“Sewed up?”
“We thought it was. Now we’ll have to go over it. We were after Douglas. We’ll have to go back over all of it. I suppose even the grandmother. Two people saw her entering at 7:10, but she could have been there earlier and gone out again. And Miss Leeds. Her agent was with her up to some time between 6:30 and 7:00, going over leases and accounts, and now we’ll have to pin that down. We had crossed off four other people who were in the building at the time because they seemed to have no connection with Ann Amory, but we’ll have to go back to that too.” Cramer glared at me. “Nuts. I don’t remember any single time I ever saw you or spoke to you that you didn’t ball something up.”
He picked up the phone and began giving orders. In ten minutes or less he issued instructions that started a couple of dozen men either going or coming. But I wasn’t paying very close attention. In spite of Wolfe’s agreeing to see Colonel Ryder and permitting the order to be relayed to Fritz for pan-broiled young turkey, I wasn’t sure whether I had him or not. He was as unpredictable as Lily Rowan, and I was trying to figure out some way of getting him really involved. I didn’t like the way he looked. He was keeping his eyes open and his head straight up; and there was no way of telling what it meant because it was new to me. Of course the thing to do was to get him home, get him seated back of his desk again, with beer in front of him and smells coming from the kitchen, as soon as possible.
I was considering ways of selling that idea to Cramer, when Cramer saved me the trouble. He pushed the phone aside and said abruptly to Wolfe, “You asked if I need anything. Well, I do. I suppose you’ve noticed the way things seem to be heading.”
“I perceive,” Wolfe said dryly, “a general tendency in the direction of Miss Rowan.”
Cramer nodded without enthusiasm. “That don’t require much perceiving. We’ve got to go back over everybody, but that’s the way it looks now. And Lily Rowan’s father was one of my best friends. He got me on the force, and he got me out of a couple of tight holes in the old days when he was on the inside at the Hall. I knew Lily before she could walk. I’m not the man to do any cleaning job on her, and I don’t want to turn her over to any of these wolves. I want you to handle her up at your place. And I want to be there in the front room where she can’t see me.”
Wolfe frowned. “I know her myself. I have given her orchids. She has been pestering me lately. It will not be pleasant.” He shot me a glance that was supposed to wither me. Then he regarded Cramer with an expression of repugnance, and heaved a sigh. “Very well. Provided Archie goes with us, and stays. This idiotic farce-”
A dick I didn’t know entered the room, advanced at a nod from Cramer and reported: “Mrs. Chack is here and wants to talk. Miss Leeds is with her. Give her to Lieutenant Rowcliff?”
“No,” Cramer said, after a glance at the clock, “bring them in here.”
Chapter 10
Those two females had been something out of the ordinary when I saw them separately on my first trip to Barnum Street, but marching in that office together they were really something. As far as size and weight went, Miss Leeds could easily have tucked Mrs. Chack under her arm and carried her off, but the expression in Mrs. Chack’s black eyes made it seem likely that such things as size and weight would be minor considerations, and age too, if anybody tried to start anything. She had to take two steps to Miss Leeds’ one, but she was in front. They were both dressed to sit in a buggy and watch a parade of soldiers returning from the Spanish-American war. When Purley had got them into chairs, Cramer asked, “You ladies have something to say?”
“I have,” Mrs. Chack snapped. “I want to know when you are going to get Roy Douglas. I want to see him face to face. He killed my granddaughter.”
“You are crazy,” Miss Leeds declared huskily but firmly. “You have been crazy for fifty years. I have permitted you to live in my house-”
“I will not tolerate-”
They were both talking at once.
“Ladies!” Cramer boomed. They both stopped talking as if he had turned a valve. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “you had better wait outside, Miss Leeds, until I hear what Mrs. Chack has to say-”
“No,” Miss Leeds said immovably. “I intend to hear it.”
“Then please don’t interrupt. You’ll get a chance-”
“She has been afraid of me,” Mrs. Chack asserted, “since I discovered that her mother poisoned squirrels in Washington Square on December ninth, 1905. That’s a prison offense. But now my own granddaughter is dead because I committed a sin myself and have no right to expect the mercy of God and I am willing to be punished. I am old enough to die and I ought to die. When Cora Leeds died on the ninth of December last year I said to myself, in my wretched vanity, it was the Hand of God, because it pleased me. Then when I learned that Roy Douglas had killed Cora Leeds, murdered her, I said I didn’t believe it. In my vanity I would not relinquish the Hand of God-”
“Who was Cora Leeds?” Cramer demanded.
“Her mother.” Mrs. Chack pointed a bony little finger, straight as an arrow, at Miss Leeds. “I refused-”
“How did you learn that Roy Douglas killed her?”
“Ann told me. My granddaughter. She told me how she knew, but I can’t remember. I have been trying to remember since last night. It will come back to me. My mind isn’t too old for a thing like that to come back. Cora Leeds was in bed, she had been in bed since she hurt her leg in September, and he put a pillow over her face and held her down, and when she struggled it was too much for her old heart and she died. I think Ann saw him putting the pillow-no, I’m just guessing. You see, I didn’t want to remember it because then it wouldn’t have been the Hand of God on December ninth, so I forgot it. That’s the way an old mind works. Since last night
