there, and when and why?”

“Yeah.” I scratched my nose. “That’s annoying. I’ll admit the question is relevant and material, but why the hell do you let it in? Why don’t you let it lay? Get him or her pinched, indicted, and tried. The cops will testify that the gun was there on the floor, and that will suit the jury fine, since it was framed for suicide. Verdict, provided you’ve sewed up things like motive and opportunity, guilty.” I waved a hand. “Simple. Why bring it up at all about the gun being so fidgety?”

Wolfe grunted. “The clients. I have to earn my fee. They want their minds cleared, and they know the gun wasn’t on the floor when they discovered the body. For the jury, I can’t leave it that the gun was on the bust, and for the clients I can’t leave it that it stayed on the floor where the murderer put it. Having, through Mr. Weppler, got it from the bust to the floor, I must now go back and get it from the floor to the bust. You see that?”

“Only too plain.” I whistled for help. “I’ll be damned. How’re you coming on?”

“I’ve just started.” He sat up straight. “But I must clear my own mind, for lunch. Please hand me Mr. Shanks’s orchid catalogue.”

That was all for the moment, and during meals Wolfe excludes business not only from the conversation but also from the air. After lunch he returned to the office and got comfortable in his chair. For a while he just sat, and then began pushing his lips out and in, and I knew he was doing hard labor. Having no idea how he proposed to move the gun from the floor to the bust, I was wondering how long it might take, and whether he would have to get Cramer to arrest someone else, and if so who. I have seen him sit there like that, working for hours on end, but this time twenty minutes did it. It wasn’t three o’clock yet when he pronounced my name gruffly and opened his eyes.

“Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can’t do this. You’ll have to.”

“You mean dope it? I’m sorry, I’m busy.”

“I mean execute it.” He made a face. “I will not undertake to handle that young woman. It would be an ordeal, and I might botch it. It’s just the thing for you. Your notebook. I’ll dictate a document and then we’ll discuss it.”

“Yes, sir. I wouldn’t call Miss Bosley really young.”

“Not Miss Bosley. Miss James.”

“Oh.” I got the notebook.