I’ll take anything I can get. This is one of those cases that can’t cool off, because the damn newspapers keep the heat turned on indefinitely, and I don’t mean only the tabloids. Molly Lauck was young and beautiful. Half of the dames that were there at the show that day are in the Social Register. H. R. Cragg was there himself, with his wife, and so on. The two girls that saw her die are also young and beautiful. They won’t let it cool off, and every time I go into the Commissioner’s office he beats the arm of his chair. You’ve seen him do that right here in your own office.” Wolfe nodded. “Mr. Hombert is a disagreeable noise. I’m sorry I have nothing for you, Mr. Cramer, I really am.” “Yeah, I am too. But you can do this, anyhow: give me a push. Even if it’s in the wrong direction and you know it.” “Well…let’s see.” Wolfe leaned back with his eyes half closed. “You are blocked on motive. You can find none as to Miss Lauck, and too many in other directions. You can’t trace the purchase either of the candy or the poison. In fact, you have traced or found nothing whatever, and you are without a starting-point. But you do really have one; have you used it?”
Cramer stared. “Have I used what?” “The one thing that is indubitably connected with the murder. The box of candy.
What have you done about that?” “I’ve had it analyzed, of course.” “Tell me about it.” Cramer tapped ashes into the tray. “There’s not much to tell. It was a two-pound box that’s on sale pretty well all over town, at druggists and branch stores, put up by Bailey of Philadelphia, selling at a dollar sixty. They call it Royal Medley, and there’s a mixture in it, fruits, nuts, chocolates and so on. Before I turned it over to the chemist I got Bailey’s factory on the phone and asked if all Royal Medley boxes were uniform. They said yes, they were packed strictly to a list, and they read the list to me. Then for a check I sent out for a couple of boxes of Royal Medley and spread them out and compared them with the list.
Okay. By doing the same with the box Molly Lauck ate from, I found that three pieces were gone from it: candied pineapple, a candied plum, and a Jordan almond. That agreed with the Mitchell girl’s story.” Wolfe nodded. “Fruits, nuts, chocolates—were there any caramels?” “Caramels?” Cramer stared at him. “Why caramels?” “No reason. I used to like them.” Cramer grunted. “Don’t try to kid me. Anyhow, there aren’t any caramels in a Bailey’s Royal Medley. That’s too bad, huh?” “Perhaps. It certainly decreases the interest, for me. By the way, these details regarding the candy—have they been published? Has anyone been told?” “No. I’m telling you. I hope you can keep a secret. It’s the only one we’ve got.” “Excellent. And the chemist?” “Sure, excellent, and what has it got me? The chemist found that there was nothing wrong with any of the candy left in the box, except four Jordan almonds in the top layer. The top layer of a Royal Medley box has five Jordan almonds in it, and Molly Lauck had eaten one. Each of the four had more than six grains of potassium cyanide in it.” “Indeed. Only the almonds were poisoned.” “Yeah, it’s easy to see why they were picked. Potassium cyanide smells and tastes like almonds, only more so. The chemist said they would taste strong, but not enough to scare you off if you liked almonds. You know Jordan almonds?
They’re covered with hard candy of different colors. Holes had been bored in them, or picked in, and filled with the cyanide, and then coated over again so that you’d hardly notice it unless you looked for it.” Cramer hunched up his shoulders and dropped them again. “You say the box of candy was a starting-point? Well, I started, and where am I? I’m sitting here in your office telling you I’m licked, with that damn Goodwin pup there grinning at me.” “Don’t mind Mr. Goodwin. Archie, don’t badger him! But, Mr. Cramer, you didn’t start; you merely made the preparations for starting. It may not be too late.
If, for instance…” Wolfe, leaning back, closed his eyes, and I saw the almost imperceptible movement of his lips—out and in, a pause, and out and in again. Then again.
