The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

Chapter 29

YOU ARE NOT AN attorney,” Inspector Ash declared in an insulting tone, though the statement was certainly not an insult in itself. “Nothing that has been said or written to you by anyone whatever has the status of a privileged communication.”

It was not a convention as I had expected. Besides Wolfe and me the only ones present were Ash, Police Commissioner Hombert, and District Attorney Skinner, which left Hombert’s spacious and well-furnished corner office looking practically uninhabited, even considering that Wolfe counted for three. At least he was not undergoing downright physical hardship, since there had been found available a chair large enough to accommodate his beam without excessive squeezing.

But he was conceding nothing. “That remark,” he told Ash in his most objectionable tone, “is childish. Suppose I have been told something that I don’t want you to know about. Would I admit the fact and then refuse to tell you about it on the ground that it was a privileged communication? Pfui! Suppose you kept after me. I would simply tell you a string of lies and then what?”

Ash was smiling. His plastic eyes had the effect of reflecting all the light that came at them from the four big windows, as if their surfaces could neither absorb light nor give it out.

“The trouble with you, Wolfe,” he said curtly, “is that you’ve been spoiled by my predecessor, Inspector Cramer. He didn’t know how to handle you. You had him buffaloed. With me in charge you’ll see a big difference. A month from now or a year from now you may still have a license and you may not. It depends on how you behave.” He tapped his chest with his forefinger. “You know me. You may remember how far you got with that Boeddiker case over in Queens.”

“I never started. I quit. And your abominable handling gave the prosecutor insufficient evidence to convict a murderer whose guilt was manifest. Mr. Ash, you are both a numskull and a hooligan.”

“So you’re going to try it on me.” Ash was still smiling. “Maybe I won’t give you even a month. I don’t see why-”

“That will do for that,” Hombert broke in.

“Yes, sir,” Ash said respectfully. “I only wanted-”

“I don’t give a damn what you only wanted. We’re in one hell of a fix, and that’s all I’m interested in. If you want to ride Wolfe on this case go as far as you like, but save the rest till later. It was your idea that Wolfe was holding out and it was time to put the screws on him. Go ahead. I’m all for that.”

“Yes, sir.” Ash had quit smiling to look stern. “I only know this, that in every case I’ve ever heard of where Wolfe horned in and got within smelling distance of money he has always managed to get something that no one else gets, and he always hangs onto it until it suits his convenience to let go.”

“You’re quite correct, Inspector,” District Attorney Skinner said dryly. “You might add that when he does let go the result is usually disastrous for some lawbreaker.”

“Yes?” Ash demanded. “And is that a reason for letting him call the tune for the Police Department and your office?”

“I would like to ask,” Wolfe put in, “if I was hauled down here to listen to a discussion of my own career and character. This babbling is frivolous.”

Ash was getting stirred up. He glared. “You were hauled down here,” he rasped, “to tell us what you know, and everything you know, about these crimes. You say I’m a numskull. I don’t say you’re a numskull, far from it, here’s my opinion of you in one short sentence. I wouldn’t be surprised if you know something that gives you a good clear idea of who it was that killed Cheney Boone and the Gunther woman.”

“Certainly I do. So do you.”

They made movements and noises. I grinned around at them, nonchalant, to convey the impression that there was nothing to get excited about, because I had the conviction that Wolfe was overplaying it beyond all reason just to get even with them and it might have undesirable consequences. His romantic nature often led him to excesses like that, and once he got started it was hard to stop him, the stopping being one of my functions. Before their exclamations and head-jerkings were finished I stepped in.

“He doesn’t mean,” I explained hastily, “that we’ve got the murderer down in our car. There are details to be attended to.”

Hombert’s and Skinner’s movements had been limited to minor muscular reactions, but Ash had left his chair and strode masterfully to within two feet of Wolfe, where he stopped short to gaze down at him. He stood with his hands behind his back, which was effective in a way, but it would have been an improvement if he had remembered that in the classic Napoleon stance the arms are folded.

