The Zero Clue

3

Cramer, bulky and burly, with a big red face and sharp and skeptical gray eyes, sat in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk. He had declined an offer of beer, the TV had been turned off, and the lights had been turned on.

Cramer spoke. “I dropped in on my way down, and I haven’t got long.” He was gruff, which was normal. “I’d appreciate some quick information. What are you doing for Leo Heller?”

“Nothing.” Wolfe was brusque, which was also normal.

“You’re not working for him?”

“No.”

“Then why did Goodwin go to see him this morning?”

“He didn’t.”

“Hold it,” I put in. “I went on my own, just exploring. Mr. Wolfe didn’t know I was going, and this is the first he’s heard of it.”

There were two simultaneous looks of exasperation — Cramer’s at Wolfe, and Wolfe’s at me. Cramer backed his up with words. “For God’s sake. This is the rawest one you ever tried to pull! Been rehearsing it all afternoon?”

Wolfe let me go temporarily, to cope with Cramer. “Pfui. Suppose we have. Justify your marching into my house to demand an accounting of Mr. Goodwin’s movements. What if he did call on Mr. Heller? Has Mr. Heller been found dead?”

“Yes.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s brows went up a little. “Violence?”

“Murdered. Shot through the heart.”

“On his premises?”

“Yeah. I’d like to hear from Goodwin.”

Wolfe’s eyes darted to me. “Did you kill Mr. Heller, Archie?”

“No, sir.”

“Then oblige Mr. Cramer, please. He’s in a hurry.”

I obliged. First telling about the phone call the day before, and Wolfe’s refusal to take on anything for Heller, and my calling Heller back, I then reported on my morning visit at Thirty-seventh Street, supplying all details, except that I soft-pedaled Susan Maturo’s state of harassment, putting it merely that she asked me to arrange for her to see Wolfe and didn’t tell me what about. When I had finished, Cramer had a few questions. Among them:

“So you didn’t see Heller at all?”

“Nope.”

He grunted. “I know only too well how nosy you are, Goodwin. There were three doors in the walls of that room besides the one you entered by. You didn’t open any of them?”

“Nope.”

“One of them is the door to the closet in which Heller’s body was found by a caller, a friend, at three o’clock this afternoon. The medical examiner says that the sausage and griddle cakes he ate for breakfast at nine-thirty hadn’t been in him more than an hour when he died, so it’s practically certain that the body was in the closet while you were there in the room. As nosy as you are, you’re telling me that you didn’t open the door and see the body?”

“Yep. I apologize. Next time I’ll open every damn door in sight.”

“A gun had been fired. You didn’t smell it?”

“No. Air-conditioned.”

“You didn’t look through the desk drawers?”

“No. I apologize again.”

“We did.” Cramer took something from his breast pocket. “In one drawer we found this envelope, sealed. On it was written in pencil, in Heller’s hand, ‘Mr. Nero Wolfe.’ In it were five one-hundred-dollar bills.”

“I’m sorry I missed that,” I said with feeling.

Wolfe stirred. “I assume that has been examined for fingerprints.”

“Certainly.”

“May I see it, please?”

Wolfe extended a hand. Cramer hesitated a moment, then tossed it across to the desk, and Wolfe picked it up. He took out the bills, crisp new ones, counted them, and looked inside.

“This was sealed,” he observed dryly, “with my name on it, and you opened it.”

“We sure did.” Cramer came forward in his chair with a hand stretched. “Let me have it.”

It was a demand, not a request, and Wolfe reacted impulsively. If he had taken a second to think he would have realized that if he claimed it he would have to earn it, or at least pretend to, but Cramer’s tone of voice was the kind of provocation he would not take. He returned the bills to the envelope and put it in his pocket.

“It’s mine,” he stated.

“It’s evidence,” Cramer growled, “and I want it.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Evidence of what? As an officer of the law, you should be acquainted with it.” He tapped his pocket with a fingertip. “My property. Connect it, or connect me, with a crime.”

