“Is that,” Breslow barked, “what you got us here to listen to? We’re heard all that before!”
“Yeah, I know you have.” Cramer was trying not to sound sour. “We didn’t get you here to listen to me. I am now turning this over to Mr. Wolfe, and he will proceed, after I say two things. First, you got the request to come here from my office, but from here on it is not official. I am responsible for getting you here and that’s all. As far as I’m concerned you can all get up and go if you feel like it. Second, some of you may feel that this is improper because Mr. Wolfe has been engaged to work on this case by the National Industrial Association. That may be so. All I can say is, if you feel that way you can stay here and keep that in mind, or you can leave. Suit yourselves.”
He looked around. Nobody moved or spoke. Cramer waited ten seconds and then turned and nodded at Wolfe.
Wolfe heaved a deep sigh and opened up with a barely audible murmur:
“One thing Mr. Cramer mentioned, the inconvenience you people are being forced to endure, requires a little comment. I ask your forbearance while I make it. It is only by that kind of sacrifice on the part of persons, sometimes many persons, who are themselves wholly blameless-”
I hated to disturb his flow, because I knew from long experience that at last he was really working. He had resolved to get something out of that bunch if he had to keep them there all night. But there was no help for it, on account of the expression on Fritz’s face. A movement out in the hall had caught my eye, and Fritz was standing there, four feet back from the door to the office, which was standing open, staring wide-eyed at me. When he saw I was looking at him he beckoned to me to come, and the thought popped into my mind that, with guests present and Wolfe making an oration, that was precisely how Fritz would act if the house was on fire. The whole throng was between him and me, and I circled around behind them for my exit. Wolfe kept on talking. As soon as I made the hall I closed the door behind me and asked Fritz:
“Something biting you?”
“It’s-it’s-” He stopped and set his teeth on his lip. Wolfe had been trying to train Fritz for twenty years not to get excited. He tried again: “Come and I’ll show you.”
He dived for the kitchen and I followed, thinking it was some culinary calamity that he couldn’t bear up under alone, but he went to the door to the back stairs, the steps that led down to what we called the basement, though it was only three feet below the street level. Fritz slept down there in the room that faced the street. There was an exit through a little hall to the front; first a heavy door out to a tiny vestibule which was underneath the stoop, and then an iron gate, a grill, leading to a paved areaway from which five steps mounted to the sidewalk. It was in the tiny vestibule that Fritz stopped and I bumped into him.
He pointed down. “Look.” He put his hand on the gate and gave it a little shake. “I came to see if the gate was locked, the way I always do.”
There was an object huddled on the concrete of the areaway, up against the gate, so that the gate couldn’t be opened without pushing the object aside. I squatted to peer. The light there was dim, since the nearest street lamp was on the other side of the stoop, thirty paces away, but I could see well enough to tell what the object was, though not for certain who it was.
“What the hell did you bring me here for?” I demanded, pushing past Fritz to re-enter the basement. “Come with me.”
He was at my heels as I mounted the stairs. In the kitchen I detoured to jerk open a drawer and get a flashlight, and then went down the main hall to the front door, out to the stoop and down to the sidewalk, and down the five steps to the areaway. There, on the same side of the gate as the object, I squatted again and switched on the flashlight. Fritz was beside me, bending over.
“Shall I-” His voice was shaking and he had to start again. “Shall I hold the light?”
After half a minute I straightened up, told him, “You stay right here,” and headed for the stoop. Fritz had pulled the front door shut, and when I found myself fumbling to get the key in the hole I stood erect to take a deep breath and that stopped the fumbling. I went down the hall to the kitchen, to the phone there, and dialed the number of Dr. Vollmer, who lived down the street only half a block away. There were six buzzes before he answered.
“Doc? Archie Goodwin. Got your clothes on? Good. Get here as fast as you can. There’s a woman lying in our areaway, by the gate to the basement, been hit on the head, and I think she’s dead. There’ll be cops on it, so don’t shift her more than you have to. Right now? Okay.”
I took another breath, filling my chest, then took Fritz’s pad and pencil and wrote:
I tore off the sheet and went to the office. I suppose I had been gone six minutes, not more, and Wolfe was still doing a monologue, with thirteen pairs of eyes riveted on him. I sidled around to the right, got to his desk, and handed him the note. He got it at a glance, gave it a longer glance, flashed one at me, and spoke without any perceptible change in tone or manner:
“Mr. Cramer. If you please. Mr. Goodwin has a message for you and Mr. Stebbins. Will you go with him to the hall?”
Cramer and Stebbins got up. As we went out Wolfe’s voice was resuming behind us:
“Now the question that confronts us is whether it is credible, under the circumstances as we know them…”
Chapter 19
THIRTY MINUTES PAST MIDNIGHT was about the peak. At that moment I was alone in my room, two flights up, sitting in the chair by the window, drinking a glass of milk, or at least holding one in my hand. I do not ordinarily
