morning I can too, and settled down in the kitchen to enjoy my anchovy omelet with half a dozen pictures and three full pages of text regarding the DunnHawthorneStaufferKarn affair in the morning paper. Someone in Rockland County had talked, and the suspicion of foul play in Hawthorne's death was also loose, so it was a regular picnic. Any fear that Wolfe had actually dived into a relapse was removed a little after nine o'clock, when Orrie Gather and Fred Durkin arrived simultaneously and told me they had been instructed to report and await orders. I was plenty relieved, but FR1;210 WHER-E THERE'S A WILL I was still determined that if communication was going to be re- established it wouldn't be through any advances by me. I knew he was up in the plant rooms because I had heard his elevator. Then I took a step. A phone call came from Inspector Cramer. I talked with him, and hung up, and buzzed the plant rooms on the inside wire. Wolfe answered. I addressed him formally. 'Good morning, sir. Inspector Cramer of the homicide squad just phoned that he was up all night, he wants to see you, and he will be here probably a little after twelve. He is working on a murder case. There are two kinds of detectives that work on homicides. One kind hastens to the scene of a murder. The other kind hastens away from it. Inspector Cramer is the first kind.' 'I said in that note that I'm not at home.' 'You can't continue being not at home indefinitely. Are there any orders for Fred and Orrie?' 'No. Have them wait.' The receiver went dead. An hour later, at the customary time, eleven o'clock, his elevator descended and he entered the office. I waited until he was holding his chair down and then stated to him: , 'I see you intend to brazen it out. I admit nothing is to be gained by a prolonged controversy. All WHERE THERE*S A WILL - 211 i.,.-^ .. i/^ I say is, that was the most preposterous goddam performance in the entire history of the investigation of crime. That's all. Now for my report--' 'There was nothing preposterous about it. It was the only jgnsible---' ^^3y/-'^*/^ 'You couldn't sell me that in a thousand years. Do you want my report?' He sighed, leaned back, and half closed his eyes. He looked as fresh as a daisy, and about as shamefaced as a fan dancer. 'Go ahead.' I gave it to him, complete, from memory, for I had made no notes. It took quite a while. He asked no questions and let me go on to the end without any interruption. When I was through he sighed again, sat up, and rang for beer. 'It's hopeless,' he declared. 'You say they sent for you last? They had interviewed all the others?' 'I think so. Certainly most of them. I think all of them.' 'It's hopeless. I mean for us. With tenacity and perseverance the police may break that circle, but I doubt it. It's welded too tight. They were all there in the country when Hawthorne was killed. They were all in that house when Miss Karn died. Too many of them. I might get the truth if I worked hard enough for it, but what would I do with it? Could I establish it? How? They don't want it, not 212 WHERE THERE'S A WILL even Dunn himself, though he thinks he does. And I don't want it myself if I can't use it. Especially at the price it would cost. Do I?' 'No, sir. But you could use a little deposit at the bank.' 'I'm aware of that. But the death of Miss Karn makes it impossible to proceed even with the matter of the will. If she left a will herself--pfui! It's hopeless.' 'Then what are Fred and Orrie sitting around for, at eight bucks a day? Local color?' 'No. I'm hanging on until I see Mr. Cramer. And others who'll be coming before the day's out. Two or three of them, I fancy, will want to see me.' 'They sure will,' I agreed. 'Stauffer will want to bribe you. Daisy will want to sell you another cornflower. And of course Sara will want you to recover her camera. Oh, I forget to mention that. She told me somebody stole her camera.' 'Miss Dunn? When?' 'Last night just before they sent for me. I mean she told me then. It was yesterday afternoon she missed the camera from her room there in the house. Also two rolls of film she had in her bag or suitcase. She said she asked everybody, including the servants, but no soap.' 'Had the rolls of film been exposed?' 'I don't know. I didn't get a chance to.ask her, FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 213 J because we were interrupted by Cramer sending for me.' 'Get Miss Dunn. At once.' I stared. 'She didn't offer any reward for its recovery.'