“You either mean it,” he said like a menace, “or you don’t. If it’s a bluff you’ll eat it. It is isn’t, for once in your life you’re going to be opened up.” His bony head swiveled to Hombert. “Let me take him, sir. Here in your office it might be embarrassing.”

“Imbecile,” Wolfe muttered. “Hopeless imbecile.” He applied the levers and got himself to his feet. “I had reluctantly accepted the necessity of a long and fruitless discussion of a singularly difficult problem, but this is farcical. Take me home, Archie.”

“No you don’t,” Ash said, even more a menace. He reached and gripped Wolfe’s arm. “You’re under arrest, my man. This time you-”

I was aware that Wolfe could move without delay when he had to, and, knowing what his attitude was toward anybody’s hand touching him, I had prepared myself for motion when I saw Ash grab his arm, but the speed and precision with which he slapped Ash on the side of his jaw were a real surprise, not only to me but to Ash himself. Ash didn’t even know it was coming until it was there, a healthy open-palm smack with a satisfactory sound effect. Simultaneously Ash’s eyes glittered and his left fist started, and I propelled myself up and forward. The emergency was too split-second to permit anything fancy, so I simply inserted myself in between, and Ash’s left collided with my right shoulder before it had any momentum to speak of. With great presence of mind I didn’t even bend an elbow, merely staying there as a barrier; but Wolfe, who claims constantly to detest a hubbub, said through his teeth:

“Hit him, Archie. Knock him down.”

By that time Hombert was there and Skinner was hovering. Seeing that they were voting against bloodshed, and not caring to be tossed in the coop for manhandling an inspector, I backed away. Wolfe glared at me and said, still through his teeth:

“I am under arrest. You are not. Telephone Mr. Parker to arrange for bail immed-”

“Goodwin is staying right here.” Ash’s eyes were really nasty. I had never had an impulse to send him a birthday greeting card, but I was surprised to learn how mean he was. “Or rather you’re both going with me-”

“Now listen.” Skinner had his hands spread out patting air, like a pleader calming a mob. “This is ridiculous. We all want-”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Oh, forget that! Technically I suppose-”

“Then I am. You can all go to the devil.” Wolfe went back to the big chair and sat down. “Mr. Goodwin will telephone our lawyer. If you want me out of here send for someone to carry me. If you want me to discuss anything with you, if you want a word out of me, vacate those warrants and get rid of Mr. Ash. He jars me.”

“I’ll take him,” Ash snapped. “He struck an officer.”

Skinner and Hombert looked at each other. Then they looked at Wolfe, then at me, and then at each other again. Skinner shook his head emphatically. Hombert regarded Wolfe once more and then turned his gaze on Ash.

“Inspector,” he said, “I think you had better leave this to the District Attorney and me. You haven’t been in charge of this case long enough to-uh-digest the situation, and while I consented to your proposal to get Wolfe down here, I doubt if you’re sufficiently aware of-uh-all the aspects. I have described to you the sources of the strongest pressure to take Inspector Cramer off of the case, which meant also removing him from his command, and therefore it is worth considering that Wolfe’s client is the National Industrial Association. Whether we want to consider it or not, we have to. You’d better return to your office, give the reports further study, and continue operations. Altogether, at this moment, there are nearly four hundred men working on this case. That’s enough of a job for one man.”

Ash’s jaw was working and his eyes were still glittering. “It’s up to you, sir,” he said with an effort. “As I told you, and as you already knew, Wolfe has been getting away with murder for years. If you want him to get away with calling one of your subordinates an imbecile and physically assaulting him, in your own office…”

“At the moment I don’t care a damn who gets away with what.” Hombert was a little exasperated. “I care about just one thing, getting this case solved, and if that doesn’t happen soon I may not have any subordinates. Get back on the job and phone me if there’s anything new.”

“Yes, sir.” Ash crossed to Wolfe, who was seated, until their toes touched. “Some day,” he promised, “I’ll help you lose some weight.” Then he strode out of the room.

