“Not, apparently, the one who assaulted Miss Stahl.”
“That was in the shop. Is that a point?”
“I suppose not. Then we assume that the object is still here. The seventh and last assumption is this: that no proper search for such an object has been made. I hasten to add, Mr. Stebbins, that that is not a point, either. You and your men are unquestionably capable of making a proper search, but I assume that you haven’t done so on account of Carl and Tina. Thinking them guilty, naturally you thought they wouldn’t leave an incriminating object behind. Have you searched thoroughly?”
“We’ve looked.”
“Yes. But granting all my assumptions, which of course you don’t, has there been a proper search?”
“No.”
“Then it’s about time. Mr. Fickler!”
Fickler jerked his head up. “Me?”
“You run this place and can help us. However, I address all of you who work here. Put your minds on this. You too, Jimmie.”
Jimmie backed off a step and stood.
“This,” Wolfe said, “could take a few minutes or it could take all night. What we’re after is an object with something on it that identifies it as coming from this shop. Ideally, it should be the name and address or phone number, but we’ll take less if we have to. Since we’re proceeding on my assumptions, we are supposing that it was inside the newspaper as Wallen was carrying it, so it is not a business card or match folder or bottle or comb or brush. It should be flat and of considerable dimensions. Another point: It should be easily recognizable. All of you went to the booth and were questioned by Wallen, but he showed you no such object and mentioned none. Is that correct?”
They nodded and mumbled affirmatives. Ed said, “Yes!”
“Then only the murderer saw it or was told of it. Wallen must for some reason have shown it to him, or asked him about it, and not the rest of you; or its edge may have been protruding from the newspaper, unnoticed by the others; or the murderer may merely have suspected that Wallen had it. In any case, when opportunity offered later for him to dive into the booth and kill Wallen, he got the object. If Mr. Stebbins is right about the surveillance that has been maintained, it is still here in the shop. I put it to you, and especially to you, Mr. Fickler: What and where is it?”
They looked at one another and back at Wolfe. Philip said in his thin tenor, “Maybe it was the newspaper.”
“Possibly. I doubt it... Where is the newspaper, Mr. Cramer?”
“At the laboratory. There’s nothing on it or in it that could have brought Wallen here.”
“What else has been taken from here to the laboratory?”
“Nothing but the scissors and the bottle that was used on Miss Stahl.”
“Then it’s here... All right, Jimmie, finish.”
“It looks to me,” Purley objected in his bass rumble, “like a turkey. Even with your assumptions. Say we find something like what you want, how do we know it’s it? Even if we think it’s it, where does that get us?”
Wolfe was curt: “For one thing, fingerprints.”
“Nuts. If it belongs here, of course it will have their prints.”
“Not their prints, Mr. Stebbins. Wallen’s prints! If he picked it up in the car, he touched it. If he touched it, he left prints. As I understand it, he didn’t go around touching things here. He entered, spoke to Mr. Fickler, was taken to the booth, and never left it alive. If we find anything with his prints on it, we’ve got it. Have you equipment here? If not, I advise you to send for it at once, and also for Wallen’s prints.”
Purley grunted. He didn’t move.
“Go ahead,” Cramer told him. “Phone. Give him what he wants.”
“The search,” Wolfe said, “must be thorough and will take time. First I ask all of you to search your minds. What object is here, belongs here, that meets the specifications as I have described them, Mr. Fickler?”
Fickler shook his head. “I don’t know, unless it’s a towel, and why would he carry a towel like that?”
“He wouldn’t. Anyway, a towel wouldn’t help us any... Philip?”
“No, sir. I don’t know what.”
“Tom?”
Tom just shook his head, gloomily.
“Ed?”
“You’ve got me. Pass.”
“Miss Stahl?”
“I think he might have been keeping the paper because there was something in it he wanted to read. I don’t have time—”
“Yes. We’ll consider that... Jimmie?”
“I don’t know a thing like that in the shop, Mr. Wolfe. Not a thing.”
“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “Either you have no brains at all, or you’re all in a conspiracy. I’m looking straight at such an object right now.”
From behind I couldn’t see where his gaze was directed, but I didn’t have to. The others could, and I saw them. Eleven pairs of eyes, including Purley’s, who had finished at the phone and rejoined us, were aimed at the magazine table next to Janet’s chair, from eleven different angles. Up to that moment my brain may have been as paralyzed as the others’, but it could still react to a stimulus. I left the stool and stood right behind Wolfe, ready if and when needed.
“You mean the magazines?” Cramer demanded.
“Yes. You subscribe to them, Mr. Fickler? They come through the mail? Then the name and address is on them. For instance, that copy of Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine — the name and address of Mr. Fickler, or of The Goldenrod Barbershop, is stenciled on the mailing-wrapper which is still around the magazine. Surely it deserves examination.
“What if he took it from here and had it in his pocket when he stole the car and drove up Broadway? And in the excitement of his misadventure he failed to notice that it had dropped from his pocket and was on the seat of the car? And Wallen found it there, took it, and saw the name and address on it?... You have sent for the equipment and Wallen’s prints, Mr. Stebbins? Then we—”
“Oh! I remember!” Janet cried. She was pointing a finger. “You remember, Jimmie? This morning I was standing here, and you came by with a hot towel, and you had that magazine — the one sticking out of the mailing-wrapper — and you tossed it under there. That’s why you must have been the one to hit me, because I asked if you had been steaming it, and you said—”
Jimmie leaped. I thought his prey was Janet, and in spite of everything I was willing to save her life, but Wolfe and the chair were in my way and cost me a fifth of a second. And it wasn’t Janet he was after; it was the magazine — the copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He went for it in a hurtling dive, and got his hands on it, but then the three dicks, not to mention Cramer and Purley, were on his neck.
Janet didn’t make a sound. I suppose she was considering what to say to the reporters.
“Confound it,” Wolfe grumbled savagely behind me. “My barber.”
Anyhow, that haircut was done.
As stubborn as Cramer was, he never did learn why Wolfe went to get a haircut that day.
He learned plenty about Jimmie Kirk. Kirk was wanted as a bail jumper, under another name, in Wheeling, West Virginia, on an old charge as a car stealer, with various fancy complications such as slugging a respected citizen who had surprised him in the act. Apparently, he had gone straight in New York for a couple of years and then had hooked up with a car-stealing ring. Unquestionably, he had been fortified with liquids that Monday evening. Driving a stolen car while drunk is a risky operation, especially with a stolen magazine in your pocket...
As for Carl and Tina, I took a strong position on them Tuesday evening in the office.