Too Many Detectives

V

It was a good-sized room and wasn’t too crowded with seven people, or, counting Wolfe as two, eight. I had phoned down a rush order for four more chairs, so no one had to perch on a bed. Dol Bonner and Sally, still sticking close, were over by the wall. Steve Amsel, next to them, had turned his chair around and folded his arms on top of its back, with his chin resting on his wrist. He was still very neat, and his black eyes were still quick. Harland Ide looked tired, but still dignified enough for a banker. Jay Kerr, the half-bald roly-poly, was the last one to show. He brought along two clues that were spotted immediately by my highly trained powers of observation: a flushed face and a breath.

“Well well!” he exclaimed at sight of us. “A party, huh? You didn’t tell me, Archie. Well well!”

“Siddown and listen,” Amsel commanded him. “We waited for you. Wolfe wants to sing a song.”

“That I’d like to hear,” Kerr said cordially, and sat.

Wolfe’s eyes went around. “I think the best way to begin,” he said, “is to read you the statement I submitted to the secretary of state.” He took a document from his pocket and unfolded it. “It’s rather long, but I want you to know my position. If you’ll permit me.”

“Sure,” Kerr told him. “Shoot.”

He started reading. It took a full ten minutes, but he held his audience. I must admit I felt for him. What he would have liked to do with that affair was scrap it and try to forget it, but, having already been compelled to record it in a sworn statement and to recite it to Hyatt, he now had to spill it again to a collection of his fellow members of a professional association. It must have been about the bitterest pill he ever had to take, but he got it down. When he got to the end he refolded it and handed it to me.

He rested his elbows on the chair arms and matched his fingertips. “So this morning I couldn’t tell you the name of the murdered man. I spoke then of my ignominy, and I won’t dwell on it. Do any of you want anything in the statement clarified? Any questions?”

Apparently nobody had any. Wolfe resumed, “Mr. Goodwin told you on the phone that I wanted to consult you about something. It is this. We are all involved in an investigation of a murder and are under restraint. Mr. Goodwin and I have been arrested as material witnesses and released on bail. I don’t know if any of you have been arrested, but certainly your movements have been restricted. I think it will be to our common advantage to pool our information, discuss it, and decide what can be done with it. We are all trained and experienced investigators.”

Amsel started to speak, but Wolfe raised a hand. “If you please. Before you comment, let me say that neither Mr. Goodwin nor I had anything to do with that man’s death, nor have we any knowledge of it. Possibly that is true of all of you. If so, the worth of my suggestion is manifest; we would be nincompoops not to share our information and join our wits. If not, if one of you killed him or had a hand in it, he certainly won’t tell us so, and probably he will be reluctant to give us any information at all; but obviously it would be to the interest of the rest of us to merge our knowledge and our resources. Don’t you agree?”

For the first time they exchanged glances. Jay Kerr said, “Pretty neat. Well well! Last one in is a monkey.”

“You put it good,” Amsel declared. “If I don’t play I’m it.”

“I have a question.” It was Harland Ide. “Why were you and Goodwin arrested and put under bail?”

“Because,” Wolfe told him, “that man — I presume you all know by now that his name was Donahue — because he told Mr. Hyatt a story this morning which conflicted with my statement. He said that he had given me his name as Donahue and that I knew the tap was illegal.”

“Ouch,” Kerr said. “No wonder you want us to open up.”

“I have opened up, Mr. Kerr. I’ll answer any questions you care to ask. And I assure you I’m not impelled by any fear of ultimate disaster, either for Mr. Goodwin or for myself. I merely want to go home.”

Dol Bonner spoke up. “It seems to me,” she said, “that the only question is whether it will do any good or not. It can’t do any harm. We have already given the police all the information we have, at least I have and Miss Colt has, and tomorrow they’ll be at us again.” She directed the caramel-colored eyes at Wolfe. “What good will it do?”

He frowned at her. Sometimes he honestly tries to speak to a woman without frowning at her, but he seldom makes it. “Possibly none, madam. But among us we pretend to a considerable batch of gumption, and we may even have it. If so, we might as well use it, since our only alternative is to sit and brood, hoping that Mr. Groom has either brains or luck. Have you people compared notes at all?”

He got three noes and two headshakes.