I returned to my chair. Skinner had already returned to his. Hombert stood looking at the door that had closed behind the Inspector, ran his fingers through his hair, shook his head slowly a few times, moved to his own chair behind his desk, sat, and lifted a receiver from its cradle. In a moment he spoke into the transmitter:

“Bailey? Have that warrant for the arrest of Nero Wolfe as a material witness vacated. Right away. No, just cancel it. Send me-”

“And the search warrant,” I put in.

“Also the search warrant for Nero Wolfe’s house. No, cancel that too. Send the papers to me.”

He hung up and turned to Wolfe. “All right, you got away with it. Now what do you know?”

Wolfe sighed deep. A casual glance at his bulk might have given the impression that he was placid again, but to my experienced eye, seeing that he was tapping the arm of his chair with his middle finger, it was evident that there was still plenty of turmoil.

“First,” he muttered, “I would like to learn something. Why was Mr. Cramer demoted and disgraced?”

“He wasn’t.”

“Nonsense. Whatever you want to call it, why?”

“Officially, for a change of scene. Off the record, because he lost his head, considering who the people are that are involved, and took on a bigger load than the Department could handle. Whether you like it or not, there’s such a thing as sense of proportion. You cannot treat some people like a bunch of waterfront hoodlums.”

“Who brought the pressure?”

“It came from everywhere. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m giving no names. Anyhow, that wasn’t the only reason. Cramer was muffing it. For the first time since I’ve known him he got tangled up. Here at a conference yesterday morning he couldn’t even discuss the problem intelligently. He had got his mind fixed on one aspect of it, one little thing, and that was all he could think of or talk about-that missing cylinder, the tenth cylinder that may or may not have been in the leather case Boone gave to Miss Gunther just before he was murdered.”

“Mr. Cramer was concentrating on that?”

“Yes. He had fifty men looking for it, and he wanted to assign another fifty to it.”

“And that was one of your reasons for removing him?”

“Yes. Actually the main reason.”

Wolfe grunted. “Hah. Then you’re an imbecile too. I didn’t know Mr. Cramer had it in him to see that. This doubles my admiration and respect for him. Finding that cylinder, if not our only chance, is beyond all comparison our best one. If it is never found the odds are big that we’ll never get the murderer.”

A loud disgusted snort came from Skinner. “That’s you all right, Wolfe! I suspected it was only fireworks. You said you’ve already got him.”

“I said nothing of the sort.”

“You said you know who it is.”

“No.” Wolfe was truculent. Having been aroused to the point of committing assault and battery, he had by no means calmed down again. “I said I know something that gives me a good clear idea of the murderer’s identity, and I also said that you people know it too. You know many things that I don’t know. Don’t try to pretend that I bulldozed you into ejecting Mr. Ash and releasing me from custody by conveying the impression that I am prepared to name the culprit and supply the evidence. I am not.”

Hombert and Skinner looked at each other. There was a silence.

“You impervious bastard,” Skinner said, but wasting no energy on it.

“In effect, then,” Hombert said resentfully, “you are saying that you have nothing to tell us, that you have nothing to offer, that you can’t help us any.”

“I’m helping all I can. I am paying a man twenty dollars a day to explore the possibility that Miss Gunther broke that cylinder into little pieces and put it in the rubbish receptacle in her apartment in Washington. That’s going to an extreme, because I doubt if she destroyed it. I think she expected to use it some day.”

Hombert shifted impatiently in his chair as if the idea of hunting for a lousy cylinder, possibly broken anyhow, only irritated him. “Suppose,” he said, “you tell us what it is we all know that gives you a good clear idea of who the murderer is, including the who. Off the record.”

“It isn’t any one thing.”

“I don’t care if it’s a dozen things. I’ll try to remember them. What are they?”

