commanding officer coming there when a big murder case was sizzling, and I wouldn’t bet that he wouldn’t still have hated it even if he knew that we had the murderer, with ample evidence, wrapped up and waiting.
The sound of the descending elevator came, and in a moment Wolfe entered. He greeted the company with no enthusiasm, crossed to his desk, and before sitting down demanded, “What kept you so long? Mr. Goodwin phoned more than six hours ago. My house is full of questionable characters, and I want to get rid of them.”
“Skip it,” Cramer snapped. “We’re in a hurry. What characters?”
Wolfe sat, taking his time to get arranged. “First,” he said, “have you any comment about Miss Estey’s charge that Mr. Goodwin offered to sell her a report of the conversation I had with Mrs. Fromm?”
“No. That’s up to the District Attorney. You’re stalling.”
Wolfe shrugged. “Second, about the spider earrings. Mrs. Fromm bought them at a midtown shop on Monday afternoon, May eleventh. As you have doubtless discovered, there is probably no other pair like them in New York and never has been.”
Stebbins got out his notebook. Cramer demanded, “Where did you get that?”
“By inquiry. I give you the fact; the way I got it is my affair. She saw them in a window, bought them, paid by check, and took them with her. Since you have access to her check stubs you can probably find the shop and verify this, but I can’t imagine a sillier waste of time. I vouch for the fact, and reflection will show you that it is extremely significant.”
“In what way?”
“No. Do your own interpreting. I supply only facts. Here’s another. You know Saul Panzer.”
“Yes.”
“Yesterday he went to the office of the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons, gave the name of Leopold Heim and as his address a cheap hotel on First Avenue, and talked both with Miss Angela Wright and a man named Chaney. He told them that he was in this country illegally and in fear of being exposed and deported, and asked for help. They said his plight was outside their field of activity, advised him to go to a lawyer, and gave him the name of Dennis Horan. He went and talked with Mr. Horan, and then went to his hotel. Shortly before eight o’clock in the evening a man arrived at his room and offered to protect him against exposure or harassment upon payment of ten thousand dollars. Mr. Panzer will give you all details. He was given twenty-four hours to scrape up all the money he could, and when the man left, Mr. Panzer followed him. He is pre-eminent at that.”
“I know he is. Then what?”
“We’ll shift to Mr. Goodwin. Before he proceeds I should explain that I had made an assumption about the man in the car with the woman last Tuesday when the woman told the boy to get a cop. I had assumed that the man was Matthew Birch.”
Cramer’s eyes widened. “Why Birch?”
“I don’t have to expound it because it has been validated. It was Birch. Another fact.”
“Show me. This one will have to be filled in good.”
“By Mr. Goodwin. He’ll get to it. Archie, start with Fred’s phone call last evening and go on through.”
I complied. Having known that this would be somewhere on the program, I had spent most of an hour carefully going over it, while I had been on guard duty in the front room from three-thirty to four-thirty, and had decided that only two major items should be omitted: the kind of stimulation used on Lips Egan, and Egan’s notebook. The latter wouldn’t be mentioned, and wasn’t. Wolfe had said, during our session up in his room, that if it proved later to be essential evidence we would have to produce it, but not otherwise.
Except for those two items I delivered the crop. Stebbins started taking notes but quit halfway through. It was too much for him. I handed him Mort’s gun and exhibited the pliers, which had black tape wrapped thick around the jaws to keep them from breaking skin and bruising flesh. When I finished, Cramer and Stebbins sat looking at each other.
Cramer turned to Wolfe. “This needs some sorting out.”
“Yes,” Wolfe agreed. “It does indeed.”
Cramer turned to Stebbins. “Do we know this Egan?”
“I don’t, but I’ve been on Homicide all my life.”
“Get Rowcliff and tell him to get on him fast.”
I left my chair, and Purley got in it and dialed. While he was phoning, Cramer sat holding his cigar in his fingers, frowning at it, and rubbing his lips with a knuckle of his other hand. It looked exactly as if he were trying to make up his mind whether to quit cigar-chewing. When Purley was through and back in his chair, Cramer looked at Wolfe. “Horan’s in it up to his neck, but we can’t hold him now.”
“I’m not holding him. He is voluntarily cleaving to his client.”
“Yeah, I know. I hand you that one. It tagged Horan all right. If we can make Egan sing we’ve got it.”
Wolfe shook his head. “Not necessarily the murderer. Possibly Egan knows as little about the murders as you do.”
It was a dirty crack, but Cramer ignored it.
“We’ll give him a chance,” he declared. “Plenty. I’ve got to sort this out. It’s not absolutely tight that it was Birch in the car with the woman. Suppose it wasn’t? Suppose the man in the car was one of the poor devils they had their hooks into. The woman was the one in the racket, the one that phones Egan the leads. She thought
