The Silent Speaker

Chapter 21

I MIGHT AS WELL have stayed put, because that was where the hand inspecting was done, my bedroom. The laboratory man wanted a quiet spot, and there was still activity everywhere else except Wolfe’s room, which, by his instructions, was not to be entered. So the customers, one by one, had to climb the two flights. The apparatus, with its special light plugged in, was set up on my table. There were five of us in the room: the two experts, the dick who brought and took the customers, the current customer, and me sitting on the edge of the bed.

I was there partly because it was my room and I didn’t care for the idea of abandoning it to a gang of strangers, and partly because I was stubborn and still couldn’t understand why I was unable to pick the face, as I had greeted them at the door, of the one who had just finished killing Phoebe. That was the reason I might have bid as high as a nickel for Winterhoff’s man in dark clothes darting and dashing. I wanted another good look at them. I had a feeling, of which I wouldn’t have told Wolfe, that if I looked straight at the face of the person who had killed Phoebe, I would know it. It was an entirely new slant on crime detection, especially for me, but I had it. So I sat on the edge of my bed and looked straight at faces while the experts looked at hands.

First, Nina Boone. Pale, tired, and nervous.

Second, Don O’Neill. Resentful, impatient, and curious. Eyes bloodshot.

Third, Hattie Harding. Saggy and very jittery. Eyes nothing like as competent as they had been four days earlier in her office.

Fourth, Winterhoff. Distinguished, sweaty, and worried stiff.

Fifth, Father Erskine. Tense and determined.

Sixth, Alger Kates. Grim and about ready to cry. Eyes backing into his head.

Seventh, Mrs. Boone. Everything coming loose but trying to hang on. The tiredest of all.

Eighth, Solomon Dexter. Sort of swollen, with bags under the eyes. Not worried, but extremely resolute.

Ninth, Breslow. Lips tight with fury and eyes like a mad pig. He was the only one who stared back at me instead of at his own hand, under the light and the lens.

Tenth, Ed Erskine. Sarcastic, skeptical, and hangover all gone. About as worried as a pigeon in the park.

There had been no exclamations of delighted discovery from the experts, any more than from me. They had spoken to the customers, to instruct them about holding still and shifting position when required, and had exchanged brief comments in undertones, and that was all. They had tweezers and pillboxes and other paraphernalia handy, but had made no use of it. When the last one, Ed Erskine, had been escorted out, I asked them:

“Any soap?”

The one without much chin replied, “We report to the Inspector.”

“Goodness gracious,” I said enviously. “It must be wonderful to be connected with the Police Department, with all the secrets. Why do you think Cramer let me come up and sit here and watch? To keep my mind a blank?”

“No doubt,” the other one, the one with a jaw, said grimly, “the Inspector will inform you of our findings. Go down and report, Phillips.”

I was beginning to get restless, so, deciding to leave my room to its fate temporarily, I followed Phillips downstairs. If it was a weird experience for me, all these aliens trampling all over the house as if they owned it, I could imagine what the effect must be on Wolfe. Phillips trotted into the dining room, but Cramer wasn’t among those present, and I steered him into the office. Wolfe was at his desk, and the P.C., the D.A., and the two FBI’s were still there, all with their eyes on Cramer, who stood talking to them. He stopped at sight of Phillips.

“Well?”

“On the microscopic examination of hands the results are negative, Inspector.”

“The hell they are. Another big rousing achievement. Tell Stebbins to get all gloves and handkerchiefs from their persons and send them up to you. Including the ladies’ bags. Tell him to tag everything. Also from their overcoat pockets-no, send up coats and hats and all, and you see what’s in the pockets. For God’s sake don’t mix anything up.”

“Yes, sir.” Phillips turned and went.

Not seeing how any good could come of staring straight at the faces of gloves and handkerchiefs, I crossed over to the Police Commissioner and addressed him:

“If you don’t mind, this is my chair.”

He looked startled, opened his mouth, shut it again, and moved to another seat. I sat down where I belonged. Cramer talked:

“You can do it if you can get away with it, but you know what the law is. Our jurisdiction extends to the limits of the premises occupied by the deceased provided it was the scene of the crime, but not otherwise. We can-”

“That’s not the law,” the D.A. snapped.

“You mean it’s not statute. But it’s accepted custom and it’s what the courts stand for, so it’s law for me. You wanted my opinion, and that’s it. I won’t be responsible for continued occupation of the apartment Miss Gunther was staying in, and not by my men anyway because I can’t spare them. The tenant of the apartment is Kates. Three good searchers have spent an hour and a half there and haven’t found anything. I’m willing to let them keep at it all night, or at least until we turn Kates loose, if and when we’re through here, but any order for continued occupancy and keeping Kates out”-he looked at the P.C.-”will have to come from you, sir, or,” he looked at the D.A., “from you.”

Travis of the FBI put in, “I’d advise against it.”

“This,” the D.A. said stiffly, “is a local problem.”

They went on. I started kicking my left ankle with my right foot, and vice versa. Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, and I was pleased to note that his opinion of high strategy was apparently the same as mine. The P.C., the D.A., and the FBI, not to mention the head of the Homicide Squad, debating where Alger Kates was going to sleep, when he got a chance to sleep, and that after three cops had had the apartment to themselves long enough to saw all the legs off the chairs and glue them back on. It developed that it was the D.A. who was plugging for continued occupancy. I decided to enter the conversation just for the hell of it and was considering which side to be on when the phone rang.