Wolfe shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because of your idiotic treatment of Mr. Cramer. If it seemed to make sense to you, and I believe it would, you would pass it on to Mr. Ash, and heaven knows what he would do. He might even, by pure chance, do something that would result in his solving the case, and I would stop short of nothing to prevent that outcome.” Wolfe’s middle finger started tapping again. “Help Mr. Ash to a triumph? God forbid!” He frowned at Hombert. “Besides, I’ve already given you the best advice I’ve got. Find that cylinder. Put a hundred men on it, a thousand. Find it!”

“We’re not neglecting the damn cylinder. How about this, do you think Miss Gunther knew who killed Boone?”

“Certainly she did.”

Skinner broke in. “Naturally you’d like that,” he said pessimistically, “since it would eliminate your clients. If Miss Gunther knew who it was, and it was an NIA man, she would have handed it to us on a platter. So if she did know, it was and is one of the other four-Dexter or Kates or one of the Boone women.”

“Not at all,” Wolfe contradicted him.

“But damn it, of course!”

“No.” Wolfe sighed. “You’re missing the whole point. What has been the outstanding fact about this case for a whole week now? What was its peculiar characteristic? This, that the public, the people, had immediately brought the case to trial as usual, without even waiting for an arrest, and instead of the customary prolonged disagreement and dissension regarding various suspects, they reached an immediate verdict. Almost unanimously they convicted-this was the peculiar fact-not an individual, but an organization. The verdict was that the National Industrial Association had murdered Cheney Boone. Now what if you were Miss Gunther and knew who had killed Boone? No matter how you knew, that’s another question; the point is that you knew. I think she did know. Let’s suppose she knew it was young Mr. Erskine. Would she have exposed him? No. She was devoted to the interests of her own organization, the BPR. She saw the rising tide of resentment and indignation against the NIA, constantly increasing in force and intensity. She saw that it might result, if sustained long enough, in completely discrediting the NIA and its purposes, policies, and objectives. She was intelligent enough to calculate that if an individual, no matter who, were arrested for the murder with good evidence, most of the resentment against the NIA would be diverted away from it as an organization.”

Wolfe sighed again. “What would she do? If she had evidence that pointed to Mr. Erskine, or to anyone else, she would suppress it; but she wouldn’t destroy it, for she wouldn’t want the murderer eventually to escape his punishment. She would put it where it wouldn’t be found, but where she could retrieve it and produce it when the time came, when the NIA had been sufficiently damaged. It is not even necessary to assume loyalty to the BPR as her dominating motive. Suppose it was personal devotion to Mr. Boone and a desire to avenge him. The best possible revenge, the perfect revenge, would be to use his death and the manner of it for the discomfiture and the destruction of the organization which had hated him and tried to thwart him. In my opinion Miss Gunther was capable of that. She was a remarkable young woman. But she made the mistake of permitting the murderer to learn that she knew who he was, how is still another question, and that she paid for.”

Wolfe raised his hand and let it fall. “However, note this. Her own death served her purpose too. In the past two days the wave of anger against the NIA has increased tremendously. It is going deep into the feeling of the people, and soon it will be impossible to dredge it out again. She was a remarkable woman. No, Mr. Skinner, Miss Gunther’s knowing the identity of the murderer would not eliminate my clients. Besides, no man is my client, and no men are. My checks come from the National Industrial Association, which, having no soul, could not possibly commit a murder.”

Wolfe cocked an eye at Hombert. “Speaking of checks. You have seen the NIA advertisement offering a reward of one hundred thousand dollars. You might let your men know that whoever finds the missing cylinder will get that reward.”

“Yes?” Hombert was skeptical. “You’re as bad as Cramer. What makes you so damn sure about that cylinder? Have you got it in your pocket?”

“No. If I had!”

“What makes you so sure about it?”

“Well. I can’t put it in a sentence.”

“We’ve got all the time there is.”

“Didn’t Mr. Cramer explain it to you?”

“Forget Cramer. He’s out of it.”