Cramer looked at me and lifted his brows. I nodded and told him, “Sure, it’ll be a miracle, wait and see.” Wolfe muttered, “Shut up, Archie.” Cramer glared at me and I winked at him. Then we just sat. If it had gone on long I would have had to leave the room for a bust, because Cramer was funny. He sat cramped, afraid to make a movement so as not to disturb Wolfe’s genius working; he wouldn’t even knock the ashes off his cigar. I’ll say he was licked.
He kept glaring at me to show he was doing something.
Finally Wolfe stirred, opened his eyes, and spoke. “Mr. Cramer. This is just an invitation to luck. Can you meet Mr. Goodwin at nine o’clock tomorrow morning at Mr. McNair’s place, and have with you five boxes of that Royal Medley?” “Sure. Then what?” “Well…try this. Your notebook, Archie?” I flipped to a fresh page.
Three hours later, after dinner, at ten o’clock that night, I went over to Broadway and hunted up a box of Bailey’s Royal Medley, and sat in the office until midnight with my desk covered with pieces of candy, memorizing a code.
CHAPTER Six
At three minutes to nine the following morning, Wednesday, as I rolled the roadster to a stop on 52nd Street, in a nice open space evidently kept free by special police orders, I was feeling a little sorry for Nero Wolfe. He loved to stage a good scene and get an audience sitting on the edge of their chairs, and here was this one, his own idea, taking place a good mile from his plant rooms and his oversized chair. But, stepping onto the sidewalk in front of Boyden McNair Incorporated, I merely shrugged my shoulders and thought to myself, Well-a-day, you fat son-of-a-gun, you can’t be a homebody and see the world too.
I walked across to the entrance, where the uniformed McNair doorman was standing alongside a chunky guy with a round red face and a hat too small for him pushed back on his forehead. As I reached for the door this latter moved to block me.
He put an arm out. “Excuse me, sir. Are you here by request? Your name, please?” He brought into view a piece of paper with a typewritten list on it.
I gazed down my nose at him. “Look here, my man. It was I who made the requests.” He squinted at me. “Yeah? Sure. The inspector says, nothing for you boys here.
Beat it.” Naturally I would have been sore anyhow at being taken for a reporter, but what made it worse was that I had taken the trouble to put on my suit of quiet brown with a faint tan stripe, a light tan shirt, a green challis four-in-hand and my dark green soft-brim hat. I said to him: “You’re blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other. Did you ever hear that one before? I’m Archie Goodwin of Nero Wolfe’s office.” I took out a card and stuck it at him.
He looked at it. “Okay. They’re expecting you upstairs.” Inside was another dick, standing over by the elevator, and no one else around.
This one I knew: Slim Foltz. We exchanged polite greetings, and I got in the elevator and went up.
Cramer had done pretty well. Chairs had been gathered from all over, and about fifty people, mostly women but a few men, were sitting there in the big room up front. There was a lot of buzz and chatter. Four or five dicks, city fellers, were in a group in a corner where the booths began. Across the room Inspector Cramer stood talking to Boyden McNair, and I walked over there.
Cramer nodded. “Just a minute, Goodwin.” He went on with McNair, and pretty soon turned to me. “We got a pretty good crowd, huh? Sixty-two promised to come, and there’s forty-one here. Not so bad.” “All the employees here?” “All but the doorman. Do we want him?” “Yeah, make it unanimous. Which booth?” “Third on the left. Do you know Captain Dixon? I picked him for it.” “I used to know him.” I walked down the corridor, counting three, and opened the door and went in. The room was a little bigger than the one we had used the day before. Sitting behind the table was a little squirt with a bald head and big ears and eyes like an eagle. There were pads of paper and pencils arranged neatly in front of him, and at one side was a stack of five boxes of Bailey’s Royal Medley. I told him he was Captain Dixon and I was Archie Goodwin, and it was a nice morning. He looked at me by moving his eyes without disturbing his head, known as conservation of energy, and made a noise something between a hoot-owl and a bullfrog. I left him and went back to the front room.