Nero ate in the kitchen with Fritz and made a hit. Wolfe had told Fritz to call him Jet. When Fritz brought in the salad he announced that Jet had wonderful manners and was very smart.
“Nevertheless,” Wolfe asked, “wouldn’t you think him an insufferable nuisance as a cohabitant?”
On the contrary, Fritz declared, he would be most welcome.
After dinner, feeling that the newly formed Canine Canonizing League needed slowing down, I first took Nero out for a brief tour and, returning, escorted him up the two flights to my room and left him there. I had to admit he was well behaved. If I had wanted to take on a dog in town it could have been him. In my room I told him to lie down, and he did, and when I went to the door to leave, his eyes, which were the color of caramel, made it plain that he would love to come along, but he didn’t get up.
Down in the office Wolfe and I got at the lists. They were special offerings from orchid growers and collectors from all over the world, and it was quite a job to check the thousands of items and pick the few that Wolfe might want to give a try. I sat at his desk, across from him, with trays of cards from our files, and we were in the middle of it, around ten-thirty, when the doorbell rang. I went to the hall and flipped a light switch and saw out on the stoop, through the one-way glass panel in the door, a familiar figure-Inspector Cramer of Homicide.
I went to the door, opened it six inches, and asked politely, “Now what?”
“I want to see Wolfe.”
“It’s pretty late. What about?”
“About a dog.”
It is understood that no visitor, and especially no officer of the law, is to be conducted to the office until Wolfe has been consulted, but this seemed to rate an exception. Wolfe had been known to refuse an audience to people who topped inspectors, and, told that Cramer had come to see him about a dog, there was no telling how he might react in the situation as it had developed.
I considered the matter for about two seconds and then swung the door open and invited cordially, “Step right in.”
II
“PROPERLY SPEAKING,” Cramer declared as one who wanted above all to be perfectly fair and square, “it’s Goodwin I want information from.”
He was in the red leather chair at the end of Wolfe’s desk, just about filling it. His big round face was no redder than usual, his gray eyes no colder, his voice no gruffer. Merely normal.
Wolfe came at me. “Then why did you bring him in here without even asking?”
Cramer interfered for me. “I asked for you. Of course you’re in it. I want to know where the dog fits in. Where is it, Goodwin?”
That set the tone-again normal. He does sometimes call me Archie, after all the years, but it’s exceptional. I inquired, “Dog?”
His lips tightened. “All right, I’ll spell it. You phoned the precinct and gave them a tag number and wanted to know who owns the dog. When the sergeant learned that the owner was a man named Philip Kampf, who was murdered this afternoon in a house at twenty-nine Arbor Street, he notified Homicide. The officer who had been on post in front of that house had told us that the dog had gone off with a man who had said it wasn’t his dog. After we learned of your inquiry about the owner, the officer was shown a picture of you and said it was you who enticed the dog. He’s outside in my car. Do you want to bring him in?”
“No, thanks. I didn’t entice.”
“The dog followed you.”
I gestured modestly. “Girls follow me, dogs follow me, sometimes even your own dicks follow me. I can’t help-”
“Skip the comedy. The dog belonged to a murder victim, and you removed it from the scene of the murder. Where is it?”
Wolfe butted in. “You persist,” he objected, “in imputing an action to Mr. Goodwin without warrant. He did not ‘remove’ the dog. I advise you to shift your ground if you expect us to listen.”
His tone was firm but not hostile. I cocked an eye at him. He was probably being indulgent because he had learned that Jet’s owner was dead.
“I’ve got another ground,” Cramer asserted. “A man who lives in that house, named Richard Meegan, and who was in it at the time Kampf was murdered, has stated that he came here to see you this morning and asked you to do a job for him. He says you refused the job. That’s what he says.” Cramer jutted his chin. “Now. A man at the scene of a murder admits he consulted you this morning. Goodwin shows up at the scene half an hour after the murder was committed, and he entices-okay, put it that the dog goes away with him, the dog that belonged to the victim and had gone to that house with him. How does that look?” He pulled his chin in. “You know damn well the last thing I want in a homicide is to find you or Goodwin anywhere within ten miles of it, because I know from experience what to expect. But when you’re there, there you are, and I want to know how and why and what, and by God I intend to. Where’s the dog?”
Wolfe sighed and shook his head. “In this instance,” he said, almost genial, “you’re wasting your time. As for Mr. Meegan, he phoned this morning to make an appointment and came at eleven. Our conversation was brief. He wanted a man shadowed, but divulged no name or any other specific detail because in his first breath he mentioned his wife-he was overwrought- and I gathered that his difficulty was marital. As you know, I don’t touch that kind of work, and I stopped him. My vanity bristles even at an offer of that sort of job. My bluntness enraged him, and he dashed out. On his way he took his hat from the rack in the hall, and he took Mr. Goodwin’s raincoat instead of his own. Archie. Proceed.”
Cramer’s eyes came to me, and I obeyed. “I didn’t find out about the switch in coats until the middle of the afternoon. His was the same color as mine, but mine’s newer. When he phoned for an appointment this morning he gave me his name and address, and I wanted to phone him to tell him to bring my coat back, but he wasn’t listed, and Information said she didn’t have him, so I decided to go get it. I walked, wearing Meegan’s coat. There was a cop and a crowd and a PD car in front of twenty-nine Arbor Street, and, as I approached, another PD car came, and Purley Stebbins got out and went in, so I decided to skip it, not wanting to go through the torture. There was a dog present, and he nuzzled me, and I patted him. I will admit, if pressed, that I should not have patted him. The cop asked me if the dog was mine, and I said no and went on, and headed for home. I was-”
“Did you call the dog or signal it?”
“No. I was at Twenty-eighth and Ninth Avenue before I knew he was tailing me. I did not entice or remove. If I did, if there’s some kind of a dodge about the dog, please tell me why I phoned the precinct to get the name of his owner.”
“I don’t know. With Wolfe and you I never know. Where is it?”
I blurted it out before Wolfe could stop me. “Upstairs in my room.”
“Bring it down here.”
“Right.”
I was up and going, but Wolfe called me sharply. “Archie!”