“Then it’s about time. You don’t even know whether one or more of you can safely be eliminated. Assuming that one of us killed him, do you know what the time limits are?... You don’t. Evidently you haven’t had the privilege, as I have, of hearing Mr. Hyatt’s story. The murder was committed between nine-thirty, when Mr. Hyatt left Donahue alone in the room, and ten o’clock, when Mr. Goodwin and I arrived. Assuming that one of us killed him — an assumption we must accept unless we find an excuse for discarding it. Therefore if one or more of you can establish that you arrived in room forty-two before nine-thirty, and stayed there, you’re out of it. Can you?”

“Not me,” Dol Bonner said. “Miss Colt and I were there first, at twenty minutes to ten. About five minutes later Mr. Ide came, and in another four or five minutes Mr. Amsel. Next was Mr. Kerr, and you and Mr. Goodwin came last, just before ten o’clock. I resented it when you were called in because we got there first and I thought we should be called first.”

“Then we’re still intact. When I said the limits are nine-thirty and ten o’clock I ignored the possibility that when Mr. Goodwin and Miss Colt went for coffee one of them, or both, stopped in at room thirty-eight and killed him. Does anyone want to explore it?”

Sally Colt started to titter. It was a flaw in her, but I made allowances because it could have been the first time she had been at close quarters with a murder, and naturally she was strung tight. I came to the rescue. “Cross it off. I didn’t, she didn’t, and we didn’t.”

“Miss Colt?”

“Don’t be silly!” Her voice was louder than necessary, and she lowered it. “No. Mr. Goodwin is correct.”

“Good. He often is.” Wolfe shifted in his chair. His rump had taken a lot of punishment since six o’clock that morning. “Presumably the police theory is that one of us, going along the hall on arrival, caught sight of Donahue, who could have opened the door of the room to look out, and proceeded to finish him. Under that theory we’re at the crux. There couldn’t have been time for a prolonged conversation unless the murderer entered the building much earlier than he arrived at room forty-two, and in that case the police will probably get him without any help from us. The point is that in all probability the mere sight of Donahue on those premises was enough to make the murderer resolve on his death forthwith. Do any of you qualify? I have reported to you fully and candidly on my association with that man. Did any of you have dealings with him?”

“I did,” Dol Bonner said.

“Yes, Miss Bonner? Will you elaborate?”

“Certainly. I’ve told the police, so why not you?” There was an edge of scorn on her voice, either for Wolfe or for the others, no telling. “First, though, I left something out, not deliberately. When Miss Colt and I got to the third floor of that building I went to the women’s room and she went on to room forty-two. It was twenty minutes to ten when I joined her there. The police know that too, of course. Also I heard a police detective telling a man — I think it was the district attorney — that all of us had recognized the body.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s frown was about gone. “All of you?”

“That’s what he said.” Her eyes went to Ide, to Amsel, to Kerr, and back to Wolfe. “About my dealings with him, they were almost identical with yours. He came to my office last April and gave his name as Alan Samuels, and wanted me to arrange for a wiretap on the telephone at his home — a house in the Bronx — with exactly the same arrangement he made with you. I didn’t have an Archie Goodwin to nudge me on, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt any for me to learn something about wiretapping if I could do it legitimately, and I agreed to handle it if he would establish his identity. He showed me some papers — a driver’s license and some letters — but I told him that wasn’t enough.”

She stopped to swallow. Evidently she wasn’t any prouder of her performance than Wolfe was of his. “He said he had an account in a bank around the corner — my office is at Fiftieth and Madison — and asked me to go there with him. I had an appointment and couldn’t leave the office, so I asked Miss Colt to go.” She turned. “Sally, that’s your part.”

Sally wasn’t looking very gay. “You want me to tell it?”

Dol Bonner said yes, and Sally gave Wolfe her eyes. From my angle, in the electric light, the blue in them didn’t show; they looked almost as black as Amsel’s. “Miss Bonner told me what was required,” she said, “and I went with him around the corner to the Madison Avenue branch of the Continental Trust Company. He took me through the gate in the railing to where there were four men at desks, and went to one of the desks. There was a little stand on the desk with a name on it, Frederick Poggett. The client called the man at the desk Mr. Poggett, and shook hands with him, and told him that in connection with a business transaction he needed to establish his identity, and would Mr. Poggett please identify him. Mr. Poggett said of course, and turned to me and said, ‘This gentleman is Mr. Samuels, a customer of our bank.’ I said, ‘Alan Samuels?’ and he said yes, and then told the client that if it was a matter of credit he would be glad to verify his balance. The client said that wouldn’t be necessary, and we left. We went back to the office and I reported to Miss Bonner.”

