The Silent Speaker, Page 3

  It took them nearly ten minutes to persuade him, and they all looked relieved, even Ed, when he finally gave in. It was more or less understood that the clinching argument was Breslow’s, that they must not let justice down. Unfortunately, since the NIA had a voucher system, the check-writing table did not get used. As a substitute I typed a letter, dictated by Wolfe, and Erskine signed it. The retainer was to be ten thousand dollars, and the ultimate charge, including expenses, was left open. They certainly were on the ropes.

  “Now,” Erskine said, handing me back my fountain pen, “I suppose we had better tell you all we know about it.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Not right now. I have to get my mind adjusted to this confounded mess. It would be better for you to return this evening, say at nine o’clock.”

  They all protested. Winterhoff said he had an appointment he couldn’t break.

  “As you please, sir. If it is more important than this. We must get to work without delay.” Wolfe turned to me: “Archie, your notebook. A telegram. ‘You are invited to join in a discussion of the Boone murder at the office of Nero Wolfe at nine o’clock this evening Friday March twenty-ninth.’ Sign it with my name. Send it at once to Mr. Cramer, Mr. Spero, Mr. Kates, Miss Gunther, Mrs. Boone, Miss Nina Boone, Mr. Rohde, and perhaps to others, we’ll see later.—Will you gentlemen be here?”

  “My God,” Ed grumbled, “with that mob, why don’t you hold it in the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf?”

  “It seems to me,” Erskine said in a grieved tone, “that this is a mistake. The first principle—”

  “I,” Wolfe said, in a tone used by NIA men only to people whose names were never on the letterhead, “am handling the investigation.”

  I started banging the typewriter, and since the telegrams were urgent, and since Wolfe took long walks only in emergencies, Fritz was sent for to escort them to the door. All I was typing was the text of the telegram and a list of the names and addresses, because the phone was the quickest way to send them. Some of the addresses were a problem. Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, not to be bothered about trivialities, so I called Lon Cohen on the city desk at the Gazette and got the addresses from him. He knew everything. They had come up from Washington for the big speech that was never delivered and had not gone back. Mrs. Boone and the niece were at the Waldorf, Alger Kates was staying with friends on Eleventh Street, and Phoebe Gunther, who had been Boone’s confidential secretary, had a room-and-bath on East Fifty-fifth Street.

  When I had that job done I asked Wolfe who else he wanted to invite. He said no one. I stood up and stretched, and looked at him.

  “I presume,” I observed, “that the rest is merely routine collection of evidence. Ed Erskine has calluses on his hands. Will that help?”

  “Confound it.” He sighed clear down. “I was going to finish that book this evening. Now this infernal mishmash.”

  He heaved the bulk forward and rang for beer.

  I, standing at the cabinet filing the germination records that Theodore had brought down from the plant rooms, was compelled to admit that he had earned my admiration. Not for his conception of the idea of digging up a paying customer; that was merely following precedent in times of drought. Not for the method he had adopted for the digging; I could have thought that up myself. Not for the execution, his handling of the NIA delegation; that was an obvious variation of the old hard-to-get finesse. Not for the gall of those telegrams; admiring Wolfe’s gall would be like admiring ice at the North Pole or green leaves in a tropical jungle. No. What I admired was his common sense. He wanted to get a look at those people. What do you do when you want to get a look at a man? You get your hat and go where he is. But what if the idea of getting your hat and going outdoors is abhorrent to you? You ask the man to come where you are. What makes you think he’ll come? That was where the common sense entered. Take Inspector Cramer. Why would he, the head of the Homicide Squad, come? Because he didn’t know how long Wolfe had been on the case or how deep he was in it, and therefore he couldn’t afford to stay away.

  At four sharp Wolfe had downed the last of his beer and taken the elevator up to the plant rooms. I finished the filing and gathered up miscellaneous loose ends around the office, expecting to be otherwise engaged for at least a day or two, and then settled down at my desk with a stack of newspaper clippings to make sure I hadn’t missed anything important in my typed summary of the Boone situation. I was deep in that when the doorbell rang, and I went to the front and opened up, and found confronting me a vacuum cleaner salesman. Or anyhow he should have been. He had that bright, friendly, uninhibited look. But some of the details didn’t fit, as for example his clothes, which were the kind I would begin buying when my rich uncle died.

