“A talk?” Cramer raised his hands, one of them holding a glass of beer. “Saint Agnes! Have I had a talk with that bird!”
“Yes, he talks. As Archie told you, he was curious about what was on those cylinders.”
“He still is.” Cramer had half emptied his glass and hung onto it. “The damn fool thought he could keep that envelope. He wanted to have a private dick, not you, investigate it, so he said.” He drank again. “Now there’s an example of what this case is like. Would you want a better lead than an envelope like that? BPR stock, special delivery, one stamp canceled and the others not, typewritten address? Shall I tell you in detail what we’ve done, including trying a thousand typewriters?”
“I think not.”
“I think not too. It would only take all night to tell you. The goddam post office says it’s too bad they can’t help us, but with all the new girls they’ve got, stamps canceled, stamps not canceled, you never can tell.”
Cramer emptied the bottle into the glass. “You heard that crack I made to Rowcliffe about my losing my job.”
“That?” Wolfe waved it away.
“Yeah I know,” Cramer agreed. “I’ve made it before. It’s a habit. All inspectors tell their wives every evening that they’ll probably be captains tomorrow. But this time I don’t know. From the standpoint of a Homicide Squad inspector, an atom bomb would be a baby firecracker compared to this damn thing. The Commissioner has got St. Vitus’s Dance. The D.A. is trying to pretend his turn doesn’t come until it’s time to panel a jury. The Mayor is having nightmares, and he must have got it in a dream that if there wasn’t any Homicide Squad there wouldn’t be any murders, at least not any involving big-time citizens. So it’s all my fault. I mustn’t get tough with refined people who have got to the point where they employ tax experts to make sure they’re not cheating the government. On the other hand, I must realize that public sentiment absolutely demands that the murderer of Cheney Boone shall not go unpunished. It’s six days since it happened, and here by God I sit beefing to you.”
He drank his glass empty, put it down, and used the back of his hand for a napkin. “That’s the situation, my fat friend, as Charlie McCarthy said to Herbert Hoover. Look what I’m doing, letting you take the wheel is what it amounts to, at least long enough for you to run me in a ditch if you happen to need to. I know damn well that no client of yours has ever been convicted of murder, and in this case your clients-”
“No man is my client,” Wolfe interposed. “My client is an association. An association can’t commit murder.”
“Maybe not. Even so, I know how you work. If you thought it was necessary, in the interest of the client-I guess here he comes or here it comes.”
The doorbell had rung. I went to answer it, and found that Cramer’s guess was right. This first arrival was a piece of our client, in the person of Hattie Harding. She seemed out of breath. There in the hall she gripped my arm and wanted to know:
“What is it? Have they-what is it?”
I used the hand of my other arm to pat her shoulder. “No, no, calm down. You’re all tense. We’ve decided to have these affairs twice a week, that’s all.”
I took her to the office and put her to helping me with chairs.
From then on they dribbled in, one by one. Purley Stebbins arrived and apologized to his boss for not making it quicker, and took him aside to explain something. G. G. Spero of the FBI was third and Mrs. Boone fourth. Along about the middle Solomon Dexter returned, and finding the red leather chair unoccupied at the moment, copped it for himself. The Erskine family came separately, a quarter of an hour apart, and so did Breslow and Winterhoff. On the whole, as I let them in, they returned my greeting as a fellow member of the human race, one word or none, but there were two exceptions. Don O’Neill looked straight through me and conveyed the impression that if I touched his coat it would have to be sent to the cleaners, so I let him put it on the rack himself. Alger Kates acted as if I was paid to do the job, so no embraces were called for. Nina Boone, who came late, smiled at me. I didn’t imagine it; she smiled right at me. To repay her, I saw to it that she got the same position she had had before, the chair next to mine.
I had to hand it to the Police Department as inviters. It was ten-forty, just an hour and ten minutes since Cramer had phoned Rowcliffe to get up a party. I stood and looked them over, checking off, and then turned to Wolfe and told him:
“It’s the same as last time, Miss Gunther just doesn’t like crowds. They’re all here except her.”
Wolfe moved his eyes over the assemblage, slowly from right to left and back again, like a man trying to make up his mind which shirt to buy. They were all seated, divided into two camps as before, except that Winterhoff and Erskine the father were standing over by the globe talking in undertones. From the standpoint of gaiety the party was a dud before it ever started. One second there would be a buzz of conversation, and the next second dead silence; then that would get on someone’s nerves and the buzz would start again. A photographer could have taken a shot of that collection of faces and called it I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.
Cramer came to my desk and used the phone and then told Wolfe, leaning over to him, “They got Miss Gunther at her apartment over an hour ago, and she said she’d come immediately.”
Wolfe shrugged. “We won’t wait. Go ahead.”
Cramer turned to face the guests, cleared his throat, and raised his voice:
“Ladies and gentlemen!” There was instant silence. “I want you to understand why you were asked to come here, and exactly what’s going on. I suppose you read the papers. According to the papers, at least some of them, the police are finding this case too hot to handle on account of the people involved, and they’re laying down on the job. I think every single person here knows how much truth there is in that. I guess all of you feel, or nearly all of you, that you’re being pestered and persecuted on account of something that you had nothing to do with. The newspapers have their angle, and you have yours. I suppose it was an inconvenience to all of you to come here this evening, but you’ve got to face it that there’s no way out of it, and you’ve got to blame that inconvenience not on the police or anybody else except one person, the person who killed Cheney Boone. I’m not saying that person is in this room. I admit I don’t know. He may be a thousand miles from here-”
