I heard Wolfe’s voice like a whip: “Archie! Get him!” I jumped up and across and reached for him. But I missed him, because he suddenly went into a spasm, a convulsion all over his body, and shot up out of his chair and stood there swaying.
He let out a scream: “Christ Jesus!” He put his hands, the fists doubled up, on Wolfe’s desk, and tried to push himself back up straight. He screamed again, “Oh, Christ!” Then another convulsion went over him and he gasped at Wolfe: “The red box—the number—God, let me tell him!” He let out a moan that came from his guts and went down.
I had hold of him, but I let him go to the floor because he was out. I knelt by him, and saw Wolfe’s shoes appear beyond him. I said, “Still breathing. No. I don’t think so. I think he’s gone.” Wolfe said, “Get Doctor Vollmer. Get Mr. Cramer. First let me have that bottle from his pocket.” As I moved for the phone I heard a mutter behind me, “I was wrong. Death did stalk him here. I’m an imbecile.”
CHAPTER Nine
Late the following morning, Thursday, April 2nd, I sat at my desk and folded checks and put them in envelopes as Wolfe signed them and passed them over to me. The March bills were being paid. He had come down from the plant rooms punctually at eleven, and we were improving our time as we awaited a promised visit from Inspector Cramer.
McNair had been dead when Doc Vollmer got there from his home only a block away, and still dead when Cramer and a couple of dicks arrived. An assistant medical examiner had come and done routine, and the remains had been carted away for a post mortem. Wolfe had told Cramer everything perfectly straight, without holding out on him, but had refused his request for a typed copy of my notes on the session with McNair. The aspirin bottle, which had originally held 50 tablets and still contained fourteen, was turned over to the inspector. Toward the end with Cramer, after eight o’clock, Wolfe got a little short with him, because it was past dirmertime. I had formerly thought that his inclination to eat when the time came in spite of hell and homicide was just another detail of his build-up for eccentricity, but it wasn’t; he was just hungry. Not to mention that it was Fritz Brenner’s cuisine that was waiting for him.
I had made my usual diplomatic advances to Wolfe Wednesday evening after dinner, and again this morning when he got down from the plant rooms, but all I had got was a few assorted rebuffs. I hadn’t pressed him much, because I saw it was a case where a little thoughtless enthusiasm might easily project me out of bounds. He was about as touchy as I had ever seen him. A neat and complete murder had had its finale right in his own office, in front of his eyes, less than ten minutes after he had grandly assured the victim that nemesis was verboten on those premises. So I wasn’t surprised he wasn’t inclined to talk, and I made no effort to sink the spurs in him. All right, I thought, go ahead and be taciturn, you’re in it up to your neck now anyway, and you’ll have to stop treading water and head for a shore sooner or later.
Inspector Cramer arrived as I inserted the last check in its envelope. Fritz ushered him in. He looked busy but not too harassed; in fact, he tipped me a wink as he sat down, knocked ashes from his cigar, returned it to the corner of his mouth and started off conversationally.
“You know, Wolfe, I was just thinking on the way up here, this time I’ve got a brand new excuse for coming to see you. I’ve been here for a lot of different reasons, to try to pry something loose from you, to find out if you were harboring a suspect, to charge you with obstructing justice, and so on and so on, but this is the first time I’ve ever had the excuse that it’s the scene of the crime. In fact, I’m sitting right on it. Wasn’t he in this chair? Huh?” I told Wolfe consolingly, “It’s all right, boss. That’s just humor. The light touch.” “I hear it.” Wolfe was grim. “I have merited even Mr. Cramer’s humor. You may exhaust your supply, sir.” It had eaten into him even worse than I thought.
“Oh, I’ve got more.” Cramer chuckled. “You know Lanzetta of the D.A.’s office?
Hates your epidermis ever since that Fairmount business three years ago? He phoned the Commissioner this morning to warn him there was a chance you were putting over a fast one. The Commissioner told me about it, and I told him you’re rapid all right, but not faster than light.” Cramer chuckled again, removed his cigar, and slipped his briefcase from the desk onto his knees and unclasped it. He grunted. “Well. Here’s this murder. I’ve got to get back before lunch. You had any inspiration?” “No.” Wolfe remained grim. “I’ve almost had indigestion.” He wiggled a finger at the briefcase. “Have you papers of Mr. McNair’s?” Cramer shook his head. “This is just a lot of junk. There may be one or two items worth something. I’ve followed up your line, that it’s sure to be hooked up with the Frosts, on account of the way McNair started his story to you. The Frosts and this fellow Gebert are being investigated from every angle, up, down and across. But there’s two other bare possibilities I don’t like to lose sight of. First, suicide. Second, this woman, this Countess von Rantz-Deichen, that’s been after McNair lately. There’s a chance—” “Tommyrot!” Wolfe was explosive. “Excuse me, Mr. Cramer. I am in no mood for fantasy. Get on.” “Okay.” Cramer grunted. “Sore, huh? Okay. Fantasy. Notwithstanding, I’ll leave two men on the Countess.” He was shuffling through papers from the briefcase.
“First for the bottle of aspirin. There were fourteen tablets in it. Twelve of them were perfectly all right. The other two consisted of potassium cyanide tablets, approximately five grains each, with a thin coating of aspirin on the outside, apparently put on as a dry dust and carefully tapped down all over. The chemist says the coating was put on skillfully and thoroughly, so there would have been no cyanide taste for the few seconds before the tablet was swallowed.
There was no cyanide smell, the bitter almond smell, in the bottle, but of course it was bone dry.” Wolfe muttered, “And yet you talk of suicide.” “I said bare possibility. Okay, forget it. The preliminary on the autopsy says cyanide of potassium, but they can’t tell whether the tablets he took were loaded or not, because that stuff evaporates fast as soon as it’s moist. I don’t suppose he’s worrying much about whether it was one or two tablets, so I’m not either. Next, who put the phonies in with the aspirins? Or anyway, who had a chance to? I’ve had three good men on that, and they’re still on it. The answer so far is, most anyone. For the past week and more McNair has been taking aspirin the way a chicken takes corn. There has been a bottle either on his desk or in a drawer all the time. There’s none there now, so when he went out yesterday he must have stuck it in his pocket. Thirty-six are gone from that fifty, and if you figure he took twelve a day that would mean that bottle has been in use three days, and in that time dozens of people have been in and out of his office where the bottle was kept. Of course all the Frosts have, and this Gebert. By the way—” Cramer thumbed to find a paper and stopped at one—”what’s a carnal…camallot doo something in French?” Wolfe nodded. “Camelot du roi. A member of a Parisian royalist political gang.” “Oh. Gebert used to be one. I cabled Paris last night and had one back this morning. Gebert was one of those. He has been around New York now over three years, and we’re after him. The preliminary reports I’ve had are vague. N.V.M.S.
Paris says so too.” Wolfe lifted a brow. “N.V.M.S.” I told him, “Police gibberish. No visible means of subsistence. Bonton for bum.”
Wolfe sighed. Cramer went on, “We’re doing all the routine. Fingerprints on the bottle, on the drawers of McNair’s desk and so on. Purchases of potassium cyanide—” Wolfe stopped him: “I know. Pfui. Not for this murderer, Mr. Cramer. You’ll have to do better than routine.” “Sure I will. Or you will.” Cramer discarded his cigar and got into his pocket for a new one. “But I’m just telling you. We’ve discovered one or two things.
For instance, yesterday afternoon McNair asked his lawyer if there was any way of finding out whether Dudley Frost, as trustee of the property of his niece, had squandered any of it, and he told the lawyer to do that in a hurry. He said that when Edwin Frost died twenty years ago he cut off his wife without a cent and left everything to his daughter Helen, and made his brother Dudley the trustee under such condition that no one, not even Helen, could demand an accounting of Dudley, and Dudley has never made any accounting. According to McNair. We’re on that too. Do you get anywhere with it? If Dudley Frost is short a million or so as trustee, what good does it do him to bump off McNair?” “I couldn’t say. Will you have some beer?” “No thanks.” Cramer got his cigar lit and his teeth sunk in it. He puffed it just short of a conflagration. “Well, we may get somewhere on that.” He thumbed at the papers again. “Next is an item that you ought to find interesting. It happens that McNair’s lawyer is a guy that can be approached, within reason, and after your tip last night I was after him early this morning. He gave me that dope on Dudley Frost, and he admitted McNair made a will yesterday. In fact, after I explained to him how serious murder is, he let me see it and copy it.