  “Hello!” he said cheerfully. “I’ll bet you’re Archie Goodwin. You came to see Miss Harding yesterday. She told me about you. Aren’t you Archie Goodwin?”

  “Yep,” I said. It was the easiest way out. If I had said no or tried to evade he would have cornered me sooner or later.

  “I thought so,” he was gratified. “May I come in? I’d like to see Mr. Wolfe. I’m Don O’Neill, but of course that doesn’t mean anything to you. I’m president of O’Neill and Warder, Incorporated, and a member of that godforsaken conglomeration of antiques, the NIA. I was Chairman of the Dinner Committee for that affair we had at the Waldorf the other evening. I guess I’ll never live that one down. Chairman of a Dinner Committee, and let the main speaker get murdered!”

  Of course my reaction was that I had got along fairly well for something like thirty years without knowing Don O’Neill and saw no reason for a change in policy, but my personal feelings could not be permitted to dominate. So I let him in and steered him to the office and into a chair before I even explained that he would have to wait half an hour because Wolfe was engaged. For a brief moment he seemed irritated, but he realized instantly that that was no way to sell vacuum cleaners and said sure, that was all right, he didn’t mind waiting.

  He was delighted with the office and got up and went around looking. Books—what a selection! The big globe was marvelous, just what he had always wanted and never took the trouble to get one, now he would …

  Wolfe entered, saw him, and gave me a dirty look. It was true that I was supposed to inform him in advance of any waiting caller and never let him come in cold like that, but it was ten to one that if I had told him about O’Neill he would have refused to see him and had me invite him for the nine o’clock party, and I saw no necessity for another three-hour rest for Wolfe’s brains. He was so sore that he pretended he didn’t believe in shaking hands, acknowledged the introduction with a nod that wouldn’t have spilled a drop if he had had a jar of water on his head, sat down and regarded the visitor unsympathetically, and asked curtly:

  “Well, sir?”

  O’Neill wasn’t at all taken aback. He said, “I was admiring your office.”

  “Thank you. But I assume that wasn’t what you came for.”

  “Oh, no. Being the Chairman of that Dinner Committee, I’m in the middle of this thing whether I like it or not—this business of Boone’s murder. I wouldn’t say I’m involved, that’s too strong a word—make it concerned. I’m certainly concerned.”

  “Has anyone suggested that you are involved?”

  “Suggested?” O’Neill looked surprised. “That’s putting it mildly. The police are taking the position that everyone connected with the NIA is involved. That’s why I claim that the line the Executive Committee is taking is sentimental and unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Wolfe.” He took time out for a friendly glance at me, to include me in the Society of United Citizens for Not Getting Don O’Neill Wrong. “I am one of the most progressive members of the NIA. I was a Willkie man. But this idea of co-operating with the police the way they’re acting, and even spending our own money to investigate, that’s unrealistic. We ought to say to the police, all right, there’s been a murder, and as good citizens we hope you catch the
guilty man, but we had nothing to do with it and it’s none of our business.”

  “And tell them to quit bothering you.”

  “That’s right. That’s exactly right.” O’Neill was pleased to find a kindred spirit. “I was at the office when they came back an hour ago with the news that they had engaged you to investigate. I want to make it plain that I am not doing anything underhanded. I don’t work that way. We had another argument, and I told them I was coming to see you.”

  “Admirable.” Wolfe’s eyes were open, which meant that he was bored and was getting nothing out of it. Either that, or he was refusing to turn on the brain until nine o’clock. “For the purpose of persuading me to call it off?”

  “Oh, no. I saw that was hopeless. You wouldn’t do that. Would you?”

  “I’m afraid not without some excellent reason. As Mr. Breslow put it, the interest of justice is paramount. That was his position. Mine is that I need the money. Then what did you come for?”

