His eyes narrowed, then he realized that was the wrong attitude and opened them. “Now it’s different. If a man like Otis Jarrell hires you for something so important that you’re even willing to get along without Goodwin so he can go and stay there under an assumed name, with a job as Jarrell’s secretary, and if the man who formerly had the job gets murdered three days later, do you expect me to believe there’s no connection?”
“I’m not sure I follow you, Mr. Cramer. Connection between what?”
“Like hell you don’t follow me! Between whatever Jarrell hired you for and the murder!”
Wolfe nodded. “I assumed you meant that, but I am wary of assumptions. You should be too. You are assuming that Mr. Jarrell hired me. Have you grounds for that? Isn’t it possible that someone else hired me, and I imposed Mr. Goodwin on Mr. Jarrell’s household to get information for my client?”
That settled it. Ever since I had opened the door a crack and got Cramer’s message for Wolfe, I had been thinking that Wolfe would probably decide that the cat was too scratchy to hang on to, and would let Cramer take it, but not now. Jarrell’s gun would not be mentioned. The temptation to teach Cramer to be wary of assumptions had been irresistible.
Cramer was staring. “By God,” he said. “Who’s your client? No. I’d never pry that out of you. But you can tell me this: was Eber your client?”
“No, sir.”
“Then is it Jarrell or isn’t it? Is Jarrell your client?”
Wolfe was having a picnic. “Mr. Cramer. I am aware that if I have information relevant to the crime you’re investigating I am bound to give it to you; but its relevance may be established, not by your whim or conjecture, but by an acceptable process of reason. Since you don’t know what information I have, and I do, you can’t apply that process and it must be left to me. My conclusion is that I have nothing to tell you. I have answered your one question that was clearly relevant, whether Mr. Eber was my client. You will of course ask Mr. Jarrell if he is my client, telling him his secretary is my confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin; I can’t prevent that. I’m sorry you gave yourself the trouble of coming, but your time hasn’t been entirely wasted; you have learned that I wasn’t working for Mr. Eber.”
Cramer looked at me, probably because, for one thing, if he had gone on looking at Wolfe he would have had to get his hands on him; and for another, there was the question whether I might possibly disagree with the conclusion Wolfe had reached through an acceptable process of reason. I met his look with a friendly grin which I hoped wouldn’t strike him as sarcastic.
He put the cigar in his mouth and closed his teeth on it, got up, risked another look at Wolfe, not prolonged, turned, and tramped out. I stayed put long enough for him to make it down the hall, then went to see if he had been sore enough to try the old Finnegan on us. He hadn’t; he was out, pulling the door shut as he went.
As I stepped back into the office Wolfe snapped at me, “Get Mr. Jarrell.”
“The assistant DA is probably still with him.”
“No matter, get him.”
I went to my desk, dialed, got Nora Kent, and told her that Mr. Wolfe wished to speak to Mr. Jarrell. She said he was engaged and would call back, and I said the sooner the better because it was urgent. Say two minutes. It wasn’t much more than that before the ring came, and Jarrell was on, and Wolfe got at his phone. I stayed at mine.
Jarrell said he had gone to another phone because two men from the district attorney’s office were with him, and Wolfe asked, “Have they mentioned Mr. Goodwin or me?”
“No, why should they?”
“They might have. Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Squad was here and just left. The entrance to your address is under surveillance and Mr. Goodwin was recognized when he came out this morning, and it has been learned that he has been there as your secretary since Monday, with Alan Green as his name. Mr. Goodwin told you what would happen if that were disclosed, and it has happened. I gave Mr. Cramer no information whatever except that Mr. Eber was not my client. Of course you—”
“Did you tell him what I hired you for?”
“You’re not listening. I said I gave him no information whatever. I didn’t even tell him that you hired me, let alone what for. Of course they’ll be at you immediately, since they know about Mr. Goodwin. I suggest that you reflect on the situation with care. Whatever you tell them, do not fail to inform me at once. If you admit that you hired me—”
“What the hell, I’ve got to admit it! You say they know about Goodwin!”
“So they do. But I mentioned to Mr. Cramer the possibility that someone else hired me to send Goodwin there to spy on you. Merely as a possibility. Please understand that I told him nothing.”
“I see.” Silence. “I’ll be damned.” Silence. “I’ll have to think it over and decide what to say.”
“You will indeed. It will probably be best for you to tell them that you hired me on a personal and confidential matter, and leave it at that. But on one point, between you and me, there must be no ambiguity. I am free to disclose what I know about your gun, and its disappearance, at any moment that I think is necessary or desirable. You understand that.”
“That’s not the way you put it. You said you’d have to report it if the possibility that my gun was used to kill Eber became a probability.”
“Yes, but the decision rests with me. I am risking embarrassment and so is Mr. Goodwin. We don’t want to lose our licenses. It would have been prudent to tell Mr. Cramer when he was here, but he provoked me.”
He hung up and glared at me as if I had done the provoking.
I hung up and glared back. “License my eye,” I told him. “We’re risking eating on the State of New York for one to ten years with time off for good behavior.”
“Do you challenge me?” he demanded. “You were present. You have a tongue, heaven knows. Would you have loosened it if I hadn’t been here?”
“No,” I admitted. “He goes against the grain. He has bad manners. He lacks polish. Look at you for contrast. You are courteous, gracious, tactful, eager to please. What now? I left up there to be out of the way when company came, but now they’re on to me. Do I go back?”
He said no, not until we heard further from Jarrell, and I went to the front room to tell Orrie to come and get on with the day’s work, and then returned to the couch and the Times.
Chapter 10
The other day I looked up “moot” in the dictionary. The murderer of James L. Eber had just been convicted, and, discussing it, Wolfe and I had got onto the question of whether or not a life would have been saved if he had told Cramer that Saturday morning about Jarrell’s gun, and he had said it was moot, and, though I thought I knew the word well enough, I went to the dictionary to check. In spite of the fact that I had taken a position just to give the discussion some spirit, I had to agree with him on that. It was moot all right, and it still is.
The thirty hours from noon Saturday until six o’clock Sunday afternoon were not without events, since even a yawn is an event, but nobody seemed to be getting anywhere, least of all me. Soon after lunch Saturday, at Wolfe’s table with him and Orrie, Jarrell phoned to tell us the score. Cramer had gone straight there from our place to join the gathering in the library. Presumably he hadn’t started barking, since even an inspector doesn’t bark at an Otis Jarrell unless he has to, but he had had questions to which he intended to get answers. Actually he had got only one answered: had Jarrell hired Nero Wolfe to do something? Yes. Plus its rider: had Archie Goodwin, alias Alan Green, come as Jarrell’s secretary to do the something Wolfe had been hired for, or to help do it? Yes. That was all. Jarrell had told them that the something was a personal and confidential matter, with no bearing on their investigation, and that therefore they could forget it.