“Which is nothing to your credit, sir.” Wolfe rearranged his pressures and angles, shifting the mass to get the center of gravity exactly right for maximum comfort. An unaccustomed chair always presented him with a complicated engineering problem. “You really want me to go into this?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Skinner?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I will.” Wolfe closed his eyes. “It was apparent from the beginning that Miss Gunther was lying about the leather case. Mr. Cramer knew that, of course. Four people stated that they saw her leaving the reception room with it, people who couldn’t possibly have been aware, at the time, that its contents had anything to do with the murder-unless they were all involved in a murder conspiracy, which is preposterous-and therefore had no valid reason for mendacity. Also, Mrs. Boone was barely able to stop herself short of accusing Miss Gunther of falsehood, and Mrs. Boone was at the same table with her in the ballroom. So Miss Gunther was lying. You see that.”

“Keep right on,” Skinner growled.

“I intend to. Why did she lie about the case and pretend that it had disappeared? Obviously because she didn’t want the text of the cylinders, one or more of them, to become known. Why didn’t she? Not merely because it contained confidential BPR information or intent. Such a text, as she knew, could safely have been entrusted to FBI ears, but she audaciously and jauntily suppressed it. She did that because something in it pointed definitely and unmistakably to the murderer of Mr. Boone. She-”

“No,” Hombert objected. “That’s out. She lied about the case before she could have known that. She told us Wednesday morning, the morning after Boone was killed, about leaving the case on the window sill in the reception room, before she had had an opportunity to listen to what was on the cylinders. So she couldn’t have known that.”

“Yes she could.”

“She could tell what was on those cylinders without having access to a Stenophone machine?”

“Certainly. At least one of them. Mr. Boone told her what was on it when he gave her the leather case Tuesday evening, in the room there where he was soon to die. She lied about that too; naturally she had to. She lied about it to me, most convincingly, in my office Friday evening. I should have warned her then that she was being foolhardy to the point of imprudence, but I didn’t. I would have wasted my breath. Caution with respect to personal peril was not in her makeup-as the event proved. If it had been, she would not have permitted a man whom she knew to be capable of murder get close to her, alone, on the stoop of my house.”

Wolfe shook his head, his eyes still closed. “She was really extraordinary. It would be interesting to know where she concealed the case, containing the cylinders, up to Thursday afternoon. It would have been too risky to hide it in Mr. Kates’s apartment, which might have been searched by the police at any moment. Possibly she checked it in the Grand Central parcel room, though that seems a little banal for her. At any rate, she had it with her in her suitcase when she went to Washington Thursday afternoon, with Mr. Dexter and with your permission.”

“Cramer’s permission,” Hombert grumbled.

Wolfe ignored it. “I would like to emphasize,” he said with his voice up a little, “that none of this is conjecture except unimportant details of chronology and method. In Washington Miss Gunther went to her office, listened to the cylinders, and learned which one bore the message that Mr. Boone had told her about. Doubtless she wanted to know exactly what it said, but also she wanted to simplify her problem. It isn’t easy to conceal an object the size of that case from an army of expert searchers. She wanted to reduce it to one little cylinder. Another thing, she had contrived a plot. She took the nine eliminated cylinders to her Washington apartment and hid them casually in a hatbox on a closet shelf. She also took ten other cylinders that had been previously used which were there in her office, put them in the leather case, brought it with her when she returned to New York, and checked it in the Grand Central parcel room.

“That was in preparation for her plot, and she probably would have proceeded with it the next day, using the police for the mystification, if it hadn’t been for that invitation I sent around for a discussion at my office. She decided to wait for developments. Why she ignored my invitation I don’t know, and I shall intrude no guesses. That same evening, Friday, Mr. Goodwin went after her and brought her to my office. She had made a profound impression on him, and she struck me as being of uncommon quality. Evidently her opinion of us was less flattering. She formed the idea that we were more vulnerable to guile than the police; and the next day, Saturday, after she had mailed the parcel room check to Mr. O’Neill and made the phone call to him, giving the name of Dorothy Unger, she sent me a telegram, signing Mr. Breslow’s name to it, conveying the notion that observation of Mr. O’Neill’s movements might be profitable. We validated her appraisal of us. Mr. Goodwin was at Mr. O’Neill’s address bright and early Sunday morning, as Miss Gunther intended him to be. When Mr. O’Neill emerged he was followed, and you know what happened.”