  O’Neill grinned at me, as if to say, your boss is really a card, isn’t he? He shifted the grin intact to Wolfe. “I’m glad to see you stick to the point. With me you need to, the way I go floundering around. What brought me down here, frankly, was a sense of my responsibility as Chairman of the Dinner Committee. I’ve seen a copy of the letter Frank Erskine gave you, but I didn’t hear the conversation you had, and ten thousand dollars as a retainer on a straight inquiry job is away above the clouds. I hire detectives in my business, things like labor relations and so on, and I know what detectives get, so naturally the question occurs to me, is it really a straight inquiry job? I asked Erskine point-blank, have you hired Wolfe to protect the NIA members by—uh—getting attention shifted to other directions, and he said no. But I know Frank Erskine, and I wasn’t satisfied, and I told him so. The trouble with me is I’ve got a conscience and a sense of responsibility. So I came to ask you.”

  Wolfe’s lips twitched, but whether with amusement or fierce indignation I couldn’t tell. The way he takes an insult never depends on the insult but on how he happens to be feeling. At the peak of one of his lazy spells he wouldn’t have exerted himself to bat an eyelash even if someone accused him of specializing in divorce evidence.

  His lips twitched. “I also say no, Mr. O’Neill. But I’m afraid that won’t help you much. What if Mr. Erskine and I are both lying? I don’t see what you can do about it, short of going to the police and charging us with obstructing justice, but then you don’t like the police either. You’re really in a pickle. We have invited some people to meet here this evening at nine o’clock and talk it over. Why don’t you come and keep an eye on us?”

  “Oh, I’m coming. I told Erskine and the others I’m coming.”

  “Good. Then we won’t keep you now.—Archie?”

  It wasn’t as simple as that. O’Neill was by no means ready to go, on account of his sense of responsibility. But we finally got him out without resorting to physical violence. After wrangling him to the stoop, I returned to the office and asked Wolfe:

  “Exactly what did he really come here for? Of course he killed Boone, I understand that, but why did he waste his time and mine—”

  “You let him in,” Wolfe said icily. “You did not notify me. You seem to forget—”

  “Oh, well,” I broke in cheerfully, “it all helps in studying human nature. I helped get him out, didn’t I? Now we have work to do, getting ready for the party. How many will there be, around twelve not counting us?”

  I got busy on the chair problem. There were six there in the office, and the divan would hold four comfortably, except that in a murder case three days old you don’t often find four people connected with it who are still in a frame of mind to sit together on the same piece of furniture. It would be better to have plenty of chairs, so I brought five more in from the front room, the one facing on the street, and scattered them around, not in rows, which would have been too stiff, but sort of staggered and informal. Big as the room was, it made it look pretty crowded. I backed against the wall and surveyed it with a frown.

  “What it needs,” I remarked, “is a woman’s touch.”

  “Bah,” Wolfe growled.

  Chapter 9

  AT A QUARTER PAST ten Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes half closed, taking them in. They had been at it for over an hour.

  There were thirteen of them. Thanks to my foresight with the seating arrangements, there had been no infighting. The NIA contingent was at the side of the room farthest from my desk, the side toward the hall door, with Erskine in the red leather chair. There were six of them: the four who had formed the afternoon delegation, including Winterhoff, who had had an appointment he couldn’t break, Hattie Harding, and Don O’Neill.

  On my side of the room were the BPR’s, four in number: Mrs. Boone the widow, Nina the niece, Alger Kates, and a gate-crasher named Solomon Dexter. Dexter was around fifty, under rather than over, looked like a cross between a statesman and a lumberjack, and was the ex-Deputy Director, now for twenty-four hours Acting Director, of the Bureau of Price Regulation. He had come, he told Wolfe, ex officio.

  In between the two hostile armies were the neutrals or referees: Spero of the FBI, and Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins. I had explained to Cramer that I was aware that he rated the red leather chair, but that he was needed in the middle. By a quarter past ten he was about as mad as I had ever seen him, because he had long ago caught on that Wolfe was starting from scratch and had arranged the gathering for the purpose of taking in, not giving out.

