Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 (11 page)

“Fallacy.”

“I’ll tell him you said so the first chance I get. Also, of course, he couldn’t leave the building. Knowing that Heller started to see callers at eleven o’clock, those people had all come early so as not to have a long wait. Including the murderer. He had to go to the waiting room and wait with the others. One of them did leave, the nurse, and she made a point of telling Goodwin why she was going, and it’s up to her to make it stick under questioning.”

“You were going to connect me with a crime.”

“Right.” Cramer was positive. “First one more fact. The gun was in the closet with the body, under it on the floor. It’s an old Gustein flug, a nasty little short-nose, and there’s not a chance in a thousand of tracing it, though we’re trying. Now here are my assumptions. The murderer went armed to kill, pushed the button at the door of Heller’s office, and was admitted. Since Heller went to his desk and sat, he couldn’t—”

“Established?”

“Yes. He couldn’t have been in fear of a mortal attack. But after some conversation, which couldn’t have been more than a few minutes on account of the timetable as verified, he was not only in fear, he felt that death was upon him, and in that super-soundproofed room he was helpless. The gun had been drawn and was aimed at him. He knew it was all up. He talked, trying to stall, not because he had any hope of living, but because he wanted to leave a message to be read after he was dead. Shaking with nervousness, with a trembling hand, perhaps a pleading one, he upset the jar of pencils on his desk, and then he nervously fumbled with them, moving them around on the desk in front of him, all the while talking. Then the gun went off, and he wasn’t nervous any more. The murderer circled the desk, made sure his victim was dead, and dragged the body to the closet. It didn’t occur to him that the scattered pencils had been arranged to convey a message—if it had, one sweep of a hand would have taken care of it. It was desperately urgent for him to get out of there and into the waiting room.”

Cramer stood up. “If you’ll let me have eight pencils I’ll show you how they were.”

Wolfe opened his desk drawer, but I got there first with a handful taken from my tray. Cramer moved around to Wolfe’s side, and Wolfe, making a face, moved his chair to make room.

“I’m in Heller’s place at his desk,” Cramer said, “and I’m putting them as he did from where he sat.” After getting the eight pencils arranged to his satisfaction, he stepped aside. “There it is, take a look.”

Wolfe inspected it from his side, and I from mine. It was like this from Wolfe’s side:

“You say,” Wolfe inquired, “that was a message?”

“Yes,” