But they weren’t. Wolfe was in the clubroom, still — or possibly again — on the leather couch, and Chisholm was standing there. As I entered, their heads turned to me.
As I crossed to them Wolfe spoke. “The police are looking for you,” he said coldly.
“Uh-huh.” I was indifferent. “I just dodged a squad.”
“What did you go to that drugstore for?”
I raised the brows. “Oh, you’ve heard about it?”
“Yes. Mr. Hennessy did, and he was kind enough to tell me.” He was dripping sarcasm. “It is a novel experience, learning of your movements through the courtesy of a policeman.”
“I was too busy to phone.” I glanced at Chisholm. “Maybe I should report privately.”
“This is getting to be a goddam farce,” Chisholm growled. His tie was crooked, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had a smear of mustard at the side of his mouth.
“No,” Wolfe said — to me, not to Chisholm. “Go ahead. But be brief.”
I obeyed. With the training and experience I have had, I can report a day of dialogue practically verbatim; but he had said to be brief, so I condensed it, but included all the essentials. When I finished he was scowling at me.
“Then you don’t know whether Gale was actually involved or not. When he failed with Mr. and Mrs. Moyse he may have quit trying.”
“I doubt it.”
“You could have resolved the doubt. You were sitting on him. Or you could have brought him here.”
I might have made three or four cutting remarks if an outsider hadn’t been present. I stayed calm. “Maybe I didn’t make it clear,” I conceded generously. “It was ten to one he had phoned for help — the kind of help that would leave no doubts to resolve — and it might come any second. Not that I was scared, I was too busy, but I wanted to see you once more so I could resign. I resign.”
“Bosh.” Wolfe put his hands on the leather seat for leverage and raised himself to his feet. “Very well. I’ll have to try it.” He moved.
Chisholm put in, “Inspector Hennessy said to notify him immediately if Goodwin showed up.”
Wolfe wheeled on him, snarling. “Am I working for you? Yes! By heaven, I am! Notify Mr. Hennessy? Hah!” He turned and strode through the door that led to Art Kinney’s office.
“It’s a farce,” Chisholm muttered and followed him.
I fell in behind.
They were all in there. The four who were famous athletes, first-string Giants, didn’t look very athletic. Their sap had started draining with the first inning of that awful ball game, and it hadn’t stopped for more than ten hours. Lew Baker, catcher, and Con Prentiss, shortstop, were perched on a desk. Joe Eston, third baseman, and Nat Neill, center fielder, were on chairs.
Art Kinney, manager, was standing over by a window. Doc Soffer was seated at Kinney’s desk, bent over, with his elbows on his knees and his face covered by his hands. Beaky Durkin was propped against a table, saggy and bleary-eyed.
“It had better be good,” someone said — I didn’t know who, because I was placing a chair for Wolfe where he could see them all without spraining his neck. When he was in it, with nothing to spare between the arms, I crossed to a vacant seat over by the radio. Chisholm was there, at my right.
Wolfe’s head moved from side to side and back again. “I hope,” he said grumpily, “you’re not expecting too much.”
“I’m through expecting,” Kinney muttered.
Wolfe nodded. “I know how you feel, Mr. Kinney. All of you. You are weary and low in spirit. You have been personally and professionally humiliated. You have all been talked at too much. I’m sorry I have to prolong it, but I had to wait until the police were gone. Also, since I have no evidence, I had to let them complete their elaborate and skilled routine in search of some. They got none. Actually they have nothing but a druggist that Mr. Goodwin got for them.”
“They’ve got Bill Moyse,” Con Prentiss rumbled.
“Yes, but on suspicion, not on evidence. Of course I admit, because I must, that I am in the same fix. I too have a suspicion but no evidence, only mine is better grounded. I suspect one of you eight men of drugging the drinks and killing Ferrone. What I—”
They made enough noise to stop him. He showed them a palm.
“If you please, gentlemen. I have a question to put. I suspect one of you, but I have no evidence and no way of getting any speedily. That is why I asked Mr. Chisholm to keep you here for consultation with me after the departure of the police. I wanted to ask you: do you want to help? I would like to tell you the reason for my suspicion and ask you to help me get evidence to support it. I think you can if you will. Well?”
“One of us?” Joe Eston demanded.
It was interesting to see them. Naturally they all had an impulse — anyhow, all but one — to look around at faces, but no two of them handled it exactly alike. Chisholm looked straight and full at each in turn. Beaky Durkin sent quick little glances here and there. Doc Soffer, frowning and pursing his lips, turned his head slowly left to right.
“Go ahead, damn it!” Kinney blurted. “Have you got something or not?”
“Yes, I have something,” Wolfe assured him, “but I don’t know how good it is. Without your help it is no good at all.”
“We’ll help if we can. Let’s hear it.”
“Well. First the background. Were the two events — the drugging of the drinks and the murder — connected? The reasonable supposition is yes, until and unless it is contradicted. If they were connected, how? Did Ferrone drug the drinks, and did one of his teammates discover it and, enraged, go for him with the bat? It seems unlikely.” Wolfe focused on Beaky Durkin. “Mr. Durkin, most of what you told me has been corroborated by others, but you knew Ferrone better than anyone else. You discovered him and got him here. You were his roommate and counselor. You told me that because of his brilliant performance this season his salary for next year would be doubled; that his heart was set on winning today’s game and the series; that winning or losing meant a difference of some two thousand dollars to him personally; that his series money would pay his debts with some to spare; and that, knowing him intimately, you are positive that he could not have been bribed to drug the drinks. Is that correct?”
“It sure is.” Durkin was hoarse and cleared his throat. “Nick was a swell kid.” He looked around as if ready for an argument, but nobody started one.
“I know,” Wolfe said, “that the police got no impeachment of that. Do any of you dispute it?”
They didn’t.
“Then, without evidence, it is idiotic to assume that he drugged the drinks. The alternative, supposing that the two events were connected, is the reverse — that someone drugged the drinks and Ferrone knew or suspected it and was going to expose him, and was killed. That is how I see it. Call him X. X could have—”
“To hell with X,” Kinney blurted. “Name him!”
“Presently. X could have put the drugged drinks in the cooler any time during the late morning, as opportunity offered. What led Ferrone to suspect him of skulduggery may not be known, but conjecture offers a wide choice. Ferrone’s suspicion may have been only superficial, but to X any suspicion whatever was a mortal menace, knowing as he did what was going to happen on the ball field. When Ferrone questioned him he had to act. The two were of course in this room together, at the time the rest of you were leaving the clubroom for the field or shortly after. X was, as so many have been, the victim of progressive exigency. At first he needed only money, and to get it he stooped to scoundrelism; but it betrayed him into needing the life of a fellow man.”
“Cut the rhetoric,” Chisholm snapped. “Name him.”
Wolfe nodded. “Naming him is easy. But it is pointless to name him, and may even expose me to an action for slander, unless I so expound it as to enlist your help. As I said, I have no evidence. All I have is a fact about one of you, a fact known to all of you and to the police, which seems to me to point to guilt, but I admit that other interpretations are conceivable. You are better judges of that than I am, and I’m going to present it for your consideration. How can I best do that?”