The Silent Speaker (Crime Line)

Chapter 3

IN APPEARANCE, DRESS, and manner, Johnny Darst was about as far as you could get from the average idea of a hotel dick. He might have been taken for a vice-president of a trust company or a golf club steward. In a little room, more a cubbyhole than a room in size, he stood watching me deadpan while I looked over the topography, the angles, and the furniture, which consisted of a small table, a mirror, and a few chairs. Since Johnny was not a sap I didn’t even try to give him the impression that I was doing something abstruse.

“What are you really after?” he asked gently.

“Nothing whatever,” I told him. “I work for Nero Wolfe just as you work for the Waldorf, and he sent me here to take a look and here I am. The carpet’s been changed?”

He nodded. “There was a little blood, not much, and the cops took some things.”

“According to the paper there are four of these rooms, two on each side of the stage.”

He nodded again. “Used as dressing rooms and resting rooms for performers. Not that you could call Cheney Boone a performer. He wanted a place to look over his speech and they sent him in here to be alone. The Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf is the best-equipped-”

“Sure,” I said warmly. “You bet it is. They ought to pay you extra. Well, I’m a thousand times obliged.”

“Got all you want?”

“Yep, I guess I’ve solved it.”

“I could show you the exact spot where he was going to stand to deliver his speech if he had still been alive.”

“Thanks a lot, but if I find I need that I’ll come back.”

He went with me down the elevator and to the entrance, both of us understanding that the only private detectives hotels enjoy having around are the ones they hire. At the door he asked casually:

“Who’s Wolfe working for?”

“There is never,” I told him, “any question about that. He is working first, last, and all the time for Wolfe. Come to think of it, so am I. Boy, am I loyal.”