I told him and went.
10
There are always taxis at Foley Square. I removed my jacket, climbed into one, and gave an address on West Twentieth Street. When we got there my shirt was stuck to the back of the seat. I pulled loose, paid, got out, put on the jacket, and went into a building. The headquarters of the Homicide Squad, Manhattan West, was much more familiar to me than the United States Courthouse. So were the inmates, one in particular, the one sitting at a dingy little desk in a dingy little room to which I was escorted. They have never let me roam loose in that building since the day I took a snapshot of a piece of paper they were saving, though they couldn't prove it.
Sergeant Purley Stebbins was big and strong but not handsome. His rusty old swivel chair squeaked and groaned as he leaned back.
'Oh, hell,' I said, sitting, 'I forgot. I meant to bring a can of oil for that chair my next trip here.' I cocked my head. 'What are you glaring about? Is my face dirty?'
'It don't have to be dirty.' He went on glaring. 'Goddam it, why did they have to pick Nero Wolfe?'
I considered a moment, maybe two seconds. 'I am glad to know,' I said pleasantly, 'that the cops and the feds are collaborating so closely. Citizens can sleep sound. Wengert must have phoned the minute I left. What did he say?'
'He spoke to the Inspector. What do you want?'
'Maybe I should speak to the Inspector.'
'He's busy. So the Rackells have hired Wolfe?'
I lifted my nose. 'Mr. and Mrs. Rackell have asked Mr. Wolfe to investigate the death of their nephew. Before he starts to whiz through it like a cyclone he wants to know whether he will be cramping the style of those responsible for the national security. I've seen Wengert, and the heat has got him. He's not interested. I am now seeing you because of the Commie angle, which has not appeared in the papers. If it is against the public interest for us to take the job, tell me why. I know you and Cramer think it's against the public interest for us to eat, let alone detect, but that's not enough. We would need facts.'
ii
'Uh-huh,' Purley growled. 'We give 'em to you and Wolfe decides he can use 'em better than we can. Nuts. I'll tell you one fact: this one has got stingers. Lay off.'
I nodded sympathetically. 'That's probably good advice. I'll tell Mr. Wolfe.' I arose. 'We would like you to sign a statement covering the substance of this interview. Three copies, one--'
'Go somewhere,' he rasped. 'On out. Beat it.'
I thought he was getting careless, but my escort, a paunchy old veteran with a pushed-in nose, was waiting in the hall. As I strode to the front and the entrance he waddled along behind.
It was past eleven by the time I got back to the office, so Wolfe had finished his two hours in the plant rooms and was behind his desk, with beer. It would have been impossible for anything with life in it to look less like a cyclone.
'Well?' he muttered at me.
I sat. 'We deposit the check. Wengert sends his regards. Purley doesn't. They both think you sent me merely to get the dope for free and they sneer at the idea of our caring for the public welfare. Wengert phoned Cramer the minute I left. Not a peep from either one. We only know what we see in the papers.'
He grunted. 'Get Mr. Rackell.'
So we had a case.
aaa
(-'INHERE were two open questions about the seven people cJL gathered in the office after dinner that Wednesday evening: were any of them Commies, and was one of them a murderer? I make it seven, including our clients, not to seem prejudiced.
I had given them the eye as they arrived and gathered and now, as I sat at my desk with them all in sight, I was placing no bets. There had been a time, years back, when I had had the notion that no murderer, man or woman, could stand ex
12
posed to view and hot let it show somewhere if you had good enough eyes, but now I knew better. However, I was using my eyes.
The one nearest me was a lanky middle-aged guy named Ormond Leddegard. He may have been expert at handling labor-management relations, which was how he made a living, but he was a fumbler with his fingers. Getting out a pack of cigarettes, and matches, and lighting up, he was all thumbs, and that would have put him low on the list if it hadn't been for the possibility that he was being subtle. If I could figure that thumbs wouldn't have been up to the job of sneaking a pillbox from a cluttered table, making a substitution, and returning the box without detection, so could he. Of course that little point could be easily settled by having a good man, say Saul Panzer, spend a couple of days interviewing a dozen or so of his friends and acquaintances.
Next to him, with her legs crossed just right to be photographed from any angle, was Fifi Goheen. The leg- crossing technique was automatic, from an old habit. Seven or eight years ago she had been the Deb of the Year and no magazine would have dared to go to press without a shot of her; then it became all a memory; and now she was a front-page item as a murder suspect. She hadn't married. It was said that a hundred males, lured by the attractions, opening their mouths for the big proposition, had seen the hard glint in her lovely dark eyes and lost their tongues. So she was still Miss Fifi Goheen, living with Pop and Mom on Park Avenue.
Beyond her in the arc facing Wolfe's desk was Benjamin Rackell, whose check had been deposited in our bank that afternoon, with his long narrow face more mournful even than the day before. At his right was a specimen who was a female anatomically but otherwise a what-is-it. Her name was Delia Devlin, and her age was beside the point. She was a resident buyer of novelties for out-of-town stores. There are ten thousand of her in midtown New York any weekday, and they're all being imposed on. You see it in their faces. The problem is to find out who it is that's imposing on them, and some day I may tackle it. Aside from that there was nothing