'Get her, please! This is our first chance to pick up something that was dropped. It may be only a thieving servant, but I doubt it, with the films gone too. Do the others know she told you about it?' 'Andy and Celia do. I can't phone her, because the cops--' 'I didn't say phone her! I said get her! Bring her here!' CHAPTER FIFTEEN < ?;,- .'-?-? ? on the way uptown in the roadster I devised two or three nifty ruses for getting the professional fiend off the premises without annoying either cops or family, but by the time I arrived at 67th Street I had decided that direct action was the quickest and most feasible. A flatfoot out front who was keeping sightseers on the move seemed to think I wasn't needed there, but I talked my way through him, pushed the button, and was admitted by the butler. I asked for Mr. Dunn. In a few minutes Dunn joined me in the living room. He looked as if he hadn't slept for a week and never expected to again. I told him Nero Wolfe had beat it the day before in order to pursue certain activities without restriction from the police, that he was at home and was on the job. The poor guy was so punch drunk that he couldn't even ask an intelligent question. He sort of sputtered that he didn't see what 'wolfe could do, he hoped he could do something but what, it was beyond remedy, did Wolfe have any idea . . . I had never expected to find myself patting John Charles Dunn on the shoulder to buck him up. But I did, and spent twenty minutes with him trying to 214 WHERE THERE'S A WILL 215 persuade him that Nero Wolfe would roll the clouds away and the sun would shine. That was partly in preparation for telling him his daughter Sara was wanted in White's office, but when I finally did so he wasn't even curious as to why we wanted her. He had been under a strain for months, and now this had about finished him. He sent the butler for her, and in no time I had her out of the house and in the roadster. But when I got to 'white's house I drove on past without slowing down, eighty yards or so, and then rolled to the curb and stopped. Sara Dunn looked at me. 'What's the matter? That's it back there, isn't it?' 'Yeah, but that car in front is Inspector Cramer's, and what he don't know won't hurt him. We'll wait here till he goes.' 'Oh. Darn it anyway. It would be simply marvelous, doings like this, if it wasn't so--if it wasn't my own f-family--' 'All right, sister. I'll teach you to be a detective some day.' I patted her hand because her lip was trembling and I didn't want her crying, but it only made it tremble more, so I quit. I twisted around on the seat to get a good view of the rear through the window, and after a while, ten minutes or so, saw Cramer emerge and start down the stoop. I FR1;216 WHERE THERE'S A WILL started the car, went around the block and into 35th again, and parked in front of the house. I was about half-bored as I sat and listened to Wolfe starting in on her. Not that I was too dumb to be able to figure that if her camera and films had been stolen it might have been done by somebody to conceal something connected either with the will or with the murder. Of course that was a possibility, but I was cold on it for two reasons. First, on account of Sara's intimate disclosures when she confessed she had betrayed her father and slaughtered her uncle, I wanted proof that anything had been stolen at all. Second, although she was loony she wasn't stupid, and she must have realized that if anybody was going to be exposed by investigating the theft of the camera it could only be someone in her family or close to it. I never knew until the following winter, when I took her to a show one evening, that she thought all the time she knew who had killed Hawthorne and Naomi Karn both, and it was someone she didn't like. ^ Apparently Wolfe was taking the larceny seriously. He went into all the details, making sure she had actually left the camera in the bedroom, and the films in the suitcase; also, he wanted to know exactly how and when she had informed each of the others of her loss, and what they had said and how they had acted. She gave him all that without FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 217 any visible reluctance or hesitation, except when he asked about Osric Stauffer. At that she balked for a moment, and then said she hadn't mentioned it to Stauffer. 'wolfe asked her why, and she said because she wouldn't have believed anything Stauffer told her, so there was no use asking him. Why, did she know Stauffer to be a liar? No, but she didn't like his mouth, or his eyes either, and she wouldn't trust him. Wolfe's brows went up a little. 'Am I to assume, Miss Dunn, that you think Mr. Stauffer stole your camera?' She shook her head. 'I wouldn't expect you to assume anything. I thought detectives didn't assume, I thought they deduced.' White grunted. 'They do if they can. They try. Anyhow, I doubt if your dislike for Mr. Stauffer's mouth and eyes will convict him of anything.' He glanced up at the clock, which said a quarter past one. 'Let's try another path briefly before we have lunch. You say the two rolls of film in the suitcase had not been exposed. Then if what the thief was after was exposed film, he presumably took those two cartons on a chance, being in too much of a hurry to investigate there in your bedroom. And the only exposed film he got was the one that was still in the camera.' 218 WHERE THERE'S A WILL Sara shook her head again. 'He didn't get any at all. There was none in the camera.' Wolfe frowned. 'You said that the picture you took in this office Friday afternoon finished a roll, and that that roll was in the camera when you put it in the bedroom.' 'I know I did. But you didn't let me go on. I removed the film from the camera Friday evening and took it to a drugstore to be developed. That was when I bought the two rolls?' 'Confound it,' Wolfe snapped, 'where are they?' 'Where are what?' 'The pictures!' 'I suppose at the drugstore.' She fished in her handbag and got out a piece of cardboard. 'Here's the check. He said they'd be ready the next evening ?that was yesterday?' 'May I have that, please?' Wolfe extended a hand. 'Thank you. Archie, call Fred and Orrie.' I went to the kitchen, where they were picking their teeth after a repast, and brought them in. Wolfe handed the check to Orrie and told him: 'That's for some snapshots. The address is on it. Miss Dunn left the film Friday evening. Take the roadster; I want the pictures and the film as soon as possible. I think I do. I'll know when I look at them.' WHERE THERE'S A WILL
