“No.”
“They seem to have that idea.”
“That isn’t true.”
Meeker’s smile came again. It came and went. “Oh,” he said, “I’m a liar.”
“I don’t know whether you’re a liar or not. But if the police have made any such statement or intimation, they are. I would have expected you to be sufficiently familiar with police methods not to come running to me with anything as silly as that.”
“You didn’t tell them that?”
“Certainly not.”
Meeker looked at me. I was back at my desk. “You’re Goodwin. Did you?”
“No,” I said. “Am I a half-wit?”
“Mr. Meeker.” Wolfe was curt. “Now that you’re here, I suggest that you stay. Be seated. You’ll be interested in what I have to say. When you entered I was about to tell these people who killed Mr. Perrit and his daughter and how and why. It will be doubly interesting because the man who did it is present.”
You could have heard a cockroach stomping. Schwartz, who was back in the red leather chair, was blinking as if he would never stop again. Morton was sitting on the edge of the couch, his palms on his knees. Saul Panzer hadn’t moved as much as a finger since Wolfe and I had brought Fabian in.
Fabian, still on his feet, rasped, “I don’t want to miss that.”
“I’m present,” Meeker said.
“Yes, sir, but it wasn’t you. Sit down. I don’t like to talk to faces on different levels. You too, Mr. Fabian.”
“[Missing] as a law student, and indeed, his temerity was unlimited. He didn’t bother about an alias. I suppose at the beginning, he regarded the two worlds as too far apart ever to get connected, and if he regretted it later on it was too late to change. Anyhow, he became engaged to marry Mr. Perrit’s daughter under his own, Morton Schane.”
“That’s a lie.” It was Morton again. His tone wasn’t as loud as it had been before, but it packed more weight.
“You’ll have a turn, Mr. Schane,” Wolfe said.
His glance went around. “As I said, I can’t believe that Mr. Perrit didn’t know about Mr. Schane, though he didn’t mention him to me. I presume Mr. Schane calculated that the highest expectations, in the long run, would be realized through the real daughter and not the counterfeit one. I assume that although Mr. Perrit knew what Mr. Schane was doing, Miss Murphy didn’t, or something would have popped. I also assume that Mr. Perrit had got onto Mr. Schane quite recently, since Mr. Schane had continued his program without interference. I also assume that the reason Mr. Perrit didn’t mention Mr. Schane to me was because he was confident of being able to handle that himself, By his own methods.”
“You assume,” Morton sneered.
Wolfe nodded. “I agree. These presumptions and assumptions are merely embroidery and really not needed.” He kept his eyes on Morton. “Their only purpose is to answer the question, why? Why did you shoot and kill Miss Murphy and Mr. Perrit? Merely to clear the track, to get them out of the way, since the daughter was betrothed to you? Possibly, but I doubt it. More probably, something had happened; you had become aware of some deadly threat. One more assumption-”
Morton stood up. “You’ll eat all this, you fat, lying, son-of-a-bitch! I’m going!”
Fabian stood up.
Meeker stood up.
Morton Schane didn’t move.
Fabian asked, “You got anything else?”
“Nothing but proof,” Wolfe told him, but his eyes stuck to Schane. “Last evening Mr. Perrit’s daughter and this young man dined with us. One or two remarks he made stirred a faint suspicion in me. It was very faint, the merest breath, but it was simple to test him. He was in his last year at law school. I asked him if he had learned to draft torts, and he said he had. A tort is an act, not a document, as any law student would know. You can’t draft a tort any more than you can draft a burglary. That settled him. I had my chef save his wineglass, and after Mr. Schane had left I got in touch with Mr. Panzer and made various arrangements. One resulted in our learning, through the FBI and their fingerprint files, of Mr. Schane’s background and record. Another arrangement, that Mr. Panzer should pick up Mr. Schane last evening in front of the building where Mr. Perrit’s daughter lives, and keep on his trail-”
Morton still had his temerity. His hand went for his hip like a frog for a fly.
He did get his gun out, because Fabian’s first bullet missed, and he even pulled the trigger, but all he hit was plaster. Then he splashed back on the couch, pulling the trigger again. By that time Meeker was shooting too, which I have never understood, but it was something never seen before and surely never will be again-Fabian and Thumbs Meeker blazing away at the same target. Morton slithered off of the couch onto the floor. That was his last move.
XIII
Six days later, Monday again, Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six o’clock, negotiated himself into his chair behind his desk, and rang for beer. I turned away from my typewriter and spoke. “The evening paper says that the District Attorney has decided not to charge Meeker or Fabian because a man has a right to defend himself, and all witnesses agree that Schane shot first.”
“Perfectly sound,” Wolfe murmured.
“Sure. But that reminds me. So far you have refused to loosen up. I would like to make it clear that I do not believe that Saul was on Schane’s tail that night. He damn well didn’t tail him through Seventy-eighth Street, nor later through our street, either, when Schane was in his hot taxicab. I think you put that in because you knew it was the one thing that was sure to make Schane go for his gun.”
“Not sound at all. Mere conjecture.”
“I like it. Another thing. I now think you did have a program. I think you invited Schwartz to come at two o’clock because you wanted a witness, not me who works for you, to what you said to Fabian. You intended to tell Fabian a good deal, maybe everything, about Schane, but do it in such a way that you couldn’t be charged with incitement to crime. You could be doing it just to put us in the clear. You didn’t have a thing on Schane for the murders. You didn’t know then that he was fool enough to go on carrying the gun he had killed them with. You knew Fabian would get Schane, and so your ward wouldn’t marry him, which you didn’t approve of. You thought Beulah was so hipped on him that she would take him in spite of his past-since the killings couldn’t be pinned on him-whereas the fact was that after she had seen me he was just a vague spot to her.”
“Shut up. I want to read.”
“Yes, sir. In an hour or so. Then Schane came here with her and insisted on joining us in the office, and right away you began to ad lib. You figured that with Fabian and Saul and me all here, one of us was bound to plug him before he plugged you. By the way, in the excitement I didn’t see Saul shoot at all, but it was his bullet that went through the middle of Schane’s pump and lodged in his spine. When Meeker showed up too I suppose you thought there was nothing to it, which speaks louder for your optimism than it does for your mathematics. If I had known how you had it sketched I would have offered twelve for five that he would get you, at least some part of you, before he was stopped. I had seen him in action, shooting out of car windows in dim street light.”
Wolfe sighed. “I suppose you have to get it out of your system.”