“You mean it’s not statute. But it’s accepted custom and it’s what the courts stand for, so it’s law for me. You wanted my opinion, and that’s it. I won’t be responsible for continued occupation of the apartment Miss Gunther was staying in, and not by my men anyway because I can’t spare them. The tenant of the apartment is Kates. Three good searchers have spent an hour and a half there and haven’t found anything. I’m willing to let them keep at it all night, or at least until we turn Kates loose, if and when we’re through here, but any order for continued occupancy and keeping Kates out”-he looked at the P.C.-”will have to come from you, sir, or,” he looked at the D.A., “from you.”
Travis of the FBI put in, “I’d advise against it.”
“This,” the D.A. said stiffly, “is a local problem.”
They went on. I started kicking my left ankle with my right foot, and vice versa. Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, and I was pleased to note that his opinion of high strategy was apparently the same as mine. The P.C., the D.A., and the FBI, not to mention the head of the Homicide Squad, debating where Alger Kates was going to sleep, when he got a chance to sleep, and that after three cops had had the apartment to themselves long enough to saw all the legs off the chairs and glue them back on. It developed that it was the D.A. who was plugging for continued occupancy. I decided to enter the conversation just for the hell of it and was considering which side to be on when the phone rang.
It was from Washington, for FBI Travis, and he came to my desk to take it. The others stopped talking and looked at him. On his part it was mostly listening. When he had finished he shoved the phone back and turned to announce:
“This has some bearing on what we’ve been discussing. Our men and the Washington police have completed their search of Miss Gunther’s apartment in Washington-one large room, bath, and kitchenette. In a hatbox on a shelf in a closet they found nine Stenophone cylinders-”
“Confound it!” Wolfe burst out. “Nine?” He was as indignant and irritated as if he had been served a veal cutlet with an egg perched on it. Everyone stared at him.
“Nine,” said Travis curtly. He was justifiably annoyed at having his scene stolen. “Nine Stenophone cylinders. A BPR man was with them, and they are now at the BPR office running them off and making a transcription.” He looked coldly at Wolfe. “What’s wrong with nine?”
“For you,” Wolfe said offensively, “apparently nothing. For me, nine is no better than none. I want ten.”
“That’s a damn shame. I apologize. They should have found ten.” Having demolished Wolfe, he reported to the others, “They’ll call again as soon as they get something we might use.”
“Then they won’t call,” Wolfe declared, and shut his eyes again, leaving the discussion of the new development to the others. He was certainly being objectionable, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. The howling insolence of committing a murder on his own stoop would alone have been enough, but in addition to that his house was filled from top to bottom with uninvited guests and he was absolutely powerless. That was dead against his policy, his practice, and his personality. Seeing that he was really in a bad way, and thinking it might be a good plan for him to keep himself at least partially informed of what was going on, since he was supposed to have an interest in the outcome, I went to the kitchen to get some beer for him. Evidently he was in too bad a humor even to remember to send for beer, since there were no signs of any.
Fritz and about a dozen assorted dicks were there drinking coffee. I told them:
“You sure are cluttering up the place, but I don’t blame you. It isn’t often that members of the lower classes get a chance to drink coffee made by Fritz Brenner.”
There was a subdued, but close to unanimous, concert of Bronx cheers. One said, “Goodwin the gentleman. One, two, three, laugh.”
Another said, “Hey, you know everything. What’s the lowdown on this NIA-BPR stuff? Is it a feud or not?”
I was putting six bottles and six glasses on a tray, with Fritz’s help. “I’m glad to explain,” I said generously. “The NIA and the BPR are in one respect exactly like the glorious PD, or Police Department. They have esprit de corps. Repeat it after me-no, don’t bother. That is a French term, the language spoken by Frenchmen, the people who live in France, the literal translation of which is ‘spirit of the body.’ In our language we have no precise equivalent-”
The cheers had begun again, and the tray was ready, so I left them. Fritz came to the hall with me, closed the kitchen door, held my sleeve, and told my ear:
“Archie, this is awful. I just want to say I know how awful it is for you. Mr. Wolfe told me when I took up his breakfast this morning that you had formed a passion for Miss Gunther and she had you wound around her finger. She was a beautiful girl, very beautiful. This is awful, what happened here.”
I said, “Go to hell,” jerked my arm to free my sleeve, and took a step. Then I turned to him and said, “All I meant was, this is a hell of a night and it will take you a week to clean up the joint. Go back and finish that lesson in French I was giving them.”
In the office they were as before. I peddled beer around, making three sales to outsiders, leaving three bottles for Wolfe, which was about as I had calculated, went back to the kitchen and got myself a sandwich and a glass of milk, and returned to my desk with them. The strategy council was going on and on, with Wolfe still aloof in spite of the beer. The sandwich made me hungry and I went and got two more. Long after they were gone the council was still chewing the fat.
They were handicapped, of course, by continual interruptions, both by phone and by personal appearances. One of the phone calls was for Travis from Washington, and when he was through with it his face displayed no triumph. The nine cylinders had all been listened to, and there was nothing for us to bite on. They contained plenty of evidence that they had been dictated by Boone at his Washington office on Tuesday afternoon, but no evidence at all that would help to uncover a murderer. The BPR was trying to hang onto the transcriptions, but the Washington FBI promised to send a copy to Travis, and he agreed to let Cramer see it.
“So,” Travis said aggressively, daring us to hint that we were no better off than before, “that proves that Miss Gunther was lying about them. She had them all the time.”
“Nine.” Wolfe grunted in disgust. “Pfui.”
That was his only contribution to their discussion of the cylinders.
