The Silent Speaker (7 page)

I looked at her, and there certainly wasn't any sign of it in her voice or her face. I never saw anyone act less hysterical. When I pulled up at the curb at her address, she hopped out before I could move and stuck her hand in.

'Good night. Or what is the protocol'Does a detective shake hands with one of the suspects?'

'Sure.' We shook. It fitted nicely. 'To get her off her guard.'

She disappeared inside, probably to give the doorman a brief glance on her way to the elevator, to strengthen his motive.

When I got back home, after putting the car away, and stopped in the office to make sure the safe was locked, there was a scribbled note lying on my desk:

Archie: Do not communicate further with Miss Gunther except on my order. A woman who is not a fool is dangerous. I don't like this case and shall decide tomorrow whether to abandon it and refund the retainer. In the morning get Panzer and Gore here.

NW

Which gave me a rough idea of the state of confusion he was in, the way the note contradicted itself. Saul Panzer's rate was thirty bucks a day, and Bill Gore's was twenty, not to mention expenses, and his committing himself to such an outlay was absolute proof that there would be no retainer refund. He was merely appealing for my sympathy because he had taken on such a hard job. I went up two flights to my room, glancing at the door of his as I passed it on the first landing, and noting that the little red light was on, showing that he had flipped the switch for the alarm connection.

I REALIZED ALL THE more how hard the job was likely to be when, the next morning after Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o'clock, I heard him giving Saul Panzer and Bill Gore their instructions.

To anyone seeing him but not knowing him, Saul Panzer was nothing but a little guy with a big nose who never quite caught up with his shaving. To the few who knew him, Wolfe and me for instance, those details meant nothing. He was the one free-lance operative in New York who, year in and year out, always had at least ten times more jobs offered him than he had the time or inclination to take. He never turned Wolfe down if he could possibly help it. That morning he sat with his old brown cap on his knee, taking no notes because he never had to, while Wolfe described the situation and told him to spend as many hours or days at the Waldorf as might be necessary, milking and gathering eggs. He was to cover everything and everybody.

Bill Gore was full size and unpolished, and one glance at the top of his head showed that he was doomed. He would be bald in another five years. His immediate objective was the NIA office, where he was to compile certain lists and records. Erskine had been phoned to and had promised co-operation.

After they had departed I asked Wolfe, 'Is it really as bad as that?'

He frowned at me. 'As bad as what?'

'You know darned well what. Fifty dollars a day for the dregs. Where is there any genius in that?'

'Genius?' His frown became a scowl. 'What can genius do with this confounded free-for-all'A thousand people, all with motive and opportunity, and the means at hand! Why the devil I ever let you persuade me-'

'No, sir,' I said loudly and firmly. 'Don't try it! When I saw how tough this was going to be, and then when I read that note you left for me last night, it was obvious you would try to blame it on me. Nothing doing. I admit I didn't know how desperate it was until I heard you telling Saul and Bill to dive into the holes the cops have already cleaned out. You don't have to admit you're licked. You can wriggle out. I'll draw a check to the NIA for their ten thousand, and you can dictate a letter to them saying that on account of having caught the mumps, or perhaps it would be better-'

'Shut up,' he growled. 'How can I return money I haven't received?'

'But you have. The check was in the morning mail and I've deposited it.'

'Good God. It's in the bank?'

'Yes, sir.'

He pushed the button, savagely, for beer. He was as close to being in a panic as I remembered seeing him.

'So you have nothing,' I said without mercy. 'Nothing whatever?'

'Certainly I have something.'

'Yeah'What?'

'Something Mr. O'Neill said yesterday afternoon. Something very peculiar.'

'What?'

He shook his head. 'Not for you. I'll put Saul or Bill on it tomorrow.'

I didn't believe a word of it. For ten minutes I went over in my mind everything I remembered Don O'Neill saying, and then believed it less than ever.

All day Saturday he had no jobs for me connected with the Boone case, not even a phone call to make. The calls all came the other way, and there were plenty of those. Most of them, from newspapers and Cramer's office and so on, were nothing but blah. Two of them were merely comic relief:

Winterhoff, the Man of Distinction, phoned around noon. He wanted something for his money right away. The cops were after him. Many hours of questioning about fourteen people had got it settled that it was he who had suggested the little room near the stage for Boone's privacy and had escorted him there, and he was being harassed. He had explained that his knowledge of the room had come from his participation in previous affairs on those premises, but they weren't satisfied. He wanted Wolfe to certify to his innocence and instruct the police to let him alone. His order wasn't filled.

