I had finished Frazee and was well along with Wheelock when the doorbell rang. As I started for the hall I offered five to one that it was LBA and their lawyer, disregarding Wolfe’s demand to be let alone, but I was wrong. When I flipped the switch of the stoop light, one glance through the panel was enough. Stepping back into the office, I told Wolfe:
“Too bad to disturb you—”
“No one,” he growled. “No one on earth.”
“Okay. It’s Cramer.”
He lowered the book, with his lips tightened. Slowly and neatly, he dog-eared a page and closed the book,on the desk. “Very well,” he said grimly. “Let him in.”
The doorbell rang again.
Chapter 10
Wolfe and Inspector Cramer of Manhattan Homicide West have never actually come to blows, though there have been times when Cramer’s big red seamy face has gone almost white, and his burly broad shoulders have seemed to shrink, under the strain. I can always tell what the tone is going to be, at least for the kickoff, by. the way he greets me when I let him in. If he calls me Archie, which doesn’t happen often, he wants something he can expect to get only as a favor and has determined to forget old sores and keep it friendly. If he calls me Goodwin and asks how I am, he still is after a favor but thinks he is entitled to it. If he calls me Goodwin but shows no interest in my health, he has come for what he would call co-operation and intends to get it. If he calls me nothing at all, he’s ready to shoot from the hip and look out.
That time it wasn’t Archie, but he asked how I was, and after he got into the red leather chair he accepted an offer of beer from Wolfe, and apologized for coming so late without phoning. As Fritz served the beer I went to the kitchen to get a glass of milk for myself. When I returned Cramer had a half-empty glass in his hand and was licking foam from his lips.
“I hope,” he said, “that I didn’t interrupt anything important.” He was gruff, but he would be gruff saying his prayers.
“I’m on a case,” Wolfe said, “and I was working.” Beauty for Ashes, by Christopher La Farge, is a novel written in verse, the scene of the action being Rhode Island. I don’t read novels in verse, but I doubt if there’s anything in it about perfume contests, or even any kind of cosmetics. If it were Ashes for Beauty that might have been different.
“Yeah,” Cramer said. “The Dahlmann murder.”
“No, sir.” Wolfe poured beer. “I’m aware of your disapproval of private detectives concerning themselves with murders in your jurisdiction-heaven knows I should be—and it pleases me to know that I’m not incurring it. I am not investigating a murder.”
“That’s fine. Would you mind telling me who your client is? This case you’re on?”
“As a boon?”
“I don’t care what you call it, just tell me.”
“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t, in confidence of course. A firm, an advertising agency, called Lippert, Buff and Assa.”
I raised my brows. Evidently Cramer wasn’t the only one in favor of favors. Wolfe was being almost neighborly.
“I’ve heard of them,” Cramer said. “Just today, in fact. That’s the firm Louis Dahlmann was with.”
“That’s right.”
“When did they hire you?”
“Today.”
“Uh-huh. And also today four people have come to see you, not counting your clients, who were at a dinner meeting with Dahlmann last night, and Goodwin has called on another one at his hotel. But you’re not investigating a murder?”
“No, sir.”
“Nuts.”
It looked as if the honeymoon was over and before long fur would be flying, but Cramer took the curse off his lunge with a diversion. He drank beer, and put his empty glass down. “Look,” he said, “I’ve heard you do a lot of beefing about people being rational. Okay. If anyone who knew you, and knew who has been coming here today— if he didn’t think you were working on the murder would he be rational? You know damn well he wouldn’t. I’m being rational. If you want to try to talk me out of it, go ahead.”
Wolfe made a noise which he may have thought was a friendly chuckle. “That would be a new experience, Mr. Cramer. There have been times when I have tried to talk you into being rational. I can only tell you, also in confidence, what my job is. Of course you know about the perfume contest, and about the wallet that was missing from Mr. Dahlmann’s pocket. I’m going to provide for a satisfactory settlement of the contest by learning who took the wallet, and what was in it, to demonstrate that none of its contents had any bearing on the contest. I’m also going to arrange that certain events, especially the detention of four of the contestants in New York, shall not prevent the fair and equitable distribution of the prizes. If you ask why I’m being so outspoken with you, it’s because our interests touch but do not conflict. If and when I get anything you might need you shall have it.”
“Quite a job.” Cramer was eying him, not as a neighbor. “How are you going to learn who took the wallet without tagging the murderer?”
“Perhaps I can’t. That’s where our interests touch. But the murder is not my concern.”
“I see. Just a by-product. And you say that the paper Dahlmann showed them and put back in his wallet didn’t have the answers on it.”
“Well.” Wolfe pursed his lips. “Not categorically. On that point I am restrained. That is what my clients have told you, and it would be uncivil for me to contradict them. In any case, that illustrates the difference between your objective and mine. Since one of my purposes is to achieve a fair and satisfactory distribution of the prizes, the contents of that paper are of the first importance to me. But to you, that is of no importance at all. What matters to you is not whether the paper contained the answers, but whether the contestants thought it did. If you had good evidence that one of them thought that Dahlmann was only hoaxing them, you’d have to eliminate him as a suspect. By the way, have you any such evidence?”
“No. Have you?”
“No, sir. I have no evidence of anything whatever.”
“Do you believe that one of the contestants killed him?”
Wolfe shook his head. “I’ve told you, I’m not working on a murder. I think it likely that one of them took the wallet—only a conjecture, not a belief.”
“Are you saying there might have been two of them— one killed him and one took the wallet?”
“Not at all. Of course my information is scanty. I haven’t even read the account in the evening paper, knowing it couldn’t be relied on. Have you reason to think there were two?”
“No.”
“You are assuming that whoever killed him took the wallet?”
“Yes.”
“Then so am I. As I said, there’s no conflict. You agree?”
There was some beer left in Cramer’s bottle, and he poured it, waited a little for the foam to go down, drank, put the glass down, and licked his lips.
He looked at Wolfe. “I’ll tell you. I have never yet bumped into you in the course of my duties without conflict before I was through, but I don’t say it couldn’t possibly happen. As it stands now, if I take you at your word —I say if—I think we might get along. I think your clients are holding out on us. I think they’re worried more about what happens to their goddam contest than what happens to a murderer, and that’s why I’m willing to believe your job is what you say it is. I think they have probably given it to you straight, and I’d like to know exactly what they’ve told you, but I certainly don’t expect you to tell me. I think that on the contest part, especially the paper Dahlmann had in his wallet, you’re on the inside track, and you know things or you’ll learn things we don’t know and maybe can’t learn. God knows I don’t expect to pump them out of you, but I do expect you to realize that it won’t hurt you a damn bit to loosen up with anything I could use.”
“It’s a pity,” Wolfe said.
“What’s a pity?”
“That you choose this occasion for an appeal instead of the usual bludgeon, because this time I’m armored. Mr. Rudolph Hansen, who is a member of the bar, made our conversation a privileged communication by taking a dollar from me as a retainer. I’m his client. It’s a pity you don’t give me a chance to raise my shield.”