“It would cost you more than an afternoon, Mr. Cramer. I read a lot of books.”
“To hell with books. I am fully aware that you’ve got some kind of a line on this thing and I haven’t; I knew that as soon as I heard about Goodwin. If it ever did any good to look at your face I’d look at it while I’m telling you that the commissioner just informed me that he had a phone call ten minutes ago from the British consul general. The consul stated that he was shocked and concerned to learn of the sudden and violent death of a British subject named Percy Ludlow and he hoped that no effort would be spared and so forth.”
Wolfe shook his head. “I’m afraid my face wouldn’t help you any on that. My sole reaction is the thought that the British consul general must have remarkable channels of information. It’s half past ten at night. The murder occurred only four hours ago.”
“Nothing remarkable about it. He heard it on a radio news bulletin.”
“The source of the news was you or your staff?”
“Naturally.”
“Then you had discovered that Ludlow was a British subject?”
“No. No one up there knew much about him. Men are out on that now.”
“Then obviously it’s remarkable. The radio tells the consul merely that a man named Percy Ludlow has been killed at a dancing and fencing studio on 48th Street, and he knows at once that the victim was a British subject. Not only that, he doesn’t wait until morning, when the usual conventional communication could be sent to the police from his office, but immediately phones the commissioner himself. So either Mr. Ludlow was himself important, or he was concerned in important business. Maybe the consul could supply some details.”
“Much obliged. The commissioner has a date with him at eleven o’clock. Meanwhile how about supplying a few yourself?”
“I don’t know any. I heard Mr. Ludlow’s name for the first time shortly before six o’clock this afternoon.”
“You say. All right, to hell with you and your client both. I don’t kick on any ordinary murder, it’s my job and I try to handle it, but I hate these damn foreign mix-ups. Look at those two girls, they barely speak English, and if they want to monkey around playing with swords why can’t they stay where they belong and do it there? Look at Miltan, I suppose some kind of a Frenchman, and his wife. Look at Zorka. Then look at that Rudolph Faber guy, he reminds me of the cartoons of Prussian officers at the time of the World War. And now the Federals are up there horning in, and this consul general informs us that even the dead man wasn’t a plain honest-to-God American –”
“From old Ireland,” I slipped in.
“Shut up. You know what I mean. I don’t care if the background is wop or mick or kike or dago or yankee or squarehead or dutch colonial, so long as it’s American. Give me an American murder with an American motive and an American weapon, and I’ll deal with it. But these damn alien trimmings, épée and culdymores and consuls calling up about their damn subjects – and moreover, why I was fool enough to expect anything here is beyond me. I should have had you tagged and hauled in and let you wait in a cold hall until sunrise.”
He appeared to be preparing to leave his chair. Wolfe displayed a palm.
“Please, Mr. Cramer. Good heavens, the corpse is barely cooled off. Would you mind telling me how Mr. Faber made himself responsible for the fact that there’s been no arrest? I think that was how you put it.”
“I might and I might not. Do you know Faber?”
“I’ve said all those people are strangers to me. I tell only useful lies, and only those not easily exposed.”
“Okay. I would have arrested your client – I’m pretty sure I would – if it hadn’t been for Faber.”
“Then I’m in debt to him.”
“You sure are. Except for lack of motive, which might have been supplied and still may be, it looked like Miss Tormic. She admitted she was in there fencing with Ludlow. There was no evidence of anyone else having entered the room, though of course someone could have done so unobserved. Miss Tormic said that when she left the room Ludlow said he would stay and fool with the dummy a while. A dummy is a thing fastened to the wall with a mechanical arm that you can hook a sword onto. She said she went to the locker room and left her pad and glove and mask, and then –”
“What about her épée?”
“She said she left it in the fencing room. There’s a dozen or more in there on a rack. There was one with a button on it lying on the floor not far from Ludlow’s body, presumably the one he had been using. Ludlow had no mask on, but of course it could have been slipped off after he was killed. I see no reason why it should have been, unless to make it look as if he hadn’t been fencing at the moment it happened. Nor was there any reason for removing the culdymore as far as I can see except to play hide and seek with it. But about Faber. He was downstairs in a dancing room with Zorka until she went with Ted Gill to show him how to hold a sword. Then he went up and changed to fencing clothes, intending to get Carla Lovchen to fence with him as soon as she was through with Driscoll. He was hanging around the upper hall when Miss Tormic came out of the end room, and Ludlow was there too, opening the door for her to leave. Ludlow called to ask Faber if he cared to fence a little, and Faber said no. He says. Ludlow said all right, he’d practice his wrist on the dummy, and went back in the end room, closing the door, and Faber and Miss Tormic went to an alcove at the other end of the hall and sat and smoked a couple of cigarettes. They were still there when the porter entered the end room to clean up, thinking it was empty, and saw the body and came out squealing. They ran to see what it was, and other people appeared from all directions.”
Wolfe, who had closed his eyes, opened them to slits. “I see,” he murmured. “You couldn’t very well have arrested her after that, even if you had known she was my client. From where they sat did they have a view of the hall?”
“No, there’s a corner.”
“How long were they sitting there before the rumpus?”
“Fifteen to twenty minutes.”
“Did anyone see them?”
“Yes, Donald Barrett. He was looking for Miss Tormic to ask her to have dinner with him. He went to the door of the ladies’ locker room and Miss Lovchen told him Miss Tormic wasn’t there. He found them in the alcove, and was still with them five minutes later when the yelling started.”
“He hadn’t looked for her in the end room?”
“No. Miss Lovchen told him she had stopped in the locker room and left her pad and glove and mask, so he presumed she wasn’t fencing.”
After a little silence Wolfe heaved a sigh. “Well,” he said irritably but mildly, “I don’t see why the devil you resent my client. She seems to be wrapped in a mantle of innocence from head to foot.”
“Sure, it’s simply beautiful.” Cramer abruptly got up. “But … there’s a couple of little things. So far as is known, she and no one else was in that room with him, and for the purpose of lunging at him with an épée. Then the alibi Faber gives her is one of those neat babies that could be 99 per cent true and still be a phony. All you’d have to subtract would be the part about his seeing and speaking with Ludlow as Miss Tormic left the end room. I don’t claim to know any reason why Faber –”
The interruption was the entrance of Fritz. Inside the door a pace he halted to get a nod from Wolfe, and then advanced to the desk and extended the card tray. Wolfe took the card, glanced at it, and elevated his brows.
He told Fritz to stand by, and looked up at Cramer, who was standing, speculatively.
“You know,” he said, “since you’re leaving anyway, I could easily finesse around you by having this caller shown into the front room until you’re gone. But I really do like to cooperate when I can. One of your ten inmates up there has got loose. Unless they’ve let him go in order to follow him, which I believe is a usual tactic.”