Just before lunch there was a call from a man with an educated voice who said his name was Adamson, of counsel for the NIA. His tone implied that he wasn't very crazy about Wolfe's being hired anyway, and he wanted practically everything, including a daily report of all actions. He insisted on speaking to Wolfe, which was a mistake on his part, because if he had been willing to talk with me I might at least have treated him with common courtesy.

Another thing the NIA wanted the very day we got their retainer check was something we couldn't have furnished even if we had felt like it. This request was brought by their Hattie Harding in person, in the middle of the afternoon, just after Wolfe went up to the orchids. I took her to the office and we sat on the couch. She was still well put together and well dressed, and her eyes were still competent, but the strain was telling on her. She looked much nearer forty-eight than twenty-six.

She had come to yell for help, though she didn't put it that way. To hear her tell it, there was hell to pay from coast to coast and the end of the world was expected any minute. Public Relations was on its last legs. Hundreds of telegrams were pouring into the NIA office, from members and friends all over the country, telling of newspaper editorials, of resolutions passed by Chambers of Commerce and all sorts of clubs and groups, and of talk in the street. Even-this was strictly off the record-eleven resignations had been received from members, one a member of the Board of Directors. Something had to be done.

I asked what.

Something, she said.

'Like catching the murderer?'

'That, of course.' She seemed to regard that as a mere detail. 'But something to stop this insane hullabaloo. Perhaps a statement signed by a hundred prominent citizens. Or telegrams urging sermons tomorrow-tomorrow is Sunday-'

'Are you suggesting that Mr. Wolfe should send telegraphs to fifty thousand preachers and priests and rabbis?'

'No, of course.' Her hands fluttered. 'But something-something-'

'Listen, P.R.' I patted her on the knee to quiet her. 'You are stricken, I appreciate that. But the NIA seems to think this is a department store. Who you want is not Nero Wolfe but Russell Birdwell or Eddie Bernays. This is a specialty shop. All we're going to do is catch the murderer.'

'Oh, my God,' she said. Then she added, 'I doubt it.'

'Doubt what?' I stared at her. 'That we're going to catch him?'

'Yes. That anyone is.'

'Why?'

'I just doubt it.' She met my gaze, competently. Then her eyes changed. 'Look, this is off the record?'

'Sure, you and me. And my boss, but he never tells anybody anything.'

'I'm fed up.' She worked her jaw like a man, no lip trembling. 'I'm going to quit and get a job sewing on buttons. The day anyone catches the murderer of Cheney Boone, finds him and proves it on him, it will rain up instead of down. In fact it will-'

I nodded encouragingly. 'What else will it do?'

She abruptly got to her feet. 'I'm talking too much.'

'Oh, no, not enough. You've just started. Sit down.'

'No, thank you.' Her eyes were competent again. 'You're the first man I've collapsed in front of for a long, long time. For heaven's sake, don't get the idea that I know secrets and try to dig them out of me. It's just that this thing is more than I can handle and I've lost my head. Don't bother to let me out.'

She went.

When Wolfe came down to the office at six o'clock I reported the conversation in full. At first he decided not to be interested, then changed his mind. He wanted my opinion and I gave it to him, that I doubted if she knew anything that would help much, and even if she did she was through collapsing in front of me, but he might have a go at her.

He grunted. 'Archie. You are transparent. What you mean is that you don't want to bother with her, and you don't want to bother with her because Miss Gunther has got you fidgeting.'

I said coldly, 'I don't fidget.'

'Miss Gunther has got you on a string.'

Usually I stay right with him when he takes that line, but there was no telling how far he might go in the case of Phoebe Gunther and I didn't want to resign in the middle of a murder job, so I cut it off by going to the front door for the evening papers.

We get two of each, to avoid friction, and I handed him his share and sat at my desk with mine. I looked at the Gazette first, and on the front page saw headlines that looked like news. It was. Mrs. Boone had got something in the mail.