It was from Washington, for FBI Travis, and he came to my desk to take it. The others stopped talking and looked at him. On his part it was mostly listening. When he had finished he shoved the phone back and turned to announce:

“This has some bearing on what we’ve been discussing. Our men and the Washington police have completed their search of Miss Gunther’s apartment in Washington-one large room, bath, and kitchenette. In a hatbox on a shelf in a closet they found nine Stenophone cylinders-”

“Confound it!” Wolfe burst out. “Nine?” He was as indignant and irritated as if he had been served a veal cutlet with an egg perched on it. Everyone stared at him.

“Nine,” said Travis curtly. He was justifiably annoyed at having his scene stolen. “Nine Stenophone cylinders. A BPR man was with them, and they are now at the BPR office running them off and making a transcription.” He looked coldly at Wolfe. “What’s wrong with nine?”

“For you,” Wolfe said offensively, “apparently nothing. For me, nine is no better than none. I want ten.”

“That’s a damn shame. I apologize. They should have found ten.” Having demolished Wolfe, he reported to the others, “They’ll call again as soon as they get something we might use.”

“Then they won’t call,” Wolfe declared, and shut his eyes again, leaving the discussion of the new development to the others. He was certainly being objectionable, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. The howling insolence of committing a murder on his own stoop would alone have been enough, but in addition to that his house was filled from top to bottom with uninvited guests and he was absolutely powerless. That was dead against his policy, his practice, and his personality. Seeing that he was really in a bad way, and thinking it might be a good plan for him to keep himself at least partially informed of what was going on, since he was supposed to have an interest in the outcome, I went to the kitchen to get some beer for him. Evidently he was in too bad a humor even to remember to send for beer, since there were no signs of any.

Fritz and about a dozen assorted dicks were there drinking coffee. I told them:

“You sure are cluttering up the place, but I don’t blame you. It isn’t often that members of the lower classes get a chance to drink coffee made by Fritz Brenner.”

There was a subdued, but close to unanimous, concert of Bronx cheers. One said, “Goodwin the gentleman. One, two, three, laugh.”

Another said, “Hey, you know everything. What’s the lowdown on this NIA-BPR stuff? Is it a feud or not?”

I was putting six bottles and six glasses on a tray, with Fritz’s help. “I’m glad to explain,” I said generously. “The NIA and the BPR are in one respect exactly like the glorious PD, or Police Department. They have esprit de corps. Repeat it after me-no, don’t bother. That is a French term, the language spoken by Frenchmen, the people who live in France, the literal translation of which is ‘spirit of the body.’ In our language we have no precise equivalent-”

The cheers had begun again, and the tray was ready, so I left them. Fritz came to the hall with me, closed the kitchen door, held my sleeve, and told my ear:

“Archie, this is awful. I just want to say I know how awful it is for you. Mr. Wolfe told me when I took up his breakfast this morning that you had formed a passion for Miss Gunther and she had you wound around her finger. She was a beautiful girl, very beautiful. This is awful, what happened here.”

I said, “Go to hell,” jerked my arm to free my sleeve, and took a step. Then I turned to him and said, “All I meant was, this is a hell of a night and it will take you a week to clean up the joint. Go back and finish that lesson in French I was giving them.”

In the office they were as before. I peddled beer around, making three sales to outsiders, leaving three bottles for Wolfe, which was about as I had calculated, went back to the kitchen and got myself a sandwich and a glass of milk, and returned to my desk with them. The strategy council was going on and on, with Wolfe still aloof in spite of the beer. The sandwich made me hungry and I went and got two more. Long after they were gone the council was still chewing the fat.

They were handicapped, of course, by continual interruptions, both by phone and by personal appearances. One of the phone calls was for Travis from Washington, and when he was through with it his face displayed no triumph. The nine cylinders had all been listened to, and there was nothing for us to bite on. They contained plenty of evidence that they had been dictated by Boone at his Washington office on Tuesday afternoon, but no evidence at all that would help to uncover a murderer. The BPR was trying to hang onto the transcriptions, but the Washington FBI promised to send a copy to Travis, and he agreed to let Cramer see it.

“So,” Travis said aggressively, daring us to hint that we were no better off than before, “that proves that Miss Gunther was lying about them. She had them all the time.”

“Nine.” Wolfe grunted in disgust. “Pfui.”

That was his only contribution to their discussion of the cylinders.

It was five minutes past three Tuesday morning when Phillips, the expert with less than his share of chin, entered the office with objects in his hands. In his right was a gray topcoat, and in his left was a silk scarf with stripes of dark brown and terra cotta. It was obvious that even an expert is capable of having feelings. His face showed plainly that he had something.

He looked at Wolfe and me and asked, “Do I report here, Inspector?”

“Go ahead.” Cramer was impatient. “What is it?”

“This scarf was in the right-hand pocket of this coat. It was folded as it is now. Unfolding one fold exposes about forty square inches of its surface. On that surface are between fifteen and twenty particles of matter which in our opinion came from that piece of pipe. That is our opinion. Laboratory tests-”

“Sure.” Cramer’s eyes were gleaming. “You can test from hell to breakfast. You’ve got a microscope up there, and you know what I want right now. Is it good enough to act on, or isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, it is. We made sure before-”

“Whose coat is it?”

“The tag says Alger Kates.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s Kates’s coat.”