Trio for Blunt Instruments

McLeod. Don’t call her, get her. Go yourself. I’ll be there in ten minutes and I want her there fast. Take a man along. If she balks, wrap her up and carry her.”

He cradled the phone, went to the stand and got his hat, and marched out.

5

OF ALL THE THOUSAND or more times I have felt like putting vinegar in Wolfe’s beer, I believe the closest I ever came to doing it was that Thursday evening when the doorbell rang at a quarter past nine, and after a look at the front I told him that Carl Heydt, Max Maslow, and Peter Jay were on the stoop, and he said they were not to be admitted.

In the nine and a half hours that had passed since Cramer had used my phone to call Purley Stebbins I had let it lie. I couldn’t expect Wolfe to start any fur flying until there was a reaction, or there wasn’t, say by tomorrow noon, to what had happened to Sue. However, I had made a move on my own. When Wolfe had left the office at four o’clock to go up to the plant rooms, I had told him I would be out on an errand for an hour or so, and I had taken a walk, to Rusterman’s, thinking I might pick up some little hint.

I didn’t. First I went out back for a look at the platform and the alley, which might seem screwy, since two days and nights had passed and the city scientists had combed it, but you never know. I once got an idea just running my eye around a hotel room where a woman had spent a night six months earlier. But I got nothing from the platform or alley except a scraped ear from squeezing under the platform and out again, and after talking with Felix and Joe and some of the kitchen staff I crossed it off. No one had seen or heard anyone or anything until Zoltan had stepped out for a cigarette (no smoking is allowed in the kitchen) and had seen the station wagon and the body on the ground.

I would have let it ride that evening, no needling until tomorrow noon. When Lily Rowan phoned around seven o’clock and said Sue had phoned her from the DA’s office that she was under arrest and had to have a lawyer and would Lily send her one, and Lily wanted me to come and tell her what was what, I would have gone if I hadn’t wanted to be on hand if there was a development. But when the development came Wolfe told me not to let it in.

I straight-eyed him. “You said you’d be concerned.”

“I am concerned.”

“Then here they are. You tossed her to the wolves to open them up, and here-”

“No. I did that to keep you out of jail. I am considering how to deal with the problem, and until I decide there is no point in seeing them. Tell them they’ll hear from us.”

The doorbell rang again. “Then I’ll see them. In the front room.”

“No. Not in my house.” He went back to his book.

Either put vinegar in his beer or get the Marley.32 from my desk drawer and shoot him dead, but that would have to wait; they were on the stoop. I went and opened the door enough for me to slip through, did so, bumping into Carl Heydt, and pulled the door shut. “Good evening,” I said. “Mr. Wolfe is busy on an important matter and can’t be disturbed. Do you want to disturb me instead?”

They all spoke at once. The general idea seemed to be that I would open the door and they would handle the disturbing.

“You don’t seem to realize,” I told them, “that you’re up against a genius. So am I, only I’m used to it. You were damn fools to think he was bluffing. You might have known he would do exactly what he said.”

“Then he did?” Peter Jay. “He did it?”

“We did. I share the glory. We did.”

“Glory hell.” Max Maslow. “You know Sue didn’t kill Ken Faber. He said so.”

“He said we were satisfied that she didn’t. We still are. He also said that we doubt if she’ll be convicted. He also said that our interest was to get me from under, and we had alternatives. We could either find out who killed Faber, for which we needed your help; or, if you refused to help, we could switch it to Sue. You refused, and we switched it, and I am in the clear, and here you are. Why? Why should he waste time on you now? He is busy on an important matter; he’s reading a book entitled My Life in Court, by Louis Nizer. Why should he put it down for you?”

“I can’t believe it, Archie.” Carl Heydt had hold of my arm. “I can’t believe you’d do a thing like this-to Sue-when you say she didn’t-”

“You never can tell, Carl. There was that woman who went to the park every day to feed the pigeons, but she fed her husband arsenic. I have a suggestion. This is Mr. Wolfe’s house and he doesn’t want you in it, but if you guys have changed your minds, at least two of you, about helping to find out who killed Faber, I’m a licensed detective too and I could spare a couple of hours. We can sit here on the steps, or we can go somewhere-”

“And you can tell us,” Maslow said, “what Sue told the cops that got them on you. I may believe that when I hear it.”

“You won’t hear it from me. That’s not the idea. You tell me things. I ask questions and you answer them. If I don’t ask them, who will? I doubt if the cops or the DA will; they’ve got too good a line on Sue. I’ll tell you this much, they know she was there Tuesday at the right time, and they know that she lied to them about what she was there for and what she saw. I can spare an hour or two.”

They exchanged glances, and they were not the glances of buddies with a common interest. They also exchanged words and found they agreed on one point: if one of them took me up they all would. Peter Jay said we could go to his place and they agreed on that too, and we descended to the sidewalk and headed east. At