A flatfoot was blocking the entrance to keep a man fully twice his weight from entering, and was explaining the situation. The man let him finish and then spoke:
“I know, I know.” His eyes came at me over the flatfoot’s shoulder, and he bellowed, “Archie! Where’s Mr. Cramer?”
I got up and made for the door in no haste or jubilation.
“Okay, take it easy. I’ll go see—”
But I didn’t have to go. His bellow had carried within, and Cramer’s voice came from right behind me:
“Well! Dynamite?”
The flatfoot had moved aside, leaving it to the brass, and Wolfe had crossed the sill. “I came to get a haircut,” he stated, and marched past the sergeant and inspector to the rack, took off his hat, coat, vest, and tie, hung them up, crossed to Jimmie’s chair, the second in the line, and got his bulk up onto the seat. In the mirrored wall fronting him he had a panorama of the row of barbers and dicks in his rear, and without turning his head he called, “Jimmie! If you please?”
Jimmie’s dancing dark eyes came to Cramer and Purley, there by me. So did others. Cramer stood scowling at Wolfe. We all held our poses while Cramer slowly lifted his right hand and carefully and thoroughly scratched the side of his nose with his forefinger. That attended to, he decided to sit down. He went to the first chair in the line, turned it to face Wolfe.
“You want a haircut, huh?”
“Yes sir. I need one.”
“Yeah.” Cramer turned his head. “All right, Kirk. Come and cut his hair.”
Jimmie got up and went past the chair to the cabinet for an apron. Everybody stirred, as if a climax had been reached and passed. Purley strode to the third chair in the line, Philip’s, and got on it. That way he and Cramer had Wolfe surrounded, and it seemed only fair for me to be handy, so I detoured around Cramer, pulled Jimmie’s stool to one side, and perched on it.
Jimmie had Wolfe aproned and his scissors were singing above the right ear. Wolfe barred clippers.
“You just dropped in,” Cramer rasped. “Like Goodwin this morning.”
“Certainly not.” Wolfe was curt but not pugnacious. “You summoned Mr. Goodwin. He told me on the phone of his fruitless talk with Miss Stahl, and I thought it well to come.”
Cramer grunted. “Okay, you’re here. And you’re not going to leave until I know why, without any funny business about murderers in your front room.”
“Not as short behind as last time,” Wolfe commanded.
“Yes, sir.” Jimmie had never had as big or attentive an audience, and he was giving a good show.
“Naturally,” Wolfe said tolerantly, “I expected that. You can badger me, if that’s what you’re after, and get nowhere, but I offer a suggestion. Why not work first? Why don’t we see if we can settle this business? Or would you rather harass me than catch a murderer?”
“I’m working now. I want the murderer. What about you?”
“Forget me for the moment. You can hound me any time. I would like to propose certain assumptions about what happened here today. Do you care to hear them?”
“I’ll listen, but don’t drag it out.”
“I won’t. Please don’t waste time challenging the assumptions; I don’t intend to defend them, much less validate them. They are merely a basis of exploration, to be tested. The first is this — that Wallen found something in the car, the car that had killed the woman... No, I don’t like it this way. I want a direct view, not reflections. Jimmie, turn me around, please.”
Jimmie whirled the chair a half-turn, so that Wolfe’s back was to the mirrored wall, also to me, and he was facing those seated in the chairs against the partition.
I spoke up: “Ed isn’t here.”
“I left him in the booth,” Purley rumbled.
“Get him,” Wolfe instructed. “And Miss Stahl, where is she?”
“In her booth lying down.”
“Archie. Bring Miss Stahl.”
He had a nerve picking on me, with an inspector and a sergeant and three dicks there, but I postponed telling him so and went, as Purley went for Ed. In the booth Janet was still on her back on the chairs, her eyes wide open. At sight of me she fired immediately: “You said you were going to send a reporter—”
I raised my voice to stop her: “Listen to me, girlie. You’re getting a break. Nero Wolfe is here with a suggestion and wants your opinion of it. Can you sit up?”
“Certainly I can, but—”
“Take it easy.” I put an arm behind her shoulders. “Are you dizzy?”
“I’m never dizzy,” she said scornfully, and shook me off and went on solo. She wasn’t taking help from a man, and of course I wasn’t her manager yet. She took the chair I had vacated when Wolfe appeared, next to the magazine table. Ed had been brought by Purley, who was back in Philip’s chair, flanking Wolfe. I returned to the stool.
Jimmie had finished above the ears and was doing the back, so Wolfe’s head was tilted forward.
“Your assumptions?” Cramer asked.
“Yes. I was saying, the first is that Wallen found something in the car that led him to this shop. It couldn’t have been something he was told, for there was no one to tell him anything. It was some object. I asked you not to challenge me, but I didn’t mean to exclude contradictions. If there are facts that repudiate this assumption, or any other, I want them.”
“We made that one without any help.”
“And it still holds?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s fortunate, since all of my assumptions concern that object. The second is that Wallen had it with him when he came here. I can support that with sound—”
“You don’t need to. We made it and we hold it.”
“Very well. That saves time... Not too short back there, Jimmie.”
“No, sir.”
“The third is that he had the object inside the newspaper he was carrying. This is slenderer, but it must be tested. He had not bought the paper shortly before coming here, for it was an early edition of the Daily Press, on sale last evening, not on sale this morning. It was not merely stuffed in his pocket, he had it in his hand; not rolled up, but folded over once. It is—”
“You know a lot about it,” Cramer growled.
“Do me later,” Wolfe snapped. “I know nothing you don’t know. It is difficult to account for him carrying a stale newspaper in that manner except on the assumption that it was a container for some object — at least, the assumption is good enough to work on. The fourth is that whatever the object was, the murderer got it and disposed of it. More than an assumption, that is. No object that could have led him to this shop was found on Wallen’s person or in the booth, so if he had it the murderer got it. The fifth assumption is that the murderer was neither Carl nor Tina. I shall—”
“Ah,” Cramer said. “Tell us why.”
“No. I shall not support that assumption; I merely make it and submit it to our test. Don’t waste time clawing at me. Since Carl and Tina are not involved, and therefore didn’t take the object away with them, it is still here in the shop. That is the sixth assumption, and it is good only if your surveillance of these people here, all these hours, has been constant and alert. What about it? Could any of them have removed such an object?”
“I want to know,” Cramer demanded, “why you’re excluding Carl and Tina.”
“No. Not now.” Wolfe and Cramer couldn’t see each other because Jimmie was in between, starting on the top. “First we’ll complete this test. We must know whether the object has been removed, not by Carl or Tina.”
“No,” Purley said.
“How good a no?”
“Good enough for me. No man has stepped outside this shop alone. Something could have been slipped to a customer, but that’s stretching it, and we’ve had them under our eyes.”