Cramer was controlling himself, which wasn’t easy under the circumstances. “I might have known,” he said bitterly. “You want to be connected with a crime? Okay. I don’t know how many times I’ve sat in this chair and listened to you making assumptions. I’m not saying you never make good on them, I just say you’re strong on assumptions. Now I’ve got some of my own to offer, but first here are a few facts. In that building on Thirty-seventh Street, Heller lived on the fourth floor and worked on the fifth, the top floor. At five minutes to ten this morning, on good evidence, he left his living quarters to go up to his office. Goodwin says he entered that office at ten-twenty-eight, so if the body was in the closet when Goodwin was there — and it almost certainly was — Heller was killed between nine-fifty-five and ten-twenty-eight. We can’t find anyone who heard the shot, and the way that room is proofed we probably never will. We’ve tested it.”

Cramer squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, a trick of his. “Very well. From the doorman we’ve got a list of everyone who entered the place during that period, and most of them have been collected, and we’re getting the others. There were six of them. The nurse, Susan Maturo, left before Goodwin went up, and the other five left later, at intervals, when they got tired waiting for Heller to show up — according to them. As it stands now, and I don’t see what could change it, one of them killed Heller. Any of them, on leaving the elevator at the fifth floor, could have gone to Heller’s office and shot him, and then to the waiting room.”

Wolfe muttered, “Putting the body in the closet?”

“Of course, to postpone its discovery. If someone happened to see the murderer leaving the office, he had to be able to say he had gone in to look for Heller and Heller wasn’t there, and he couldn’t if the body was there in sight. There are marks on the floor where the body — and Heller was a featherweight — was dragged to the closet. In leaving, he left the door ajar, to make it more plausible, if someone saw him, that he had found it that way. Also—”

“Fallacy.”

“I’ll tell him you said so the first chance I get. Also, of course, he couldn’t leave the building. Knowing that Heller started to see callers at eleven o’clock, those people had all come early so as not to have a long wait. Including the murderer. He had to go to the waiting room and wait with the others. One of them did leave, the nurse, and she made a point of telling Goodwin why she was going, and it’s up to her to make it stick under questioning.”

“You were going to connect me with a crime.”

“Right.” Cramer was positive. “First one more fact. The gun was in the closet with the body, under it on the floor. It’s an old Gustein flug, a nasty little short-nose, and there’s not a chance in a thousand of tracing it, though we’re trying. Now here are my assumptions. The murderer went armed to kill, pushed the button at the door of Heller’s office, and was admitted. Since Heller went to his desk and sat, he couldn’t—”

“Established?”

“Yes. He couldn’t have been in fear of a mortal attack. But after some conversation, which couldn’t have been more than a few minutes on account of the timetable as verified, he was not only in fear, he felt that death was upon him, and in that super-soundproofed room he was helpless. The gun had been drawn and was aimed at him. He knew it was all up. He talked, trying to stall, not because he had any hope of living, but because he wanted to leave a message to be read after he was dead. Shaking with nervousness, with a trembling hand, perhaps a pleading one, he upset the jar of pencils on his desk, and then he nervously fumbled with them, moving them around on the desk in front of him, all the while talking. Then the gun went off, and he wasn’t nervous any more. The murderer circled the desk, made sure his victim was dead, and dragged the body to the closet. It didn’t occur to him that the scattered pencils had been arranged to convey a message — if it had, one sweep of a hand would have taken care of it. It was desperately urgent for him to get out of there and into the waiting room.”

Cramer stood up. “If you’ll let me have eight pencils I’ll show you how they were.”

Wolfe opened his desk drawer, but I got there first with a handful taken from my tray. Cramer moved around to Wolfe’s side, and Wolfe, making a face, moved his chair to make room.

“I’m in Heller’s place at his desk,” Cramer said, “and I’m putting them as he did from where he sat.” After getting the eight pencils arranged to his satisfaction, he stepped aside. “There it is, take a look.”

