He went to Purley. 'He was there, and he could help. You know him as well as I do. What about it? Is this straight?'
'It's possible,' the sergeant granted. 'His head's been swelling a long time now, and it got a bad jolt, and he can't stand it. I'd buy it. We can always toss him out.'
Cramer came to me. 'If this is a dodge, I'll hook you good. Nothing goes to Wolfe, not a damn word, and nothing to the press or anyone else.'
'Right.'
'This was already a big noise, as you know, and now with this third one, another strangling, everybody in town has joined in. Two dozen copies have been made of your full report, and the Commissioner himself is studying one of them right now. Deputy Commissioner Wade is in a room down the hall with Brucker. At the DA's, Bowen is with Miss Duday, and Mandelbaum was to start again on Hagh, the ex-husband, when he finished with you. You can join any one of them, and I'll phone that you're coming, or you can come with Stebbins and me. We're going to do a retake with Helmar.'
'I'll go with you for a starter.
'Come on.' He moved.
My first appearance as an informal adjunct of the NYPD, seated at the left of Inspector Cramer as he interviewed Perry Helmar, lasted for five hours. It was by no means the first time I had seen and heard Cramer perform, but the circumstances were new, because I was all for him with no reservations. As a spectator at a quiz job I am probably as hard to please as anybody around, after the countless times I have watched Wolfe work, and I thought Cramer was good with Helmar. He couldn't have read my report more than once, with the full day he had had, but his picture of the meeting at Wolfe's office was clear and accurate. I made no great contribution to the performance, supplying a few interpositions and a couple of suggestions, none of which made a noticeable whoosh. At nine o'clock Helmar was sent home without escort, after being told that he would probably be wanted again in the morning.
Cramer went off to another conference in the Commissioner's office, and Purley and I left the building together. He had been on duty thirteen hours, and his program was eat and sleep, and I offered to buy him fried clams at Louie's.
I don't know how I had learned that offering Purley fried clams at Louie's was like dangling a bit of red flannel in front of a bullfrog, since our intimacy, not social to begin with, had never reached the peak of a joint meal. In view of my new though temporary status with the NYPD, he hesitated only four or five seconds.
At Louie's I insisted on his company to a phone booth, and, with the door open and him at my elbow, I dialed and got Wolfe.
I apologized. 'I should have called earlier to say I couldn't make it for dinner, but I was tied up. I was with Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins, questioning Perry Helmar. Cramer's idea is that since I was there at the meeting last night it may help for me to sit in, and I agree. I am now going to buy Sergeant Stebbins some seafood, and afterward, as an aid to digestion, I'm going to the DA's office and check in at a session with Andy Fomos-either that or one with Oliver Pitkin. So again I can't say when I'll be home. This triple homicide is of course a round-the-clock operation for the cops, and I might as well keep going until I drop-chasing the picturesque and the passionate, according to plan. I'll give you a ring someday.'
There was a little noise like a chopped-off chuckle, which seemed ill timed. 'The confounded doorbell keeps ringing,' he complained. 'But Fritz and I will manage. Keep me informed at your convenience.'
It clicked in my ear. I hung up, slow motion, and sat for a moment. He was being picturesque himself. Either he intended to dig in and work on it, in which case he should have insisted on my coming home immediately to help, or he did not intend to, in which case he should have beefed about my fraternizing with our ancient enemies.
'You know,' I told Purley, 'eccentrics are such interesting people.'
'Not to me,' he objected. 'Every goddam murderer I've ever seen was an eccentric.'
By the time he had finished two full portions of fried clams with trimmings, two steins of ale, and two pieces of apple pie with cheese, I was fairly well caught up on the routine aspects. There had been no tails on any of them Thursday night, including Andy Fomos. Within five minutes after getting my phone call Purley had started twenty men checking on them, some by phone and some in person, covering everyone who had been at the meeting at Wolfe's office, not excluding Nathaniel Parker. Though four of them, including Parker, apparently had alibis-still being investigated-no one was conclusively eliminated, and no one was conclusively indicated.
On that Purley had a comment. When I got the phone call from Sarah Jaffee, if I had called Purley at once, and if he had jumped on it and had not only sent a man to Eightieth Street but had also immediately started the check on all concerned, we would now have the strangler. I agreed-but, I asked, if I had called him at once, would he have jumped on it; and he had to admit he wouldn't, chiefly because there was no known motive for any of them to kill Sarah Jaffee. Even if I had told him about the threat of Sarah's applying for an injunction, it would be stretching it thin to suppose one of them would murder her for that.
As for the alibis, whether they stood up or not, the law felt the same as Wolfe when he told Viola Duday that while she might not have committed the crimes there was no reason why she shouldn't have contrived them. Purley said they had twenty-six men, the ones best qualified for that chore, trying to find a connection between one of the suspects and a death jobber. It was simpler in a way, but also harder in a way, because they were after a strangler, not a gunman.
They hadn't found a hackie who had taken a fare, between midnight and 1:45, to the address on East Eightieth or the immediate neighborhood, or from there after two o'clock. They were still looking, but the chances were slim. There was a subway station only three blocks away.
The name of the night man was William Fisler. My appraisal had been sound; he was a dope. At first he had maintained that from 12:30 to 1:45, the period during which the murderer must have got in and up to the apartment, he had been right on the job every minute, on guard near the front entrance, except for a couple of elevator trips with known tenants; but when he realized that if he stuck to that he was allowing the murderer, for entry to the building and the stairs, only the times of the brief elevator trips, he did a full flop and practically stated that he had been so busy downstairs with sandwiches and coffee that he had hardly seen the front entrance at all. His position was approximately the same for the period from 1:58 to 2:23, during which the murderer must have descended the stairs and made his exit to the sidewalk, and on away. He did admit that around a quarter to two he had been out on the sidewalk with the door to the building standing open, because he had to; Sarah's
