Cramer paid no attention to him. He started with Warder, gave him a quick but thorough frisking, motioned him back, and said to O’Neill, “Stand up.” O’Neill didn’t move. Cramer barked at him, “Do you want to get lifted?” O’Neill stood up and did some fancy breathing while Cramer’s expert hands went over him. When it was Alger Kates’s turn no pressure was required. He looked dazed but not even resentful. Cramer, through with him and empty-handed, moved across to the machine and stood with a hand resting on its frame. He growled at me:
“Go ahead, Goodwin.”
Not being a Stenophone expert and not wanting to damage the cylinder, I started it over at the beginning. Soon it was at the point where it had been interrupted:
He told me the following. Warder has known for several months that the president of his company, Don O’Neill, has been paying a member of the BPR staff for confidential information. He did not discover it by accident or any secret investigation. O’Neill has not only admitted it, but bragged about it, and Warder, as Treasurer, has been obliged to supply corporation funds for the purpose through a special account. He has done so under protest. I repeat that this is Warder’s story, but I am inclined to believe it as he tells it because he came to me voluntarily. It will have to be checked with the FBI to find out if they have had any lead in the direction of O’Neill and Warder and specifically Warder, but the FBI must not be given any hint of Warder’s communicating with me. I had to give him my pledge on that before he would say a word, and the pledge must be kept absolutely. I’ll talk this over with you tomorrow, but I have a hunch-you know how I have hunches-that I want to get it on a cylinder without delay.
Cramer made a little noise that was part snort and part sneeze, and three pairs of eyes went to him as if in irritation at his interfering with a fascinating performance. I didn’t mind so much because I had heard it before. What I was interested in was the audience.
Warder said that to his knowledge the payments began last September and that the total paid to date is sixteen thousand five hundred dollars. The reason he gave for coming to me is that he is a man of principle, so he put it, and he violently disapproves of bribery, especially bribery of government officials. He was not in a position to take a firm stand with O’Neill because O’Neill owns over sixty per cent of the corporation’s stock and Warder owns less than ten per cent, and O’Neill could and would throw him out. That can easily be checked. Warder was extremely nervous and apprehensive. My impression is that his story is straight, that his coming to me was the result of his conscience gnawing at him, but there is a chance that his real motive is to build a fire under O’Neill, for undisclosed reasons. He swore that his only purpose was to acquaint me with the facts so I can put a stop to it by getting rid of my corrupted subordinate, and that is substantiated by his exacting a pledge beforehand that makes it impossible for us to touch O’Neill in the matter.
This will be a surprise to you-I know it was to me-the man O’Neill has bought is Kates, Alger Kates. You know what I have thought of Kates, and, so far as I know, you have thought the same. Warder claims he doesn’t know exactly what O’Neill has got for his money, but that isn’t important. We know what Kates has been in a position to sell-as much as any man in the organization outside of the very top ranks-and our only safe assumption is that he has given it all to O’Neill and that O’Neill has passed it on to the whole rotten NIA gang. I don’t need to tell you how sick I am about it. For a miserable sixteen thousand dollars. I don’t think I would mind quite so much being betrayed by a first-class snake for something up in the millions, but this just makes me sick. I thought Kates was a modest little man with his heart in his work and in our objectives and purposes. I have no idea what he wanted the money for and I don’t care. I haven’t decided how to handle it. The best way would be to put the FBI on him and catch him with O’Neill, but I don’t know whether my pledge to Warder would permit that. I’ll think it over and we’ll discuss it tomorrow. If I were face to face with Kates right now I don’t think I could control myself. Actually I don’t ever want to see him again. This has gone pretty deep and if he entered this room now I think I’d get my fingers around his throat and choke him to death. You know me. That’s the way I talk.
The important thing is not Kates himself, but what this shows. It shows that it is simply insanity for me to put complete trust in anybody, anyone whatever except Dexter and you, and we must install a much better system of checks immediately. To some extent we can continue to let the FBI handle it, but we must reinforce that with a setup and personnel that will work directly under us. I want you to think it over for tomorrow’s discussion, to which no one will be invited but Dexter. The way it strikes me now, you’ll have to take this over and drop everything else. That will leave me in a hole, but this is vitally important. Think it over. I have to appear before the Senate Committee in the morning, so I’ll take this to New York and give it to you, and you can run it off while I’m up on the Hill, and we’ll get at it as early in the afternoon as possible.
The voice stopped and was replaced by a faint sizzling purr, and I reached to flip the switch.
There was complete dead silence.
Wolfe broke in. “What about it, Mr. Kates?” he asked in a tone of innocent curiosity. “When you entered that room, taking Mr. Boone material for his speech, and he found himself face to face with you, did he get his fingers around your throat and try to choke you?”
“No,” Kates squeaked. He sounded indignant, but that may have been only because squeaks often do.
O’Neill commanded him: “You keep out of this, Kates! Keep your mouth shut!”
Wolfe chuckled. “That’s marvelous, Mr. O’Neill. It really is. Almost verbatim. That first evening here you admonished him, word for word, ‘You can keep out of this, Kates! Sit down and shut up!’ It was not very intelligent of you, since it sounded precisely like a high-handed man ordering an employee around, as indeed it was. It led to my having a good man spend three days trying to find a link between you and Mr. Kates, but you had been too circumspect.” His eyes darted back to Kates. “I asked about Mr. Boone’s choking you because apparently he had it in mind, and also because it suggests a possible line for you-self-defense. A good lawyer might do something with it-but then of course there’s Miss Gunther. I doubt if a jury could be persuaded that she too tried to choke you, there on my stoop. By the way, there’s one detail I’m curious about. Miss Gunther told Mrs. Boone that she wrote a letter to the murderer, telling him that he must return that wedding picture. I don’t believe it. I don’t think Miss Gunther would have put anything like that in writing. I think she got the picture and the automobile license from you and mailed them to Mrs. Boone herself. Didn’t she?”
For reply Alger Kates put on one of the strangest performances I have ever seen, and I have seen plenty. He squeaked, and this time there was no question about the indignation, not at Wolfe but at Inspector Cramer. He was trembling with indignation, up on his feet, a retake in every way of the dramatic moment when he had accused Breslow of going beyond the bounds of common decency. He squeaked, “The police were utterly incompetent! They should have found out where that piece of pipe came from in a few hours! They never did! It came from a pile of rubbish in a basement hall in the building on Forty-first Street where the NIA offices are!”
“For Christ’s sake,” Cramer rumbled. “Listen to him! He’s sore!”
“He’s a fool,” O’Neill said righteously, apparently addressing the Stenophone. “He’s a contemptible
