"I don't believe it," he said flatly.
"No? What is it you don't believe, Mr Cramer?"
"I don't believe that Goodwin's bughouse. I don't believe he left like that because he was homesick and hungry. I don't believe he went back there to collect a fee from Miss Tormic. I don't believe that as far as you're concerned it's washed up and you're not interested in the murder."
"I haven't said I'm not interested in the murder."
"Ho! Haven't you? Well, are you?"
"Yes." Wolfe grimaced. "Apparently I am. While Archie was on guard at the door Miss Tormic approached and asked him-me-to act in the matter in her interest. He accepted. I am committed, and the amount of profit that may be expected. " He shrugged. "I am committed. That was what happened that made Archie feel he should communicate with me promptly and privately. As you are aware, Mr Cramer, I am quite capable of candour when the occasion presents-"
The inspector clamped his teeth on his cigar and said through them savagely, "I knew it!"
Wolfe's brows went up a millimetre. "You knew?. "
"I knew it the minute I learned Goodwin had been there and gone off to chase a cat. It had already begun to look like a first-class headache, and when I heard about Goodwin that clinched it. So you've got a client! And sure enough, by God, it has to be your client that was in that room fencing with him! It would be!" He rescued the cigar from his teeth with his left hand and hit the desk with his right fist, simultaneously. "Understand this, Wolfe! I came here in a mood of co-operation, in spite of Goodwin's tricky getaway! And what am I getting? Now you try to tell me that in the space of ten seconds, just like that, your man accepted a murder case for you! Nuts!" He hit the desk again. "I know what your abilities are-no one knows that better than I do! And like a fool I come here expecting a little disinterested discussion and you tell me you've got a client! Why have you always got to have a goddam client? Naturally from now on I can't believe a single solitary thing-"
My waving paw finally stopped his bellowing; the phone had rung and I couldn't hear. It was a request for him. With a grunt he got up and came to my desk for it, and I made way for him. For several minutes his part of it was mostly listening, and then apparently he was told something disagreeable, judging from the way he violated the law against the use of profanity on the telephone. He gave some instructions, banged the thing into its cradle, and said in a quiet but very sarcastic voice, "That's nice, now "
He went back to his chair and sat there a minute chewing his lip. "That's just fine," he said. "The case is as good as solved. I won't have to go to any bother about it."
"Indeed," Wolfe murmured.
"Yes indeed. Three Federals have blown in up there. Anybody might suppose that a murder in Manhattan is the business of the homicide squad of which I happen to be the head, but who am I compared with a G-man? If we throw them out on their tail, the commissioner will say tut-tut, we've got to co-operate. It has two pleasant aspects. First, it means an entirely new angle we haven't even suspected, and that's a cheerful idea. Second, whoever solves it and however and whenever, the G-men will grab the credit. They always do."
"Now, Inspector," I remonstrated. "A G-man is the representative of the American people, in fact it would hardly be going too far to say that a G-man is America-"
"Shut up. I wish you'd get an F.B.I. job yourself and they'd send you to Alaska. I can pull you in, you know."
"If you can it's news to me. Who made any law about an innocent man being overcome with repugnance at the sight of blood and taking a taxi home?"
"Where did you see any blood?"
"I didn't. Figure of speech."
"Metonymy," Wolfe muttered.
"Kid me. I like it." Cramer glared at Wolfe. "So you've got a client "
Wolfe made a face. "Tentatively I have. Archie accepted the commission. I say tentatively, because I have never met her. When I've seen her and talked with her I shall know whether she's guilty or not."
"You admit she may be."
"Certainly she may be " Wolfe wiggled a finger. "May I made a suggestion, Mr Cramer? If you want consilience. It would be doubly unprofitable for you to question me, since you have stated that you will believe nothing I tell you, and since all those people are strangers to me and I am completely ignorant of what went on."
"You say."
"Yes, sir, I say. But it might help for me to question you. It would certainly help me, and in the long run it might even help you."
"Great idea. Wonderful idea."
"I think so."
Cramer put his mangled cigar in the tray, got out another one and stuck it in his mouth. "Shoot."
"Thank you. First, of course, achieved results. Have you arrested anyone?"
"No."
"Have you found adequate motive?"
"No."
"Are there any definite conclusions in your mind?"
"No. Nor indefinite either."
"I see. No indictments from the mechanical routine-fingerprints, photographs, blabbing objects?"
"No. There's one object, and maybe two, that ought to be there and we can't find it. Do you know anything about fencing?"
Wolfe shook his head. "Nothing whatever."
"Well, the thing he was killed with is called an йpйe. It's triangular in section, with no cutting edge, and the point is so blunted that if you thrust at a man hard enough to go through him it would merely break the blade, which is quite flexible. In fencing, they fasten a little steel button on the end, and the button has three tiny points. The points are only to show on your opponent's jacket when you've made a hit; the thick body of the button wouldn't permit the йpйe to pierce through the pad they wear or the mask over their face."
I said, "He didn't have any mask on."
"I know he didn't, so he wasn't actually fencing at the moment he was killed. Miltan says no one ever fences with the йpйe without a mask. The one Ludlow had been wearing was on a bench over by the wall. And the йpйe that was sticking through him had no button on it, just the blunted end, and it couldn't possibly have pierced him like that. But there was that thing in the cabinet in the office which Mrs Miltan discovered was missing while your Mr Goodwin was present. Which she calls a culdymore. You talk French; you can say it better than I can."
"Col de mort."
"Right. Anyone could have taken it from the cabinet. The chances are a million to one it was used on the йpйe that killed Ludlow. At a distance of a few feet, and especially with the йpйe in motion, he would never have seen it was that and not the ordinary fencing button. But the culdymore was not on the йpйe. So it had been removed. So everyone was searched and twenty men went through that joint like molasses through cheese-cloth. They didn't find it. One person and only one had left that building, namely Goodwin here. You don't imagine he took it with him for a souvenir?"
Wolfe smiled slightly. "I wouldn't suppose so. Thrown out of a window perhaps?"
"It could have been. They're still looking, in the damn dark with flashlights. Also for the other objects which may be missing. Miss Tormic has an idea a glove is gone, one of the ladies'-size fencing gauntlets, from the cupboard in the locker room. Miss Lovchen and the dame that calls herself Zorka don't think so. Mrs Miltan won't commit herself. Nobody seems to know for sure exactly how many there were."
"What about the button that had to be removed from the йpйe before the col de mort could be used?"
"They're all over the place. Right in the fencing rooms in drawers."