It was our chum Inspector Cramer, head of Homicide. He advanced to the table before he stopped and spoke to Wolfe.
“Hello. Sorry to break in on your meal.”
“Good morning,” Wolfe said courteously. For him it was always morning until he had finished his lunch coffee. “If you haven’t had lunch we can offer you—”
“No, thanks, I’m busy and in a hurry. A woman named Cynthia Nieder came to see you yesterday.”
Wolfe put a piece of rice cake in his mouth. I had a flash of a thought:
Good God, the client’s dead.
“Well?” Cramer demanded.
“Well what?” Wolfe snapped. “You stated a fact. I’m eating lunch.”
“Fine. It’s a fact. What did she want?”
“You know my habits and customs, Mr. Cramer.” Wolfe was controlling himself. “I never talk business at a meal. I invited you to join us and you declined. If you will wait in the office—”
Cramer slapped a palm on the table, raiding things. My guess was that Wolfe would throw the coffee pot, since it was the heaviest thing handy, but I couldn’t stay for it because along with the sound of Cramer’s slap the doorbell rang again, and I thought I’d better not leave this one to Fritz. I got up and went, and through the one-way glass panel in the front door I saw an object that relieved me. The client was still alive and apparently unhurt. She was standing there on the stoop.
I pulled the door open, put my finger on my lips, muttered at her, “Keep your mouth shut,” and with one eye took in the police car parked at the curb, seven steps down from the stoop. The man seated behind the wheel, a squad dick with whom I was acquainted, was looking up at us with an expression of interest. I waved at him, signaled Cynthia to enter, shut the door, and elbowed her into the front room, which faces the street and adjoins the office.
She looked scared, untended, haggard, and determined.
“The point is,” I told her, “that a police inspector named Cramer is in the dining room asking about you. Do you want to see him?”
“Oh.” She gazed at me as if she were trying to remember who I was. “I’ve already seen him.” She looked around, saw a chair, got to it, and sat. “They’ve been—asking me—questions for hours—”
“Why, what happened?”
“My uncle—” Her head went forward and she covered her face with her hands. In a moment she looked up at me and said, “I want to see Nero Wolfe,” and then covered her face with her hands again.
It might, I figured, take minutes to nurse her to the point of forming sentences. So I told her, “Stay here and sit tight. The walls are soundproofed, but keep quiet anyhow.”
When I rejoined them in the dining room the coffee pot was still on the table unthrown, but the battle was on. Wolfe was out of his chair, erect, rigid with rage.
“No, sir,” he was saying in his iciest tone, “I have not finished my gobbling now, as you put it. I would have eaten two more cakes, and I have not had my coffee. You broke in, and you’re here. If you were not an officer of the law Mr. Goodwin would knock you unconscious and drag you out.”
He moved. He stamped to the door, across the hall, and into the office. I was right behind him. By the time Cramer was there, seated in the red leather chair, Wolfe was seated too, behind his desk, breathing at double speed, with his mouth closed tight.
“Forget it,” Cramer rasped, trying to make up.
Wolfe was silent.
“All I want,” Cramer said, “is to find out why Cynthia Nieder came to see you. You have a right to ask why I want to know, and I would have told you if you hadn’t lost your temper just because I arrived while you were stuffing it in. There’s been a murder.”
Wolfe said nothing.
“Last night,” Cramer went on. “Time limits, eight P.M. and midnight, At the place of business of Daumery and Nieder on the twelfth floor of Four-ninety-six Seventh Avenue. Cynthia Nieder was there last night between nine and nine-thirty, she admits that; and nobody else as far as we know now. She says she went to get some drawings, but that’s got holes in it. The body was found this morning, lying in the middle of the Soor in the office. He had been hit in the back of the head with a hardwood pole, one of those used to raise and lower windows, and the end of the pole with the brass hook on it had been jabbed into his face a dozen times or more—like spearing a fish.”
Wolfe had his eyes closed. I was considering that after all Cramer was the head of Homicide and he was paid for handling murders, and he always tried hard and deserved a little encouragement, so I asked in a friendly manner, “Who was it?”
“Nobody knows,” he said sarcastically and without returning the friendliness. “A complete stranger to all the world, and nothing on him to tell.” He paused, and then suddenly barked at me, “You describe him!”
“Nuts. Who was it?”
“It was a medium-sized man around forty, with a brown beard and slick brown hair parted on the left side, with glasses that were just plain glass. Can you name him?”
I thought it extremely interesting that Cramer’s description consisted of the three items that Cynthia had specified. It showed what a well-planned disguise could do.
WOLFE remained silent.
“Sorry,” I said. “Never met him.”
Cramer left me for Wolfe. “Under the circumstances,” he argued, still sarcastic, “you may concede that I have a right to ask what she came to you for. It was only after she tried two lies on us about how she spent yesterday morning that we finally got it out of her that she came here. She didn’t want us to know, she was dead against it, and she wouldn’t tell what she came for. Add to that the fact that whenever you are remotely connected with anyone who is remotely connected with a murder you always know everything, and there’s no question about my needing to know what you were consulted about. I came to ask you myself because I know what you’re like.”
Wolfe broke his vow. He spoke. “Is Miss Nieder under arrest?”
The phone rang before Cramer could answer. I took it, a voice asked to speak to Inspector Cramer, and Cramer came to my desk and talked. Or rather, he listened. About all he used was grunts, but at one point he said “Here?” with an inflection that started my mind going, and simple logic carried it on to a conclusion.
So as Cramer hung up I pushed in ahead of him to tell Wolfe. “Answering your question, she is not under arrest. They turned her loose because they didn’t have enough to back up anything suffer than material witness, and they put a tail on her, and the tail phoned in that she came here, and the call Cramer just got was a relay or the tail’s report. She’s in the front room. I put her there because I know how you are about having your meals interrupted. Shall I bring her in?”
Cramer returned to the red leather chair, sat, and said to someone, “You snippy little bastard.” I ignored it, knowing it couldn’t be for me, since I am just under six feet and weigh a hundred and eighty and therefore could not be called little.
Cramer went at Wolfe. “So the minute we let her go she comes here. That has some bearing on my wanting to know what she was after yesterday, huh?”
Wolfe spoke to me. “Archie. You say Miss Nieder is in the front room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It was she who rang the bell while Mr. Cramer was trying to knock my luncheon dishes off the table?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing, except that she wanted to see you. She has spent hours with cops and her tongue’s tired.”
“Bring her in here.”
Cramer started offering objections, but I didn’t hear him. I went and opened the connecting door to the front room, which was as soundproof as the wall, and said respectfully for all to hear, “Inspector Cramer is here asking about you. Will you come in, please?”
She stood up, hesitated, stiffened herself, and then walked to me and on through. I placed one of the yellow chairs for her, facing Wolfe, closer to my position than to Cramer’s. She nodded at me, sat, gave Cramer a straight full look, transferred it to Wolfe, and swallowed.
Wolfe was rrowning at her and his eyes were slits. “Miss Nieder,” he said gruffly, “I am working for you and you have paid me a retainer. Is that correct?”