“When was that?” I asked. “Who was in Tina’s booth with Wallen?”
“I don’t think anybody was. Janet had come out a while before. She was at Jimmie’s chair with a customer.”
“Good heavens,” I turned my palms up. “You left that place less than a minute, may be only a few seconds, before Fickler found Wallen dead!”
“I don’t know,” Carl wasn’t fazed. “I only know I didn’t touch that man.”
“This,” I told Wolfe, “makes it even nicer. There was a slim chance we could get it that they left sooner.”
“Yes.” He regarded me. “It must be assumed that Wallen was alive when Ed left the booth, since that young woman — what’s her name?”
“Janet.”
“I call few men, and no women, by their first names. What’s her name?”
“Stahl,” Tina said. “Janet Stahl.”
“Thank you... Wallen was presumably alive when Ed left the booth, since Miss Stahl followed him. So Miss Stahl, who saw Wallen last, and Mr. Fickler, who reported him dead — manifestly they had opportunity. What about the others?”
“You must remember,” I told him, “that I had just dropped in for a shave. I had to show the right amount of intellectual curiosity, but I had to be careful not to carry it too far. From what Ed said, I gathered that opportunity is fairly wide open, except he excludes himself. As you know, they all keep darting behind that partition for one thing or another. Ed can’t remember who did and who didn’t, during that ten or fifteen minutes, and it’s a safe bet that the others can’t remember, either. The fact that the cops were interested enough to ask shows that Carl and Tina haven’t got a complete monopoly on it. As Ed remarked, they’ve gotta have evidence, and they’re still looking.”
Wolfe grunted in disgust.
“It also shows,” I went on, “that they haven’t got any real stopper to cork it, like prints from the car or localizing the scissors or anything they found on the corpse. They sure want Carl and Tina, and you know what happens when they get them, but they’re still short on exhibits. If you like your suggestion to keep our guests here until Cramer and Stebbins get their paws on the right guy, it might work fine as a long-term policy, but you’re against the idea of women living here, or even a woman, and after a few months it might get on your nerves.”
“It is no good,” Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. “Just let us go! I beg you, do that!”
Wolfe ignored her. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and heaved a deep sigh, and from the way his nose began to twitch I knew he was coercing himself into facing the hard fact that he would have to go to work — either that or tell me to call Purley, and that was ruled out of bounds both by his self-respect and his professional vanity.
Wolfe sighed again, opened his eyes, and rasped at Tina, “Except for Mr. Fickler, that man questioned you first. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what he said. What he asked. I want every word.”
I thought Tina did pretty well, under the circumstances. She wrinkled her brow and concentrated, and it looked as if Wolfe got it all out of her. But she couldn’t give him what she didn’t have.
He kept after it: “You are certain he showed you no object whatever?”
“Yes, I’m sure he didn’t.”
“He asked about no object, anything, in the shop?”
“No.”
“He took nothing from his pocket?”
“No.”
“The newspaper he had. Didn’t he take that from his pocket?”
“No, like I said, he had it in his hand when he came in the booth.”
“In his hand or under his arm?”
“In his hand. I think... yes, I’m sure.”
“Was it folded up?”
“Well, of course newspapers are folded.”
“Yes, Mrs. Vardas. Just remember the newspaper as you saw it in his hand. I’m making a point of it because there is nothing else to make a point of, and we must have a point if we can find one. Was the newspaper folded up as if he had had it in his pocket?”
“No, it wasn’t.” She was trying hard. “It wasn’t folded that much. Like I said, it was a Daily Press. When he sat down he put it on the table, at the end by his right hand — yes, that’s right, my left hand — I moved some of my things to make room — and it was the way it is on the newsstand, so that’s all it was folded.”
“But he didn’t mention it?”
“No.”
“And you noticed nothing unusual about it? I mean the newspaper?”
She shook her head. “It was just a newspaper.”
Wolfe repeated the performance with Carl, and got more of the same. No object produced or mentioned, no hint of any. The only one on exhibit, the newspaper, had been there on the end of the table when Carl, sent by Fickler, had entered and sat, and Wallen had made no reference to it. Carl was more practical than Tina. He didn’t work as hard as she had trying to remember Wallen’s exact words, and I must say I couldn’t blame him.
Wolfe gave up trying to get what they didn’t have. He leaned back, compressed his lips, closed his eyes, and tapped with his forefingers on the ends of his chair arms. Finally he opened his eyes. “Confound it,” he said peevishly, “it’s impossible. Even if I had a move to make I couldn’t make it. If I so much as stir a finger, Mr. Cramer will start yelping and I have no muzzle for him. Any effort to—”
The doorbell rang. During lunch Fritz had been told to leave it to me, so I arose, crossed to the hall, and went front. But not all the way. Four paces short of the door I saw, through the one-way glass panel, the red, rugged face and the heavy, broad shoulders. I wheeled and returned to the office, not dawdling, and told Wolfe, “The man to fix the chair.”
“Indeed.” His head jerked up. “The front room.”
Carl and Tina, warned by our tone and tempo, were on their feet. The bell rang again. I moved, fast, to the door to the front room and pulled it open, telling them, “In here, quick! Step on it!” They obeyed, without a word, as if they had known me and trusted me for years, but what choice did they have? When they had passed through I said, “Relax and keep quiet,” shut the door, glanced at Wolfe and got a nod, went to the front door, opened it, and said morosely, “Hello. What now?”
“It took you long enough,” Inspector Cramer growled, crossing the threshold.
Wolfe can move when he wants to. I have seen him prove it more than once, as he did then. By the time I was back in the office, following Cramer, he had scattered in front of him on his desk a dozen folders of plant germination records for which he had had to go to the filing cabinet. One of the folders was spread open and he was scowling at us above it. He grunted a greeting but not a welcome. Cramer grunted back, moved to the red leather chair, and sat down.
I got myself at my desk. I was wishing I wasn’t involved so I could just enjoy it. If Wolfe succeeded in keeping Cramer’s claws off of the Vardas family, and at the same time kept himself out of jail, I would show my appreciation by not hitting him for a raise for a month.
Fritz entered with a tray, so Wolfe had found time to push a button, too. It was the fixed allotment, three bottles of beer. Wolfe told Fritz to bring another glass, but Cramer said no, thanks.
Suddenly Cramer looked at me and demanded, “Where did you go when you left the barbershop?”
My brows went up. “If you really cared you could have put a tail on me. If you didn’t care enough to put a tail on me you’re just being nosy, and I resent it. Next question.”
“Why not answer that one?”
“Because some of the errands I get sent on are confidential, and I don’t want to start a bad habit.”
Cramer turned abruptly to Wolfe: “You know a police officer was killed this morning there in that shop?”