Wolfe inspected it from his side, and I from mine. It was like this from Wolfe’s side:

“You say,” Wolfe inquired, “that was a message?”

“Yes,” Cramer asserted. “It has to be.”

“By mandate? Yours?”

“Blah. You know damn well there’s not one chance in a million those pencils took that pattern by accident. Goodwin, you saw them. Were they like that?”

“Approximately,” I conceded. “I didn’t know there was a corpse in the closet at the time, so I wasn’t as interested in it as you were. But since you ask me, the pencil points were not all in the same direction, and an eraser from one of them was there in the middle.” I put a fingertip on the spot. “Right there.”

“Fix it as you saw it.”

I went around and joined them at Wolfe’s side of the desk and did as requested, removing an eraser from one of the pencils and placing it as I had indicated. Then it was like this:

“Of course,” I said, “you had the photographer shoot it. I don’t say that’s exact, but they were pointing in different directions, and the eraser was there.”

“Didn’t you realize it was a message?”

“Nuts. Someday you’ll set a trap that’ll catch me, and I’ll snarl. Sure, I thought it was Heller’s way of telling me he had gone to the bathroom and would be back in eight minutes. Eight pencils, see? Pretty clever. Isn’t that how you read it?”

“It is not.” Cramer was emphatic. “I think Heller turned it sideways to make it less likely that his attacker would see what it was. Move around here, please. Both of you. Look at it from here.”

Wolfe and I joined him at the left end of the desk and looked as requested. One glance was enough. You can see what we saw by turning the page a quarter-turn counterclockwise.

Cramer spoke. “Could you ask for a plainer NW?”

“I could,” I objected. “Why the extra pencil on the left of the W?”

“He put it there deliberately, for camouflage, to make it less obvious, or it rolled there accidentally, I don’t care which. It is unmistakably NW.” He focused on Wolfe. “I promised to connect you with a crime.”

Wolfe, back in his chair, interlaced his fingers. “You’re not serious.”

“The hell I’m not.” Cramer returned to the red leather chair and sat. “That’s why I came here, and came alone. You deny you sent Goodwin there, but I don’t believe you. He admits he was in Heller’s office ten minutes, because he has to, since the doorman saw him go up and five people saw him enter the waiting room. In a drawer of Heller’s desk is an envelope addressed to you, containing five hundred dollars in cash. But the clincher is that message. Heller, seated at his desk, sure that he is going to be killed in a matter of seconds, uses those seconds to leave a message. Can there be any question what the message was about? Not for me. It was about the person or persons responsible for his death. I am assuming that its purpose was to identify that person or persons. Do you reject that assumption?”

“No. I think it quite likely. Highly probable.”

“You admit it?”

“I don’t admit it, I state it.”

“Then I ask you to suggest any person or persons other than you whom the initials NW might identify. Unless you can do that here and now I’m going to take you and Goodwin downtown as material witnesses. I’ve got men in cars outside. If I didn’t do it the DA would.”

Wolfe straightened up and sighed deep, clear down. “You are being uncommonly obnoxious, Mr. Cramer.” He got to his feet. “Excuse me a moment.” Detouring around Cramer’s feet, he crossed to the other side of the room, to the bookshelves back of the big globe, reached up to a high one, took a book down, and opened it. He was too far away for me to see what it was. He turned first to the back of the book, where the index would be if it had one, and then to a page near the middle of it. He went on to another page, and another, while Cramer, containing his emotions under pressure, got a cigar from a pocket, stuck it in his mouth and sank his teeth in it. He never lit one.

Finally Wolfe returned to his desk, opened a drawer and put the book in it, and closed and locked the drawer. Cramer was speaking. “I’m not being fantastic. You didn’t kill him; you weren’t there. I’m not even assuming Goodwin killed him, though he could have. I’m saying that Heller left a message that would give a lead to the killer, and the message says NW, and that stands for Nero Wolfe, and therefore you know something, and I want to know what. I want a yes or no to this. Do you or do you not know something that indicates, or may indicate, who murdered Leo Heller?”