She stopped and looked at Dol Bonner, who nodded and took the ball. “In my case, Mr. Wolfe, it wasn’t his secretary he suspected, it was his brother who was living in his house, but that’s just a detail. He paid me in cash, a thousand dollars, and I found out how to arrange for the tap and did so. He was to come to the office at five o’clock every day for the report. The morning after he had got the fifth report he phoned to say that he didn’t need the tap any longer and asked if he owed me anything. I told him yes, another five hundred dollars, and in an hour or so he came in and paid it.”

She made a little gesture. “I never did suspect him. I still say there was no reason to. But when all the publicity about wiretapping started, and then when we were told to report under oath any and all connections we had had with wiretapping, I went to the bank and spoke with Mr. Poggett, taking Miss Colt with me. He remembered the incident, of course. After going to look at the records, he told me that Alan Samuels had opened a checking account at the bank on February eighteenth, giving a business address on Lexington Avenue. He, Poggett, had attended to it. He wouldn’t tell me either the amount or the references Samuels had given, but he did tell me that the balance had been withdrawn, closing the account, on April twentieth, which was the day after Samuels had canceled the tap, and I did get the Lexington Avenue address out of him. Of course I suspected I had been taken in, and I — do you want me to go on? My efforts to trace him?”

“Not unless you found him. Did you?”

“No. I never did. The next time I saw him was in that room today. Dead.”

“You didn’t see him alive first?”

“I did not.”

“Wouldn’t it have been a simple matter to check on your suspicion — either confirm it or allay it?”

“Oh.” She was taken aback. “I left that out. Of course. I went myself to the address in the Bronx. A man named Alan Samuels lived there, but he wasn’t the same man.”

“Did you tell him of your — uh, inadvertent invasion of his privacy?”

“No. I admit I should have, but I didn’t. I was sick about it, and I was sick of it.”

“Did you inform yourself about him — his occupation, his standing, his interests?”

“No. What good would that do?”

“What is his address?”

“I don’t...” She hesitated. “Is that important?”

Wolfe was frowning at her again. “Come, Miss Bonner. When a Bronx phone book will probably supply it?”

She flushed a little. “It merely seems to me that it’s immaterial. Twenty-nine seventy Borchard Avenue, the Bronx.”

Wolfe turned. “Archie. Get Mr. Cohen. Give him that name and address and tell him we would like to have such information as is readily available. Within an hour if possible.”

I got up and went to the phone. The number of the Gazette was one I didn’t have to consult my notebook for. I told them to go right ahead, that I was used to phoning under difficulties, but they politely kept silence. At that evening hour I had New York in twenty seconds, got Lon, and made the request, but it took two minutes to get rid of him. He wanted an exclusive on how we had got arrested and on the kind of knot I had used on Donahue’s necktie, and I had to get rude and hang up on him. As I returned to my chair Wolfe invited the audience, “Do any of you want to ask Miss Bonner any questions?”

Apparently they didn’t.

“I think,” he said, “that we can best show our appreciation of Miss Bonner’s candor by reciprocating it. Mr. Ide? Mr. Amsel? Mr. Kerr?”

Ide sat and pinched the skin over his Adam’s apple. Amsel, his arms still folded on the back of his chair, kept his eyes at Wolfe. Jay Kerr made a noise, but it was only a minor belch.

“I can understand,” Wolfe said, “that by your vocation and training you have developed a high regard for discretion, but I hope you haven’t made a fetish of it. According to Miss Bonner, all of you recognized the dead man. In that case, not only had you met him, but also you had met him under circumstances that made you think it hazardous, or at least imprudent, to pretend to no knowledge of him. As Miss Bonner said, what you have told the police can surely be told here, unless you have reason to fear—”

“What the hell,” Jay Kerr blurted. “Sure, I knew the bastard.”

“There’s ladies here,” Amsel reproached him.

“They’re not ladies, they’re fellow members. Why, wasn’t he a bastard? Look how he played Wolfe and Dol Bonner, two professionals of the highest standards. A skunk. I’ll be glad to ante all I know about him, but I want a drink first.”

“I beg your pardon,” Wolfe apologized, and he meant it. “Away from home I’m not myself, and I even neglect the amenities. Archie? If you please?”