Mrs. Oliver was licking her lips and swallowing, by turns. Perdis was hunched over, his lips tight, his heavy broad shoulders rising and falling with his breathing. Khoury had his chin up, his narrowed eyes aimed at Wolfe past the tip of his long thin nose. Anne Talbot’s eyes were closed, and a muscle at the side of her pretty neck was twitching.
“I realize,” Wolfe said, “that it may not be easy to produce so large a sum in so short a time, but it is not impossible, and I dare not give you longer. While it is true that the box and its contents are the property of Mrs. Hazen, the police would no doubt regard it as evidential in their investigation of a murder, and I can’t undertake to withhold my knowledge of it longer than twenty-four hours.” He pushed his chair back and rose. “I shall await your pleasure.”
But if he was through they weren’t. Mrs. Oliver wanted the box opened then and there, and a display of its contents by me. Khoury said that there was a question of extortion, that they were being told to fork over a million dollars in twenty-four hours or else. Perdis demanded that they be given the time and opportunity to talk with Mrs. Hazen, but of course she was in the coop. Anne Talbot was the only one who had nothing to say; she was on her feet, gripping the back of the chair, the muscle in her neck still twitching. Thinking it might help if I went and brought their coats, I did so, and it took Anne Talbot three tries to find the armhole.
When they were out, and the door shut, and I returned to the office, Wolfe was out from behind his desk. “A notion,” I said. “Mrs. Hazen may be out on bail by the middle of the morning and accessible to them, and you’re up in the plant rooms until eleven o’clock, not to be disturbed. Even if she’s locked up, those people have lawyers and connections, Perdis especially. He may play poker with the DA. I could phone Parker to see her in the morning and tell her that no matter what she hears you’re not loony, you’re just a genius, and you know where you’re headed for even when nobody else does, including me.”
“Not necessary.” He went to the door and turned. “Make sure that the safe’s locked. I’m tired. Good night.”
He knows darned well that I always make sure the safe’s locked, but of course it doesn’t often have something in it that’s supposed to be worth a million bucks. Up in my room on the third floor, as I undressed I made assorted tries at deciding what was next on his program, and didn’t like any of them.
As it turned out the next thing on the program wasn’t decided either by me or by him, but by Inspector Cramer. In the morning Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock as usual, and also as usual I had the mail opened and the dusting done and fresh water in the vase on his desk. He went first to the front of the desk to put a spray of orchids in the vase, Odontoglossum pyramus, then circled around to his chair. As he sat the doorbell rang. I went to the office door for a look and told him it was Cramer. He slapped a palm on the desk, glared at me, and said nothing, and I went to the front and opened up. I didn’t like the look on Cramer’s face as he entered and let me take his coat and hat. He almost grinned at me, and he didn’t stride to the office, he just walked. He sat in the red leather chair, crossed his legs comfortably, and told Wolfe, “I haven’t got much time. I want to hear it from you, what Mrs. Hazen came to you for yesterday, just the substance, and then Goodwin will come downtown and get it down in a statement, all of it. With his wonderful memory.”
Wolfe was glowering at him. “Mr. Cramer. It shouldn’t be—”
“Save it. She’s booked for murder. We have the gun. Hazen got his car from the garage Monday night. It has been found parked on Twenty-first Street. There was a gun in the dashboard compartment, and it fired the bullet that killed him. We have traced it. It was bought by Hazen six years ago and he had a permit for it. He kept it in a drawer in his bedroom, and the maid saw it there yesterday morning when she went up to see why he hadn’t come down for breakfast. Don’t ask me why Mrs. Hazen took it from there afterwards and went to where she had parked the car on Twenty-first Street and put it in the car. I don’t know, but maybe you do. So let’s hear you.”
Chapter 7
I squeezed my eyes shut because if I had kept them open they would have popped, and I didn’t want to give Cramer that satisfaction. But I am supposed to help Wolfe when he needs it, and right then he sure could use a few seconds to arrange his mind, so I opened my eyes and asked Cramer, just curious, “What kind of a gun?”
He ignored it. He was having too good a time looking at Wolfe to bother with me. Wolfe was paying me another compliment. I was responsible for our assumption that Mrs. Hazen was innocent, but he didn’t glance at me. He lowered his chin, scratched the tip of his nose, regarded Cramer for ten seconds, and then turned to me.
“Archie. It may be desirable to have a record of what Mr. Cramer just said. Type it. Verbatim. Double-spaced, one carbon.”
As I got at the typewriter Cramer said, “I don’t object. Naturally you’ve got to stall while you try to figure a way to climb down without breaking your neck.”
No comment from Wolfe. I put in paper and hit the keys. Since I had had years of practice reporting long and involved conversations that had had time to fade, that one was no trick at all. As I rolled the paper out Wolfe said, “Initial the original,” and I did so, and handed it to him. He read it through, in no hurry, took his pen and initialed it, handed it back to me, and turned to Cramer.
“I’m not stalling,” he said. “If what you just told me is true, your demand for information is warranted. If it isn’t true you’re gulling me into disclosing a confidential communication from a client, and I want a record—”
“Then she’s your client?”
“She is now. She wasn’t when you were here yesterday, but she hired me later through Mr. Parker. I want a record of your words, and I have it. I also want more facts, to make sure that those you have given me are not qualified by others. That’s a reasonable precaution, I think. What time did Mr. Hazen take his car from the garage Monday evening?”
“A little after eleven o’clock.”
“That was after the dinner guests left?”
“Yes. They left at a quarter to eleven.”
“Was anyone with him at the garage?”
“No.”
“Was anyone else with him anywhere, out of the car or in it, after a quarter to eleven?”
“No.”
“Is it assumed that he was shot in that alley where the body was found?”
“No. He was shot in the car.”
“Have you any additional facts implicating Mrs. Hazen, of any kind? Not conjectures, facts. For example, was she seen in or near the car, driving it, or when it was parked on Twenty-first Street dining the night, or when — as you have it — she went there yesterday to put the gun in the dashboard compartment?”
“No. No more facts. I expect to get some from you.”
“You will. Naturally, when you learned that Mrs. Hazen had been to see me you focused on her, but surely not exclusively. Have you inquired into the movements of the dinner guests after they left?”
“Yes.”
“Have any of them been conclusively eliminated?”
“No. Not conclusively.”
Wolfe closed his eyes. In a moment he opened them. “That seems to cover it.” He took a breath. “Of course I don’t like this. And you’re not squeezing it out of me, though you think you are. I would tell you nothing and take the consequences if it weren’t that I need some information that I can get only from you. I have to know where the gun came from that Mrs. Hazen left with me yesterday. If you’ll agree—”