'Yes. So I'm faced with an alternative. I can make a pro-posal to your colleague in the Bronx. I can offer to tell him of this link connecting the two deaths, which will surely be of great help to him, on the condition that he collaborates with me, within reason, to satisfy my client-when the-case is solved-that I have earned my fee. Or I can make that proposal to you. Since the death of my client's daughter oc-curred in the Bronx and therefore is in your colleague's jurisdiction, perhaps I should go to him, but on the other hand Dykes was killed in Manhattan. What do you think?'
'I think,' Cramer growled, 'I expected something like this and here it is. You want me to pay for information about a murder by promising to help you collect a fee, and you threaten to take it to the Bronx if I won't buy. If he won't buy either, then you withhold it? Huh?'
'I have no information to withhold.'
'Goddam it, you said you-'
'I said I have reason to think the two deaths are con-nected. It's based on information, of course, but I have none that the police do not have. The Police Department is a huge organization. If your staff and the Bronx staff get together on this it's likely that sooner or later they'll get where I am. I thought this would save you time and work. I can't be charged with withholding information when I know nothing that the police don't know- collectively.'
Cramer snorted. 'Some day,' he said darkly, and snorted again.
'I offer this,' Wolfe said, 'because you might as well have it, and because the case looks complex enough to need a lot of work and my resources are limited. I make the offer con-ditional because if with my hint you solve it in a hurry with-out further consultation with me, I don't want my client to refuse to pay my bill. I am willing to put it like this: if, when it's finished, you think it likely that the Wellman case would
not have been solved if Mr. Wellman had not come to me, you tell him so, not for publication.'
Wolfe levered himself forward to reach for his glass and drink.
'I'll take it that way,' Cramer stated. 'Let's have it.'
Wolfe wiped his lips with his handkerchief. 'Also Mr. Goodwin is to be permitted to look over the two files-on Dykes and on Miss Wellman.'
'I don't have the Wellman file.'
'When I explain the connection you'll get it.'
'It's against Department regulations.'
'Indeed? I beg your pardon. It would be mutually helpful to share information, and it would waste my time and my client's money to collect again the facts you already have, but of course a violation of regulations is unthinkable.'
Cramer glared at him. 'You know,' he said, 'one of the many reasons you're hard to take is that when you're being sarcastic you don't sound sarcastic. That's just one of your offensive habits. Okay, I'll see you get facts. What's this connection?'
'With the condition as stated.'
'Hell yes. I'd hate to see you starve,'
Wolfe turned to me. 'Archie. That letter?'
I got it from under the paperweight and handed it to him.
'This,' he told Cramer, 'is a copy of a letter Miss Wellman wrote to her parents on Thursday, February first. She was killed the evening of the next day, Friday.' He held it out, and Cramer got up to take it. 'Read it all if you like, but the relevant part is the marked paragraph.'
Cramer ran over it. He took his time, and then sat frowning at it. Looking up at Wolfe, he kept the frown. 'I've seen that name somewhere. Baird Archer. Isn't that it?'
Wolfe nodded. 'Shall we see how long it takes you to dig it up?'
'No. Where?'
'On the list of names written by Leonard Dykes which you came here to show me six weeks ago. It was seventh on the list, I think-possibly eighth. Not sixth.'
'When did you first see this letter?'
'This evening. My client gave it to me.'
'I'll be damned.' Cramer gawked at him and at the relevant paragraph. He folded the letter with slow deliberate fingers and put it in his pocket.
'The original,' Wolfe told him, 'is in the possession of your colleague in the Bronx. That's my copy.'
'Yeah. I'll borrow it.' Cramer reached for his glass, took a swallow, and focused his eyes on a corner of Wolfe's arc-wood desk. He took another swallow and went back to studying the desk. So alternating, two more swallows with intervals for desk study emptied the glass. He put it down on the little table.
'What else have you got?'
'Nothing.'
'What have you done?'
'Nothing. Since I saw that letter, I have dined.'
'I bet you have.' Cramer came up out of his chair, still springy in spite of his years. 'I'll be going. Damn it, I was going home.'
