I looked up. “All right, it wasn’t just to keep me off your neck. Okay on the power. But there’s still the if on the preference. She didn’t kill him. She came to me and opened the bag. I’m her hero. She as good as told Maslow that she’d marry me if I asked her. Maybe she could learn how to dance if she tried hard, though I admit that’s doubtful. She makes a lot more than you pay me, and we could postpone the babies. You said you doubt if she would be convicted, but that’s not good enough. Before I sign that affidavit I would need to know that you won’t chuck the joint affair as soon as the heat is off of me.”
“Rrrhhh,” he said.
“I agree,” I said, “it’s a goddam nuisance. It’s entirely her fault, she dragged me in without even telling me, and if a girl pushes a man in a hole he has a right to wiggle out, but you must remember that I am now a hero. Heroes don’t wiggle. Will you say that it will be our joint affair to make sure that she doesn’t go to trial?”
“I wouldn’t say that I will make sure of anything whatever.”
“Correction. That you will be concerned?”
He took air in, all the way, through his nose, and let it out through his mouth. “Very well. I’ll be concerned.” He glanced at the twelve pages on his desk. “Will you bring Miss Pinelli to my room at five minutes to nine in the morning?”
“No. She doesn’t get to her office until nine-thirty.”
“Then bring her to the plant rooms at nine-forty with the affidavit.” He looked at the wall clock. “You can type it in the morning. You’ve had no sleep for forty hours. Go to bed.”
That was quite a compliment, and I was appreciating it as I mounted the stairs to my room. Except for a real emergency he will permit no interruptions from nine to eleven in the morning, when he is in the plant rooms, but he wasn’t going to wait until he came down to the office to get the affidavit notarized. As I got into bed and turned the light off I was considering whether to ask for a raise now or wait till the end of the year, but before I made up my mind I didn’t have a mind. It was gone.
I never did actually make up my mind about passing the buck to Sue. I was still on the fence after breakfast Thursday morning, when I dialed the number of Lila Pinelli, who adds maybe two bucks a week to the take of her secretarial service in a building on Eighth Avenue by doubling as a notary public. Doing the affidavits didn’t commit me to anything; the question was, what then? So I asked her to come, and she came, and I took her up to the plant rooms. She was in a hurry to get back, but she had never seen the orchids, and no one alive could just breeze on by those benches, with everything from the neat little Oncidiums to the big show-offs like the Laeliocattleyas. So it was after ten o’clock when we came back down and I paid her and let her out, and I went to the office and put the document in the safe.
As I say, I never did actually make up my mind; it just happened. At ten minutes past eleven Wolfe, having come down at eleven as usual, was at his desk looking over the morning crop of mail, and I was at mine sorting the germination slips he had brought, when the doorbell rang. I stepped to the hall for a look, turned, and said, “Cramer. I’ll go hide in the cellar.”
“Confound it,” he growled. “I wanted- Very well.”
“There’s no law about answering doorbells.”
“No. We’ll see.”
I went to the front, opened up, said good morning, and gave him room. He crossed the sill, took a folded paper from a pocket, and handed it to me. I unfolded it, and a glance was enough, but I read it through. “At least my name’s spelled right,” I said. I extended my hands, the wrists together. “Okay, do it right. You never know.”
“You’d clown in the chair,” he said. “I want to see Wolfe.” He marched down the hall and into the office. Very careless. I could have scooted on out and away, and for half a second I considered it, but I wouldn’t have been there to see the look on his face when he found I was gone. When I entered the office he was lowering his fanny onto the red leather chair and putting his hat on the stand beside it. Also he was speaking. “I have just handed Goodwin a warrant for his arrest,” he was saying, “and this time he’d stay.”
I stood. “It’s an honor,” I said. “Anyone can be banged by a bull or a dick. It takes me to be pinched by an inspector, and twice in one week.”
His eyes stayed at Wolfe. “I came myself,” he said, “because I want to tell you how it stands. A police officer with a warrant to serve is not only allowed to use his discretion, he’s supposed to. I know damn well what Goodwin will do, he’ll clam up, and a crowbar wouldn’t pry him open. Give me that warrant, Goodwin.”
“It’s mine. You’ve served it.”
“I have not. I just showed it to you.” He stretched an arm and took it. “When I was here Tuesday night,” he told Wolfe, “you were dumfounded by my fatuity. So you said in your fancy way. All you cared about was who picked that corn. I came myself to see how you feel now. Goodwin will talk if you tell him to. Do you want me to wait in the front room while you discuss it? Not all day, say ten minutes. I’m giving you a-”
He stopped to glare. Wolfe had pushed his chair back and was rising, and of course Cramer thought he was walking out. It wouldn’t have been the first time. But Wolfe headed for the safe, not the hall. As he turned the handle and pulled the door open, there I was. If he had told me to bring it instead of going for it himself, I could have stalled while I made up my mind, even with Cramer there, but as I have said twice before I never did actually make up my mind. I merely went to my desk and sat. I owed Sue McLeod nothing. If either she or I was going to be cooped, there were two good reasons why it should be her: she had made the soup herself, and I wouldn’t be much help in the joint affair if I was salted down. So I sat, and Wolfe got it from the safe, went and handed it to Cramer, and spoke. “I suggest that you look at the affidavits first. The last two sheets.”
Over the years I have made a large assortment of cracks about Inspector Cramer, but I admit he has his points. Having inspected the affidavits, he went through the twelve pages fast, and then he went back and started over and took his time. Altogether, more than half an hour; and not once did he ask a question or even look up. And when he finished, even then no questions. Lieutenant Rowcliff or Sergeant Purley Stebbins would have kept at us for an hour. Cramer merely gave each of us a five-second straight hard look, folded the document and put it in his inside breast pocket, rose and came to my desk, picked up the phone, and dialed. In a moment he spoke.
“Donovan? Inspector Cramer. Give me Sergeant Stebbins.” In another moment: “Purley? Get Susan
