The Doorbell Rang (14 page)

“I haven’t said I have a bullet in my pocket.”

“Nonsense. I advise you to pull in your horns, Mr Wragg. Mr Cramer has good reason to suppose that you have on your person an essential item of evidence in a homicide which occurred in his jurisdiction. Under the statutes of the State of New York he may legally search you, here and now, and get it. Is that correct, Mr Cramer?”

“Yes.”

“But,” Wolfe told Wragg, “that shouldn’t be necessary. You do have a brain. Obviously it is to your interest and that of your bureau that you give Mr Cramer that bullet.”

“The hell it is,” Wragg said. “And one of my men gets on the stand and says under oath that he was in that apartment and took it'The hell it is.”

Wolfe shook his head. “No. No indeed. You wouldn’t. You give Mr Cramer your word, here privately, that that’s where the bullet came from, and one of his men gets on the stand and says under oath that he took it from that apartment. There will-“

“My men are not perjurers,” Cramer said.

“Bah. This is not being recorded. If Mr Wragg hands you a bullet and says it was found on the floor of Morris Althaus’s apartment around eleven o’clock in the evening of Friday, November twentieth, will you believe him?”

“Yes.”

“Then save your posing for audiences that will appreciate it. This one isn’t sufficiently naive. I don’t think-“

“He might not be posing,” Wragg cut in. “He might go on the stand himself and tell how he got it. Then I’m called to the stand.”

Wolfe nodded. “Fine. He might. But he wouldn’t. If he did, I too would be called to the stand, and Mr Goodwin, and a much larger audience than this one would learn how the murderer of Morris Althaus had been disclosed after the police and the District Attorney had spent eight futile weeks on it. He wouldn’t.”

“Damn you,” Cramer said. “Both of you.”

Wolfe looked at the clock. “It’s past my dinner hour, gentlemen. I’ve said all I have to say, and I have disposed of my obligation. Do you want to settle it, or mulishly fail to, elsewhere?”

Wragg looked at Cramer. “Do you see anything wrong with it?”

The eyes of the cop and the G-man met and held. “No,” Cramer said. “Do you?”

“No. You have the gun?”

“Yes.” Cramer turned to Wolfe. “You said I might not ask Goodwin after we finished with Wragg. I won’t. I may later if we hit a snag. I would only get a runaround, and to hell with it.” He went back to Wragg. “It’s up to you.

Wragg’s hand went to a pocket and came out with a little plastic vial. He rose and took a step. “This bullet,” he said, “was found on the floor of Morris Althaus’s apartment, in the living room, around eleven o’clock in the evening on Friday, November twentieth. Now it’s yours. I have never seen it.”

Cramer stood up to take it. He removed the lid of the vial, let the bullet drop into his palm, inspected it, and returned it to the vial.

“You’re damned right it’s mine,” he said.

Three evenings later, Monday around half past six, Wolfe and I were in the office, debating a point about the itemization of expenses to go with the bill to Mrs Bruner. I admit it was a minor point, but it was a matter of principle. He was maintaining that it was just and proper to include the lunch at Rusterman’s, on the ground that the meals we got there were in consideration of services he had rendered and was still rendering to the restaurant and so were not actually gratis. My position was that the past services had already been rendered, and the present ones would be rendered, even if she and I had gone to the Automat for lunch.

“I realize,” I said, “that you’re up against it. Even if you push the fee to the limit, say another hundred grand, it still might not be enough to last the whole year, and around Labor Day, or at least Thanksgiving, you might have to take on a job, so you need to squeeze out every nickel you can. But she has been a marvelous client, and you should have some consideration for her, and indirectly for me too in case I decide to marry her. She has a lot of other expenses besides you, and now she’ll have another one, now that she’s going to supply a high-priced lawyer to defend Sarah Dacos. Have a heart.”

“As you know, Miss Dacos has confessed.”

“So she’ll need a lawyer even more. I feel very strongly about this. I invited her to lunch. I am almost prepared to say that if she is billed for it I will feel that I must tell her privately that it was on the house. She may want-“

The doorbell rang. I got up and went to the hall and saw a character on the stoop I had never seen before, but I had seen plenty of pictures of him. I stepped back in and said, “Well, well. The big fish.”

He frowned at me, then got it, and did something he never does. He left his chair and came. We stood side by side, looking. The caller put a finger to the button, and the doorbell rang.

“No appointment,” I said. “Shall I take him to the front room to wait a while?”

“No. I have nothing for him. Let him get a sore finger.” He turned and went back in to his desk.

I stepped in. “He probably came all the way from Washington just to see you. Quite an honor.”

“Pfui. Come and finish this.”

I returned to my chair. “As I was saying, I may have to tell her privately& “

The doorbell rang.