“I don’t understand,” Skinner interposed, “why O’Neill was such an easy sucker for that Dorothy Unger phone call. Didn’t the damn fool suspect a plant? Or is he a damn fool or something else?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Now you’re asking for more than I’ve got. Mr. O’Neill is a headstrong and bumptious man, which may account for it; and we know that he was irresistibly tempted to learn what was on those cylinders, whether because he had killed Mr. Boone or for some other reason is yet to be discovered. Presumably Miss Gunther knew what might be expected of him. Anyhow her plot was moderately successful. It kept us all in that side alley for a day or two, it further jumbled the matter of the cylinders and the leather case, and it was one more involvement of an NIA man, without, however, the undesirable result-undesirable for Miss Gunther-of exposing him as the murderer. She was saving that-the disclosure of the murderer’s identity and the evidence she had-for the time that would best suit her purpose.”

“You’ve got pictures of all this,” Skinner said sarcastically. “Why didn’t you call her on the phone or get her in your office and lecture her on the duties of a citizen?”

“It was impractical. She was dead.”

“Oh? Then you didn’t know it all until after she had been killed?”

“Certainly not. How the devil could I? Some of it, yes, it doesn’t matter how much. But when word came from Washington that they had found in Miss Gunther’s apartment, perfunctorily concealed, nine of the cylinders Mr. Boone had dictated the afternoon of his death-nine, not ten-there was the whole story. There was no other acceptable explanation. All questions became paltry and pointless except the one question: where is the tenth cylinder?”

“Wherever you start a sentence,” Hombert complained grouchily, “it always ends on that goddam cylinder!”

Wolfe opened his eyes enough to pick Hombert out. “You try doing a sentence that makes any sense and leave the cylinder out.”

Skinner demanded, “What if she threw it in the river?”

“She didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve already told you. Because she intended to use it, when the time came, to get the murderer punished.”

“What if you’re making your first and only mistake and she did throw it in the river?”

“Drag the river. All the rivers she could reach.”

“Don’t be whimsical. Answer my question.”

Wolfe’s shoulders went perceptibly up and down. “In that case we would be licked. We’d never get him.”

“I think,” Hombert said pointedly, “that it is conceivable that you would like to sell a bill of goods. I don’t say you’re a barefaced liar.”

“I don’t say I’m not, Mr. Hombert. We all take those chances when we exchange words with other people. So I might as well go home-”

“Wait a minute,” Skinner snapped. “Do you mean that as an expert investigator you advise abandoning all lines of inquiry except the search for that cylinder?”

“I shouldn’t think so.” Wolfe frowned, considering. “Especially not with a thousand men or more at your disposal. Of course I don’t know what has been done and what hasn’t, but I know how such things go and I doubt if much has been overlooked in a case of this importance, knowing Mr. Cramer as I do. For instance, that piece of iron pipe; I suppose every possible effort has been made to discover where it came from. The matter of arrivals at my house Monday evening has of course been explored with every resource and ingenuity. The tenants of all the buildings in my block on both sides of the street have naturally been interviewed, on the slim chance, unlikely in that quiet neighborhood, that somebody saw or heard something. The question of opportunity alone, the evening of the dinner at the Waldorf, must have kept a dozen men busy for a week, and perhaps you’re still working on it. Inquiries regarding relationships, both open and concealed, the checking and rechecking of Mr. Dexter’s alibi-these and a thousand other details have unquestionably been competently and thoroughly attended to.”