One detail that I believe I haven't mentioned before was Boone's wallet. I haven't mentioned it because its being taken by the murderer provided no new angle on the crime or the motive, since he hadn't carried money in it. His money had been in a billfold in his hip pocket and hadn't been touched. He had carried the wallet in the breast pocket of his coat and used it for miscellaneous papers and cards, and it had not been found on the body, and therefore it was presumed that the murderer had taken it. The news in the Gazette was that Mrs. Boone had received an envelope in the mail that morning, with her name and address printed on it with a lead pencil, and in it had been two objects that Boone had always carried in the wallet: his automobile license and a photograph of Mrs. Boone in her wedding dress. The Gazette article remarked that the sender must be both a sentimentalist and a realist; sentimental, because the photo was returned; realist, because the auto license, which was still of use, had been returned, while Boone's operator's license, which he had also kept in the wallet, had not been. The Gazette writer was picturesque about it, saying that the operator's license had been canceled with a monkey wrench.

'Indeed,' Wolfe said loud enough for me to hear. I saw that he was reading it too, and spoke:

'If the cops hadn't already been there and got it, and if Miss Gunther didn't have me on a string, I'd run up to see Mrs. Boone and get that envelope.'

'Three or four men in a laboratory,' Wolfe said, 'will do everything to that envelope but split its atoms. Before long they'll be doing that too. But this is the first finger that has pointed in any direction at all.'

'Sure,' I agreed, 'now it's a cinch. All we have to do is find out which of those one thousand four hundred and ninety-two people is both a sentimentalist and a realist, and we've got him.'

We went back to our papers.

Nothing more before dinner. After the meal, which for me consisted chiefly of thin toast and liver pate on account of the way Fritz makes the pate, we had just got back to the office again, a little before nine when a telegram came. I took it from the envelope and handed it to Wolfe, and after he had read it he passed it over to me. It ran:

NERO WOLFE 922 WEST 35 NYC

CIRCUMSTANCES MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTINUE SURVEILLANCE OF ONEILL BUT BELIEVE IT ESSENTIAL THIS BE DONE ALTHOUGH CAN GUARANTEE NOTHING

BRESLOW

I put my brows up at Wolfe. He was looking at me with his eyes half open, which meant he was really looking.

'Perhaps,' he said witheringly, 'you will be good enough to tell me what other arrangements you have made for handling this case without my knowledge?'

I grinned at him. 'No, sir. Not me. I was about to ask if you have put Breslow on the payroll and if so at how much, so I can enter it.'

'You know nothing of this?'

'No. Don't you?'

'Get Mr. Breslow on the phone.'

That wasn't so simple. We knew only that Breslow was a manufacturer of paper products from Denver, and that, having come to New York for the NIA meeting, he was staying on, as a member of the Executive Committee, to help hold the fort in the crisis. I knew Frank Thomas Erskine was at the Churchill and tried that, but he was out. Hattie Harding's number, which was in the phone book, gave me a don't answer signal. So I tried Lon Cohen again at the Gazette, which I should have done in the first place, and learned that Breslow was at the Strider-Weir. In another three minutes I had him and switched him to Wolfe, but kept myself connected.

He sounded on the phone just the way he looked, red-faced with anger.

'Yes, Wolfe'Have you got something'Well'Well?'

'I have a question to ask-'

'Yes'What is it?'

'I am about to ask it. That was why I had Mr. Goodwin learn your number, and call it and ask for you, so you could be on one end of the telephone and me on the other end, and then I could ask you this question. Tell me when you are ready, sir.'

'I'm ready! Damn it, what is it?'

'Good. Here it is. About that telegram you sent me-'

'Telegram'What telegram'I haven't sent you any telegram!'

'You know nothing about a telegram to me?'

'No! Nothing whatever! What-'

'Then it's a mistake. They must have got the name wrong. I suspected as much. I was expecting one from a man named Bristow. I apologize, sir, for disturbing you. Good-by.'

Breslow tried to prolong the agony, but between us we got him off.

'So,' I remarked, 'he didn't send it. If he did, and didn't want us to know it, why would he sign his name'Do we have it traced'Or do we save energy by assuming that whoever sent it knows about phone booths?'

'Confound it,' Wolfe said bitterly. 'Probably someone peddling herrings. But we can't afford to ignore it.' He glanced at the wall clock, which said three minutes past nine. 'Find out if Mr. O'Neill is at home. Just ask him-no. Let me have him.'

The number of O'Neill's residence, an apartment on Park Avenue was listed, and I got both it and him. Wolfe took it, and told him about the request from Adamson, the NIA lawyer, and fed him a long rigmarole about the inadvisability of written reports. O'Neill said he didn't care a hang about reports, written or otherwise, and they parted friends.

Wolfe considered a moment. 'No. We'll let him go for tonight. You had better get him in the morning as he leaves. If we decide to keep it up we can get Orrie Cather.'