“The main complication,” Wolfe said in his purring tone, “is this. There are a man and a woman in the front room. Granting that one of them is the murderer, which one?”
Cramer frowned at him. “You didn’t say anything about granting. You said that you had caught the murderer.”
“So I have. He or she is in there, under guard. I suppose I’ll have to tell you what happened, if I expect you to start your army of men digging, and it looks as though that’s the only way to go about it. I have no army. To begin with, when I received that threat I hired a man who resembles me-superficially-in physical characteristics to be visible, both in this house and on the street, and I kept to my room. Nothing occurred-”
“Not involved, not inter-”
“Please don’t interrupt,” Wolfe snapped. “I’m telling you what happened.”
He did so. I have a high opinion of myself as a reporter of a series of events, but, listening to Wolfe as an expert, I had to admit I couldn’t have done much better. He didn’t waste any words, but he got it all in. Purley nearly bit the end of his tongue off, trying to get it all in his notebook, but I didn’t bother. Wolfe finished. Cramer sat scowling. Wolfe purred, “Well, sir, there’s the problem. I doubt if it can be solved with what we have, or what is available on the premises. You’ll have to get your men started on the indicated lines. I’ll be available for consultation.”
“I wish,” Cramer growled, gazing at him as if he were looking at a puzzle he had seen and worked at many times but had never got solved, “I wish I knew how much dressing you put on that.”
“Not any. I have only one concern in this. I have no client. I withheld nothing and added nothing.”
“Maybe.” Cramer straightened up like a man of action. “Okay, we’ll proceed on that basis and find out. First of all, I want to ask them some questions.”
“I suppose you do.” Wolfe detested sitting and listening to someone else ask questions, especially in his own office. “And Miss Geer is going to be difficult. She wants a lawyer. You are handicapped, of course, by your official status. Which one do you want first?”
Cramer stood up. “I’ve got to see that room before I talk to either of them. I want to see where things are. Especially that vase.”
I was amazed to see that Wolfe was leaving his chair too, knowing his attitude toward all nonessential movement, but as I went to open the door to the front room for them I reflected that while he hated hearing Cramer ask questions, under the circumstances he would hate even more not hearing him, in case conversation got started in the front room. Stebbins tagged in after them, and I brought up the rear.
Jane was seated on the piano bench. Jensen was on the sofa, but arose as we entered. Fritz was standing by a window, his hand with the gun coming up as Jensen moved.
Wolfe said, “This is Inspector Cramer, Miss Geer.” She didn’t make a sound or move a muscle.
Wolfe said, “I believe you’ve met the inspector, Mr. Jensen.”
“Yes, I have.” Jensen’s voice had gone unused so long it squeaked, and he cleared his throat. “So the agreement not to call in the police was a farce too.” He was bitter.
“There was no such agreement. I said that Mr. Cramer couldn’t be kept out of it indefinitely. The bullet that was fired at me-at Mr. Hackett-came from the gun that was found in that vase”-Wolfe pointed at it-“and so did those that killed your father and Mr. Doyle. So the field has become-ah, restricted.”
“I insist,” Jane put in, in a voice with no resemblance to any I had ever heard her use before, “on my right to consult a lawyer.”
“Just a minute now,” Cramer told her in the tone he thought was soothing. “We’re going to talk this over, but wait till I look around a little.” He proceeded to inspect things, and so did Sergeant Stebbins. They considered distances, and the positions of various objects. Then there was this detaiclass="underline" from what segment of that room could a gun send a bullet through the open door to the office and on through the hole in Wolfe’s chair and the one in the wall?
They were working on that together when Wolfe turned to Fritz and asked him, “What happened to the other cushion?”
Fritz was taken aback. “Other cushion?”
“There were six velvet cushions on that sofa. There are only five. Did you remove it?”
“No, sir.” Fritz gazed at the sofa and counted. “That’s right. They’ve been rearranged to take up the space. I don’t understand it. They were all here yesterday when I cleaned in here.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, sir. Positive.”
“Look for it. Archie, help him. I want to know if that cushion is in this room.”
It seemed like an odd moment to send out a general alarm for a sofa cushion, but since I had nothing else to do at the moment I obliged. Cramer and Purley went on solving a murder and Fritz and I went on hunting the cushion. Jensen watched both operations. Wolfe watched only one-Fritz’s and mine. Jane pretended there was no one in the room but her.
I finally told Wolfe, “It’s gone. It isn’t in here.”
He muttered at me, “I see it isn’t.”
I stared at him. There was an expression on his face that I knew well. It wasn’t exactly excitement, though it always stirred excitement in me. His neck was rigid, as if to prevent any movement of the head, so as not to disturb the brain, his eyes were half shut and not seeing anything, and his lips were moving, pushing out, then relaxing, then pushing out again. I knew it would take more than the loss of a velvet cushion to produce that effect on him. I stared at him.
Suddenly he turned and spoke. “Mr. Cramer! Please leave Mr. Stebbins in here with Miss Geer and Mr. Jensen. You can stay here too, or come with me, as you prefer. Fritz and Archie, come.” He headed for the office.
Cramer, knowing Wolfe’s tones of voice almost as well as I did, spoke to Stebbins and then followed. Fritz and I also followed. So did Jane’s voice.
“This is outrageous! I want-”
I shut the door.
Wolfe waited until he was in his chair before he spoke. “I want to know if that cushion is on the premises. Search the house from the cellar up-except the south room; Mr. Hackett is in there lying down. Start in here.”
Cramer barked, “What the hell is all this about?”
“I’ll give you an explanation,” Wolfe told him, “when I have one. I’m going to sit here and work and must not be disturbed. It may take ten minutes; it may take ten hours. Go in there; stay here; go anywhere, but let me alone.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips started moving. Cramer slid farther back in his chair, crossed his legs, got out a cigar and sank his teeth in it. Searching the office was quite different from searching the front room.
In the first place, it was a lot bigger. Also, there were a lot more places where you could hide a cushion-files, drawers, bookshelves, magazine and newspaper racks, cabinets, miscellaneous. It had a high ceiling, and the steps had to be used for all the upper shelves and file and cabinet compartments. None of them could be ruled out, because the shelves were deep, and it was no trivial job to pull out all those books and slide them back again. Fritz went at it with his usual deliberate thoroughness, and I couldn’t have been called a whirlwind either because I was using my brain along with my hands, trying to work out how and why the fact of a missing cushion crashed into the structure like a comet shattering a world. Now and then a glance at Wolfe showed me that he was still working, his lips moving and his eyes shut. Half an hour or so had passed, maybe a little more, when I heard him let out a grunt. I nearly toppled off the steps, turning to look at him. He was in motion. He picked up his wastebasket, which was kept at the far corner of his desk, held it so that the light shone directly into it, inspected it, shook his head, put it down again, and began opening the drawers of his desk, all the way out, and inspecting their interiors, starting with the top one on the right side. The first two, the one at the top and the one in the middle, apparently didn’t get him anything, but when he yanked out the double-depth one at the bottom as far as it would go, he looked in, bent over closer to see better, stuck a hand in and seemed to be poking around, closed the drawer, got himself erect, and announced: “I’ve found it.”