  There had been one puny attempt to disrupt my seating plans. Mrs. Boone and the niece had come early, before nine, and since there is nothing wrong with my eyesight I had without the slightest hesitation put the niece in the chair—one of the yellow ones from the front room—nearest to mine. When Ed Erskine arrived, alone, a little later, I assigned him to a seat on the NIA side, only to discover, after attending to a couple of other customers, that he had bounced across and was in my chair talking to the niece. I went over and told him:

  “This side is for the Capulets. Would you mind sitting where I put you?”

  He twisted his neck and lifted his chin to get me, and his focusing was not good. It was obvious that he had been applying the theory of acquired immunity to his hangover. I want to be fair, he was not pie-eyed, but neither was he in danger of desiccating.

  He asked me, “Huh? Why?”

  “Besides,” I said, “this is my chair and I work here. Let’s not make an issue of it.”

  He shrugged it off and moved. I addressed Nina Boone courteously:

  “You run into all sorts of strangers in a detective’s office.”

  “I suppose you do,” she said. Not a deep remark, nothing specially penetrating about it, but I smiled at her to show I appreciated her taking the trouble to make it when under a strain. She had dark hair and eyes, and was keeping her chin firm.

  From the moment, right at the beginning, that Wolfe had announced that he had been retained by the NIA, the BPR’s had been suspicious and antagonistic. Of course everyone who reads a newspaper or listens to the radio, which includes me, knew that the NIA hated Cheney Boone and all he stood for, and had done everything possible to get him tossed to the wolves, and also knew that the BPR would gladly have seen the atom bomb tested by bunching the NIA crowd on an island and dropping one on them, but I hadn’t realized how it sizzled until that evening in Wolfe’s office. Of course there were two fresh elements in it then: the fact that Cheney Boone had been murdered, at an NIA dinner of all places, and the prospect that some person or persons either would or wouldn’t get arrested, tried, convicted, and electrocuted.

  By a quarter past ten a good many points, both trivial and important, had been touched on. On opportunity, the BPR position was that everyone in the reception room, and probably many others, had known that Boone was in the room near the stage, the murder room, while the NIA claimed that not more than four or five people, besides the BPR’s who were
there, knew it. The truth was that there was no way of finding out who had known and who hadn’t.

  Neither hotel employees nor anyone else had heard any noise from the murder room, or seen anybody enter or leave it other than those whose presence there was known and acknowledged.

  No one was eliminated on account of age, size, or sex. While a young male athlete can swing a monkey wrench harder and faster than an old female bridge player, either could have struck the blows that killed Boone. There had been no sign of a struggle. Any one of the blows, from behind, could have stunned him or killed him. G. G. Spero of the FBI joined in the discussion of this point, and replied to a crack from Erskine by stating that it was not a function of the FBI to investigate local murders, but that since Boone had been killed while performing his duty as a government official, the Department of Justice had a legitimate interest in the matter and was acting on a request for co-operation from the New York police.

  One interesting development was that it was hard to see how Boone had got killed unless he did it himself, because everybody had alibis. Meaning by everybody not merely those present in Wolfe’s office—there being no special reason to suppose that the murderer was there with us—but all fourteen or fifteen hundred at the dinner. The time involved was about half an hour, between seven-fifteen, when Phoebe Gunther left the baby carriage and its contents, including the monkey wrenches, with Boone in the room, and around seven forty-five, when Alger Kates discovered the body. The police had gone to town on that, and everybody had been with somebody else, especially those in the reception room. But the hitch was that all the alibis were either mutual NIA’s or mutual BPR’s. Strange to say, no NIA could alibi a BPR, or vice versa. Even Mrs. Boone, the widow, for instance—no NIA was quite positive that she had not left the reception room during that period or that she had gone straight from there to the dais in the ballroom. The BPR’s were equally unpositive about Frank Thomas Erskine, the NIA president.