My waving paw finally stopped his bellowing; the phone had rung and I couldn’t hear. It was a request for him. With a grunt he got up and came to my desk for it, and I made way for him. For several minutes his part of it was mostly listening, and then apparently he was told something disagreeable, judging from the way he violated the law against the use of profanity on the telephone. He gave some instructions, banged the thing into its cradle, and said in a quiet but very sarcastic voice, “That’s nice, now.”
He went back to his chair and sat there a minute chewing his lip. “That’s just fine,” he said. “The case is as good as solved. I won’t have to go to any bother about it.”
“Indeed,” Wolfe murmured.
“Yes indeed. Three Federals have blown in up there. Anybody might suppose that a murder in Manhattan is the business of the homicide squad of which I happen to be the head, but who am I compared with a G-man? If we throw them out on their tail, the commissioner will say tut-tut, we’ve got to co-operate. It has two pleasant aspects. First, it means an entirely new angle we haven’t even suspected, and that’s a cheerful idea. Second, whoever solves it and however and whenever, the G-men will grab the credit. They always do.”
“Now, Inspector,” I remonstrated. “A G-man is the representative of the American people, in fact it would hardly be going too far to say that a G-man is America –”
“Shut up. I wish you’d get an F.B.I. job yourself and they’d send you to Alaska. I can pull you in, you know.”
“If you can it’s news to me. Who made any law about an innocent man being overcome with repugnance at the sight of blood and taking a taxi home?”
“Where did you see any blood?”
“I didn’t. Figure of speech.”
“Metonymy,” Wolfe muttered.
“Kid me. I like it.” Cramer glared at Wolfe. “So you’ve got a client.”
Wolfe made a face. “Tentatively I have. Archie accepted the commission. I say tentatively because I have never met her. When I’ve seen her and talked with her I shall know whether she’s guilty or not.”
“You admit she may be.”
“Certainly she may be.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “May I make a suggestion, Mr. Cramer? If you want consilience. It would be doubly unprofitable for you to question me, since you have stated that you will believe nothing I tell you, and since all those people are strangers to me and I am completely ignorant of what went on.”
“You say.”
“Yes, sir, I say. But it might help for me to question you. It would certainly help me, and in the long run it might even help you.”
“Great idea. Wonderful idea.”
“I think so.”
Cramer put his mangled cigar in the tray, got out another one and stuck it in his mouth. “Shoot.”
“Thank you. First, of course, achieved results. Have you arrested anyone?”
“No.”
“Have you found adequate motive?”
“No.”
“Are there any definite conclusions in your mind?”
“No. Nor indefinite either.”
“I see. No indictments from the mechanical routine – fingerprints, photographs, blabbing objects?”
“No. There’s one object, and maybe two, that ought to be there and we can’t find it. Do you know anything about fencing?”
Wolfe shook his head. “Nothing whatever.”
“Well, the thing he was killed with is called an épée. It’s triangular in section, with no cutting edge, and the point is so blunted that if you thrust at a man hard enough to go through him it would merely break the blade, which is quite flexible. In fencing they fasten a little steel button on the end, and the button has three tiny points. The points are only to show on your opponent’s jacket when you’ve made a hit; the thick body of the button wouldn’t permit the épée to pierce through the pad they wear or the mask over their face.”
I said, “He didn’t have any mask on.”
“I know he didn’t, so he wasn’t actually fencing at the moment he was killed. Miltan says no one ever fences with the épée without a mask. The one Ludlow had been wearing was on a bench over by the wall. And the épée that was sticking through him had no button on it, just the blunted end, and it couldn’t possibly have pierced him like that. But there was that thing in the cabinet in the office which Mrs. Miltan discovered was missing while your Mr. Goodwin was present. Which she calls a culdymore. You talk French; you can say it better than I can.”
“Col de mort.”
“Right. Anyone could have taken it from the cabinet. The chances are a million to one it was used on the épée that killed Ludlow. At a distance of a few feet, and especially with the épée in motion, he would never have seen it was that and not the ordinary fencing button. But the culdymore was not on the épée. So it had been removed. So everyone was searched and twenty men went through that joint like molasses through cheesecloth. They didn’t find it. One person and only one had left that building, namely Goodwin here. You don’t imagine he took it with him for a souvenir?”
Wolfe smiled slightly. “I wouldn’t suppose so. Thrown out of a window perhaps?”
“It could have been. They’re still looking, in the damn dark with flashlights. Also for the other object which may be missing. Miss Tormic has an idea a glove is gone, one of the ladies’-size fencing gauntlets, from the cupboard in the locker room. Miss Lovchen and the dame that calls herself Zorka don’t think so. Mrs. Miltan won’t commit herself. Nobody seems to know for sure exactly how many there were.”
“What about the button that had to be removed from the épée before the col de mort could be used?”
“They’re all over the place. Right in the fencing rooms in drawers.”
“Would the handle of the épée show fingerprints if it had been grasped without a glove?”
“No. Wrapped with cord or something for a grip.”
“Well.” Wolfe looked sympathetic. “The only two objects that might have helped aren’t there. I’ll promise you one thing, Mr. Cramer, if Archie did take them away I shall see that they are handed over to you as soon as we finish with them. But to go on, how many persons were in the building at the time the body was found?”
“Counting everybody, twenty-six.”
“How many have you eliminated?”
“All but eight or nine.”
“Namely?”
“First and foremost, the one who was fencing with him. Your client.”
“I wouldn’t expect that. If she is still my client after I see her I’ll eliminate her myself. The others?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Miltan. They alibi each other, which would be a drug on the market at two for a nickel. The girl that came to see you, Carla Lovchen. That’s four. She had been fencing with Driscoll, but they had quit and had gone to the locker rooms, and she could have sneaked to the end room and done it. Driscoll. He’s unlikely but not eliminated. Zorka. She was in the big room on that floor with a young man named Ted Gill. He claims not to be a fencer and was in there with her learning how to start.”
I said, “It was him that was with Belinda Reade yesterday when they saw our client in the hall as she was going to the locker room not to pinch Driscoll’s diamonds.”
“Right. Then there’s the Reade girl and young Barrett. They were moving around and it’s hard to tell. Of course if it’s Donald Barrett you can have it. Also there’s a kind of a man named Rudolph Faber.”
“The chinless wonder.”
“Not original but good. It’s him, by the way, that’s responsible for the fact that there’s been no arrest. How many does that make?”
“Ten.”
“Then it’s ten. And no discovered motive in the whole damn bunch. I wouldn’t –”
The phone rang. I performed and, after a moment, beckoned to Cramer.
“For you. It’s the boss.”
“Who?”
“The police commissioner, by gum.”
He got up, said in a resigned tone, “Oh, poop,” and came and took it.
Chapter 6
That telephone conversation was in two sections. During the first section, which was prolonged, Cramer was doing the talking, in a respectfully belligerent tone, reporting on the situation and the regrettable lack of progress to date. During the second, which was shorter, he was listening and apparently to something not especially cheerful, judging from the inflection of his grunts, and from the expression on his face when he finally cut the connection and returned to his chair.
He sat and scowled.
Wolfe said, “You were lamenting the lack of motive.”
“What?” He looked at Wolfe. “Yeah. I’d give my afternoon off to know what you know right now.”