“I’m just curious. If you’ll satisfy my curiosity I’ll satisfy yours someday. Have they found the bullet?”
Lon is a fine guy and a good poker player, but he has the occupational disease of all journalists: before he’ll answer a question he has to ask one. So he did. “Has Wolfe got a thumb in it already?”
“Not a thumb, a foot. No, he hasn’t, not for the record. If and when, you first as usual. Have they found the bullet?”
“Yes. It just came in. A thirty-eight, that’s all so far. Who is Wolfe’s client?”
“J. Edgar Hoover. Have they arrested anybody?”
“No. My God, give ‘em time to sweep up and sit down and think. It was only twelve hours ago. I’ve been thinking ever since I heard your voice just now. What I think, I think it was you who called headquarters last night and told them to go and look, and I’m sore. You should have called me first.”
“I should, at that. Next time. Have they or you or anyone got any kind of a lead?”
“To the murderer, no. So far the most interesting item is that up to a couple of weeks ago he was working for a guy named Otis Jarrell, you know who he is-
“Sure it was. That’s one reason-”
“Is Jarrell Wolfe’s client?”
“For the present, as far as you’re concerned, Wolfe has no client. I was saying, that’s one reason I’m calling now. I thought you might remember I had asked about him, and I wanted to tell you not to trust your memory until further notice. Just go ahead and gather the news and serve the public. You may possibly hear from me someday.”
“Come on up here. I’ll buy you a lunch.”
“I can’t make it, Lon. Sorry. Don’t use any wooden bullets.”
As I pushed the phone back Orrie asked, “What’s an arquebus?”
“Figure it out yourself. A combination of an ark and a bus. Amphibian.”
“Then don’t.” He sat up. “If I’m not supposed to be in on whatever you think you’re doing, okay, but I have a right to know what an arquebus is. Do you want me out of here?”
I told him no, I could think better with him there for contrast.
But he got bounced when Wolfe came down at eleven o’clock. From the kitchen I had buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone to tell him I was there, so he wasn’t surprised to see me. He went to his desk, glanced at the morning mail, which was skimpy, straightened his desk blotter, and focused on me. “Well?”
“In my opinion,” I said, “the time has come for a complete report.”
His eyes went over my shoulder to the couch. “If we need you on this, Orrie, you will get all the required information. That can wait.”
“Yes, sir.” Orrie got up and went.
When the door had closed behind him I spoke. “I called Lon Cohen. The bullet that killed Eber is a thirty-eight. Jarrell didn’t know that when he entered my room this morning, knocking but not waiting for an invitation. He only knew what he had heard on the radio at eight o’clock, and I suppose you heard it too. Even so, he badly needed a tranquilizer. When I report in full you’ll know what he said. It ended with his telling me to beat it quick before the cops arrived. He said to tell you he’s still your client and he’ll get in touch with you, and there’s no limit to what your discretion may be worth to him. Me too. My discretion is as good as yours. Now that I know it was a thirty-eight, I have only two alternatives. Either I go down to Homicide and open the bag, or I give you the whole works from the beginning, words and music, and you listen, and then put your mind on it. If I get tossed in the coop for withholding evidence you can’t operate anyhow, with me not here to supervise, so you might as well be with me.”
“Pfui. As I said last night, there is no obligation to report what may be merely a coincidence.” He sighed. However, I concede that I’ll have to listen. As for putting my mind on it, we’ll see. Go ahead.”
It took me two hours. I will not say that I gave him every word that had been pronounced in my hearing since Monday afternoon, four days back, but I came close to it. I left out some of Tuesday evening at Colonna’s with Lois; things that are said between dances, when the band is good and your partner is better than good, are apt to be irrelevant and off key in a working detective’s report. Aside from that I didn’t miss much, and nothing of any importance, and neither did he. If he listens at all, he listens. The only interruptions were the two bottles of beer he rang for, brought by Fritz-both, of course, for Wolfe. The last half hour he was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t getting it.
I stood up and stretched and sat down again. “So what it amounts to is that we are to sit it out, nothing to do but eat and sleep, and name our figure.”
“Not an intolerable lot, Archie. The figure you suggested last evening was half a million.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve decided that Billy Graham wouldn’t approve. Say that the chance is one in ten that one of them killed Eber. I think it’s at least fifty-fifty, but even if it’s only one in ten I pass. So do you. You have to. You know darned well it’s one of two things. One is to call it off with Jarrell, back clear out, and hand it over to Cramer. He would appreciate it.”
He made a face. His eyes opened. “What’s the other?”
“You go to work.”
“At what? Investigating the murder of Mr. Eber? No one has hired me to.”
I grinned at him. “No good. You call it quibbling, I call it dodging. The murder is in only because one of them might have done it, with Jarrell’s gun. The question is, do we tell Cramer about the gun. We would rather not.
