Hewitt said, “That phone call is for me,” and was moving for the door. I got in front of him. Dill arose, looking uncertain.
“I don’t know whether I can—”
“Certainly you can,” Wolfe assured him. “Go ahead. The phone is there on the potting bench. Theodore, confound it, let him by and come in here and close the door.”
Theodore obeyed orders. When Dill had passed through Theodore pulled the door shut and stood there resenting us. Hewitt sat down again and put his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. Anne had her head turned not to look at him. That made her face Fred Updegraff, who was next to her, and I became aware for the first time that he was holding her hand. Hardly as private as in a taxi, but he had her hand.
“While we’re waiting,” Wolfe observed, “I may as well finish my speculations about the cane. Mr. Hewitt may have decided to use it on the theory that the fact of its being his cane would divert suspicion away from him instead of toward him. Was that it, Mr. Hewitt? But in that case, why did you submit to my threat to divulge the fact that it was your cane? I believe I can answer that too. Because you mistrusted my acumen? Because you were afraid my suspicions would be aroused if you failed to conform to the type of the eminent wealthy citizen zealously guarding his reputation from even the breath of scandal? Things like that gather complications as they go along. It’s too bad.”
Wolfe looked at Hewitt, and shook his head as though regretfully. “But I have no desire to torment you. Theodore, try the door.”
“I don’t have to,” Theodore said, standing with his back to the door. “I heard the bolt. The lower one squeaks.”
I stood up. Not that there was anything I intended to do or could do, but I was coming to in a rush and I couldn’t stay sitting. Cramer did, but his eyes, on Wolfe, were nothing but narrow slits.
“Try it anyway,” Wolfe said quietly.
Theodore turned and lifted the latch and pushed, and turned back again. “It’s bolted.”
“Indeed,” Wolfe said with a tingle in his voice. His head turned. “Well, Miss Lasher, what do you think of it?” His eyes swept the faces. “I ask Miss Lasher because she knew all along that I was lying. She knew it couldn’t have been Mr. Hewitt who put that cane there on the floor of the corridor, because she saw Mr. Dill do it. Mr. Hewitt, let me congratulate you on a superb performance — you can’t force it, Mr. Cramer, it’s a sturdy door—”
Cramer was at it, lifting the latch, assaulting the panel with his shoulder. He turned, his face purple, blurted, “By God, I might have known—,” jumped across and grabbed up a heavy packing-box.
“Archie!” Wolfe called sharply.
In all my long and varied association with Inspector Cramer I had never had an opportunity to perform on him properly. This, at last, was it. I wrapped myself around him like cellophane around a toothbrush and turned on the pressure. For maybe five seconds he wriggled, and just as he stopped Fred Updegraff sprang to his feet and gasped in horror:
“Ciphogene! For God’s sake—”
“Stop it!” Wolfe commanded. “I know what I’m doing! There is no occasion for panic. Mr. Cramer, there is an excellent reason why that door must not be opened. If Archie releases you, will you listen to it? No? Then, Archie, hold him. This is a fumigating room where we use ciphogene, a gas which will kill a man by asphyxiation in two minutes. The pipe runs from a tank in the potting room and the valve is in there. This morning I closed the outlet of the pipe in this room, and removed the plug from an outlet in the potting room. So if Mr. Dill has opened that valve in the potting room, he is dead, or soon will be. And if you batter a hole in that door I won’t answer for the consequences. We might get out quickly enough and we might not.”
“You goddam balloon,” Cramer sputtered helplessly. It was the first and only time I ever heard him cuss in the presence of ladies.
I unwrapped myself from him and stepped back. He shook himself and barked at Wolfe:
“Are you going to just sit there? Are we going to just sit here? Isn’t there — can’t you call someone—”
“I’ll try,” Wolfe said placidly. He lifted the osmundine fork and thumped the floor with it, five times, at regular intervals.
Lewis Hewitt murmured, believe it or not, apparently to Theodore, “I was in the dramatic club at college.”
10
“All right, I’ll buy you a medal,” Inspector Cramer said in utter disgust.
Five hours had passed. It was six thirty that evening, and the three of us were in the office. I was at my desk, Cramer was in the red leather chair, and Wolfe was seated behind his own desk, leaning back with his fingertips touching on top of his digestive domain. He looked a little creasy around the eyes, which were almost open.
Cramer went on sputtering: “Dill was a murderer, and he’s dead, and you killed him. You maneuvered him into the potting room with a fake phone call, and he took the bait and bolted the door to the fumigating room and opened the valve. And then why didn’t he walk out and go on home? How did you know he wouldn’t do that?”
“Pfui,” Wolfe said lazily. He grunted. “Without waiting four minutes to make sure the ciphogene had worked? And leaving the door bolted, and the valve open? Mr. Dill was a fool, but not that big a fool. After a few minutes he would have closed the valve and opened the door, held his nose long enough to take a look at us and make sure we were finished, and departed, leaving the door closed but not bolted to give it the appearance of an accident. And probably leaving the valve a bit loose so it would leak a little.” Wolfe grunted again. “No. That wasn’t where the thin ice was. It was next thing to a certainty that Mr. Dill wouldn’t decamp without having a look inside at us.”
“You were sure of that.”
“I was.”
“You admit it.”
“I do.”
“Then you murdered him.”
“My dear sir.” Wolfe wiggled a finger in exasperation. “If you are privately branding me to relieve your feelings, I don’t mind. If you are speaking officially, you are talking gibberish. I could be utterly candid even to a jury, regarding my preparations. I could admit that I plugged the outlet in the fumigating room, and opened the one in the potting room, so that it would be the latter, and not the former, that would be filled with ciphogene if Mr. Dill bolted that door and opened that valve. I could admit that I arranged with Mr. Hewitt to play his part, appealing to him in the interest of justice. He is a public-spirited man. And I discovered his weakness; he has always wanted to be an actor. He even gave me permission to mention his cane, and to recite that wild tale about him — which of course was true, though not true about him, but about Mr. Dill.
“I could admit that I arranged with Theodore also to play his part. He works for me and obeyed orders. I could admit that I had Fritz stationed in the room below, and my three thumps on the floor were a signal to him to make the telephone call for Mr. Hewitt, and the five thumps, later, told him to come upstairs and start the ventilating blowers in the potting room, which can be done from the hall. I could admit that I deliberately postponed the second signal to Fritz for three minutes after I learned that the door had been bolted; that I had previously released a minute quantity of ciphogene in the potting room and fumigating room so that Mr. Dill’s nose would be accustomed to the smell and would not take alarm at any sudden odor in the potting room after he turned on the valve; that all my arrangements were made with the idea that if Mr. Dill should open that valve, thinking to murder all eight of us, he would die, I could admit all that to a jury.”