Wolfe wiggled a finger. “And where are you? So sunk in a bog of futility and bewilderment that you resort to such monkey tricks as ditching Mr. Cramer, replacing him with a buffoon like Mr. Ash, and swearing out a warrant for my arrest! Over a long period I have become familiar with the abilities and performances of the New York police, and I never expected to see the day when the inspector heading the Homicide Squad would try to solve a difficult murder case by dragging me off to a cell, attacking my person, putting me in handcuffs, and threatening me with mayhem!”

“That’s a slight exaggeration. This is not a cell, and I don’t-”

“He intended to,” Wolfe asserted grimly. “He would have. Very well. You have asked me my advice. I would continue, within reason, all lines of inquiry that have already been started, and initiate any others that offer any promise whatever, because no matter what the cylinder gives you-if and when you find it-you will almost certainly need all available scraps of support and corroboration. But the main chance, the only real hope, is the cylinder. I suggest you try this. You both met Miss Gunther? Good. Sit down and shut your eyes and imagine it is last Thursday afternoon, and you are Miss Gunther, sitting in your office in the BPR headquarters in Washington. You have decided what you are going to do with the leather case and the nine eliminated cylinders; forget all that. In your hand is the cylinder, and the question is what to do with it. Here’s what you’re after: you want to preserve it against any risk of damage, you want it easily accessible should you need it on short notice, and you want to be certain that no matter how many people look for it, or who, with whatever persistence and ingenuity, it will not be found.”

Wolfe looked from one to the other. “There’s your little problem, Miss Gunther. Anything so simple, for example, as concealing it there in the BPR office is not even to be considered. Something far above that, something really fine, must be conceived. Your own apartment would be merely ridiculous; you show that you are quite aware of that by disposing of the other nine cylinders as you do. Perhaps the apartment of a friend or colleague you can trust? This is murder; this is of the utmost gravity and of ultimate importance; would you trust any other human being that far? You are ready now to leave, to go to your apartment first and then take a plane to New York. You will probably be in New York some days. Do you take the cylinder with you or leave it in Washington? If so, where? Where? Where?”

Wolfe flipped a hand. “There’s your question, gentlemen. Answer it the way Miss Gunther finally answered it, and your worries are ended.” He stood up. “I am spending a thousand dollars a day trying to learn how Miss Gunther answered it.” He was multiplying by two and it wasn’t his money he was spending, but at least it wasn’t a barefaced lie. “Come, Archie. I want to go home.”

They didn’t want him to go, even then, which was the best demonstration to date of the pitiable condition they were in. They certainly were stymied, flummoxed, and stripped to the bone. Wolfe magnanimously accommodated them by composing a few more well-constructed sentences, properly furnished with subjects, predicates, and subordinate clauses, none of which meant a damn thing, and then marched from the room with me bringing up the rear. He had postponed his exit, I noticed, until after a clerk had entered to deliver some papers to Hombert’s desk, which had occurred just as Wolfe was telling the P.C. and D.A. to shut their eyes and pretend they were Miss Gunther.

Driving back home he sat in the back seat, as usual, clutching the toggle, because of his theory that when-not if and when, just when-the car took a whim to dart aside and smash into some immovable object, your chances in back, hopeless as they were, were slightly better than in front. On the way down to Centre Street I had, on request, given him a sketch of my session with Nina Boone, and now, going home, I filled in the gaps. I couldn’t tell whether it contained any morsel that he considered nutritious, because my back was to him and his face wasn’t in my line of vision in the mirror, and also because the emotions that being in a moving vehicle aroused in him were too overwhelming to leave any room for minor reactions.

As Fritz let us in and we entered the hall and I attended to hat and coat disposal, Wolfe looked almost good-humored. He had beaten a rap and was home safe, and it was only six o’clock, time for beer. But Fritz spoiled it at once by telling us that we had a visitor waiting in the office. Wolfe scowled at him and demanded in a ferocious whisper:

“Who is it?”

“Mrs. Cheney Boone.”

“Good heavens. That hysterical gammer?”

Which was absolutely unfair. Mrs. Boone had been in the house just twice, both times under anything but tranquil circumstances, and I hadn’t seen the faintest indication of hysteria.