Wolfe, settled in his chair again, nodded. “Yes.”

“Ah. You do. What?”

“The message he left.”

“The message only says NW. Go on from there.”

“I need more information. I need to know — are the pencils still there on his desk as you found them?”

“Yes. They haven’t been disturbed.”

“You have a man there, of course. Get him on the phone and let me talk to him. You will hear us.”

Cramer hesitated, not liking it, then decided he might as well string along, came to my desk, dialed a number, got his man, and told him Wolfe would speak to him. Wolfe took it with his phone while Cramer stayed at mine.

Wolfe was courteous but crisp. “I understand those pencils are there on the desk as they were found, that all but one of them have erasers in their ends, and that an eraser is there on the desk, between the two groups of pencils. Is that correct?”

“Right.” The dick sounded bored. I was getting it from the phone on the table over by the globe.

“Take the eraser and insert it in the end of the pencil that hasn’t one in it. I want to know if the eraser was loose enough to slip out accidentally.”

“Inspector, are you on? You said not to disturb—”

“Go ahead,” Cramer growled. “I’m right here.”

“Yes, sir. Hold it, please.”

There was a long wait, and then he was back on. “The eraser couldn’t have slipped out accidentally. Part of it is still clamped in the end of the pencil. It had to be pulled out, torn apart, and the torn surfaces are bright and fresh. I can pull one out of another pencil and tell you how much force it takes.”

“No, thank you, that’s all I need. But to make certain, and for the record, I suggest that you send the pencil and eraser to the laboratory to check that the torn surfaces fit.”

“Do I do that, Inspector?”

“Yeah, you might as well. Mark them properly.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cramer returned to the red leather chair, and I went to mine. He tilted the cigar upward from the corner of his mouth and demanded, “So what?”

“You know quite well what,” Wolfe declared. “The eraser was yanked out and placed purposely, and was a part of the message. No doubt as a dot after the N to show it was an initial? And he was interrupted permanently before he could put one after the W?”

“Sarcasm don’t change it any. It’s still NW.”

“No. It isn’t. It never was.”

“For me and the district attorney it is. I guess we’d better get on down to his office.”

Wolfe upturned a palm. “There you are. You’re not hare-brained, but you are pigheaded. I warn you, sir, that if you proceed on the assumption that Mr. Heller’s message says NW, you are doomed; the best you can expect is to be tagged a jackass.”

“I suppose you know what it does say.”

“Yes.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“I’m waiting.”

“You’ll continue to wait. If I thought I could earn this money” — Wolfe tapped his pocket — “by deciphering that message for you, that would be simple, but in your present state of mind you would only think I was contriving a humbug.”

“Try me.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe half closed his eyes. “An alternative. You can go on as you have started and see where it lands you, understanding that Mr. Goodwin and I will persistently deny any knowledge of the affair or those concerned in it except what has been given you, and I’ll pursue my own course; or you can bring the murderer here and let me at him — with you present.”

“I’ll be glad to. Name him.”

“When I find him. I need all six of them, to learn which one Heller’s message identifies. Since I can translate the message and you can’t, you need me more than I need you, but you can save me much time and trouble and expense.”

Cramer’s level gaze had no trace whatever of affection or sympathy. “If you can translate that message and refuse to disclose it, you’re withholding evidence.”

“Nonsense. A conjecture is not evidence. Heaven knows your conjecture that it says NW isn’t. Nor is mine, but it should lead to some if I do the leading.” Wolfe flung a hand impatiently, and his voice rose. “Confound it, am I suggesting a gambol for my refreshment? Do you think I welcome an invasion of my premises by platoons of policemen herding a drove of scared and suspected citizens?”

“No. I know damn well you don’t.” Cramer took the cigar from his mouth and regarded it as if trying to decide exactly what it was. That accomplished, he glanced at Wolfe and then looked at me, by no means as a bosom friend.

“I’ll use the phone,” he said, and got up and came to my desk.