Structures…”
He was going on: “I hope that none of you will be offended or irritated at the simple experiment we are going to try. It wasn't possible for us to explain it to each of you on the telephone, and I won't make a general explanation now. I suppose some of you will regard it as absurd, and in the case of most of you, and possibly all of you, it will be, but I hope you'll just take it and let it go at that. Then you can tell your friends how dumb the police are, and we'll all be satisfied. But I can assure you we're not doing this just for fun or to try to annoy somebody, but as a serious part of our effort to get to the bottom of this sad affair.
“Now this is all there is to it. I'm going to ask you to go one at a time down that corridor to the third door on the left. I've organized it to take as little time as possible; that's why we asked you to write your name twice, on two different pieces of paper, when you came in. Captain Dixon and Mr. Goodwin will be in that room, and I'll be there with them. We'll ask you a question, and that's all. When you come out you are requested to leave the building, or stay here by the corridor if you want to wait for someone, without speaking to those who have not yet been in the booth. Some of you, those who go in last, will have to be patient. I want to thank you again for your cooperation in this…this sad affair.”
Cramer took a breath of relief, wheeled, and called out toward the bunch of dicks: “All right, Rowcliff, we might as well start with the front row.”
“Mr. Inspector!” Cramer turned again. A woman with a big head and no shoulders had arisen in the middle of the audience and stuck her chin forward. “I want to say, Mr. Inspector, that we are under no compulsion to answer any question you may think fit to ask. I am a member of the Better Citizens' League, and I came here to make sure that-”
Cramer put up a hand at her. “Okay, madam. No compulsion at all-”
“Very well. It should be understood by all that citizenship has its privileges as well as its duties-”
Two or three snickered. Cramer tossed me a glance, and I joined him and followed him down the corridor and into the room. Captain Dixon didn't bother to move even his eyes this time, probably having enough of us already in his line of vision to make a good guess at our identity. Cramer grunted and sat down on one of the silk affairs against the partition.
“Now that we're ready to start,” he growled, “I think it's the bunk.”
Captain Dixon made a noise something between a pigeon and a sow with young. I had decided to wear out the ankles so as to see better. I removed the four top
Royal Medleys from the stack and put them on the floor under the table, out of sight, and picked up the other one.
“As arranged?” I asked Cramer. “Am I to say it?”
He nodded. The door opened, and one of the dicks ushered in a middle-aged woman with a streamlined hat on the side of her head, and lips and fingernails the color of the first coat of paint they put on an iron bridge. She stopped and looked around without much curiosity. I put out a hand at her.
“The papers, please?”
She handed me the slips of paper, and I gave one to Captain Dixon and kept the other. “Now, Mrs. Ballin, please do what I ask, naturally, as you would under ordinary circumstances, without any hesitation or nervousness-”
She smiled at me. “I'm not nervous.”
“Good.” I took the cover from the box and held it out to her. 'Take a piece of candy.”
Her shoulders lifted daintily, and fell. “I very seldom eat candy.”
“We don't want you to eat it. Just take it. Please.”
She reached in without looking and snared a chocolate cream and held it up in her fingers and looked at me. I said, “Okay. Put it back, please. That's all.
Thank you. Good day, Mrs. Ballin.”
She glanced around at us, said, “Dear me,” in a tone of mild and friendly astonishment, and went.
I bent to the table and marked an X on a comer of her paper, and the figure 6 beneath her name. Cramer growled, “Wolfe said three pieces.”
“Yeah. He said to use our judgment too. In my judgment, if that dame was mixed up in anything, even Nero Wolfe would never find it out. What did you think of her, Captain?”
Dixon made a noise something between a hartebeest and a three-toed sloth. The door opened and in came a tall slender woman in a tight-fitting long black coat and a silver fox that must have had giantism. She kept her lips tight and gazed at us with deepest concentrated eyes. I took her slips and gave one to Dixon.
“Now, Miss Claymore, please do what I ask, naturally, as you would under ordinary circumstances, without any hesitation or nervousness. Will you?”
She shrank back a little, but nodded. I extended the box.
“Take a piece of candy.”
“Oh!” she gasped. She goggled at the candy. “That's the box…” She shuddered, backed off, held her clenched fist against her mouth, and let out a fairly good shriek.
I said icily, “Thank you. Good day, madam. All right, officer.”
The dick touched her arm and turned her for the door. I observed, bending to mark her slip, “That scream was just shop talk. That's Beth Claymore, and she's as phony on the stage as she is off. Did you see her in The Price of Folly?”
Cramer said calmly, “It's a goddam joke.” Dixon made a noise. The door opened and another woman came in.
We went through with it, and it took nearly two hours. The employees were saved till the last. What with one thing and another, some of the customers took three pieces, some two or one, and a few none at all. When the first box began to show signs of wear I began with a fresh one from the reserve. Dixon made a few more noises, but confined himself mostly to making notations on his slips, and I went ahead with mine.
There were a few ructions, but nothing serious. Helen Frost came in pale and stayed pale, and wasn't having any candy. Thelma Mitchell glared at me and took three pieces of candied fruit, with her teeth clinched on her lower lip. Dudley
Frost said it was nonsense and started an argument with Cramer and had to be suggested out by the dick. Llewellyn said nothing and made three different selections. Helen's mother picked out a thin narrow chocolate, a Jordan almond, and a gum drop, and wiped her fingers delicately on her handkerchief after she put them back. One customer that interested me because I had heard a few things about him was a bird in a morning coat with the shoulders padded. He looked about forty but might have been a little older, and had a thin nose, slick hair, and dark eyes that never stopped moving. His slip said Perren Gebert. He hesitated a second about having refreshment, then smiled to show he didn't mind humoring us, and took at random.
The employees came last, and last of all was Boyden McNair himself. After I had finished with him, Inspector Cramer stood up.
“Thank you, Mr. McNair. You've done us a big favor. Well be out of here now in two minutes, and you can open up.”
“Did you…get anywhere?” McNair was wiping his face with his handkerchief. “I don't know what all this is going to do to my business. It's terrible.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled it out again. “I've got a headache. I'm going to the office and get some aspirin. I ought to go home, or go to a hospital. Did you…what kind of a trick was this?”
“This in here?” Cramer got out a cigar. “Oh, this was just psychology. I'll let you know later if we got anything out of it.”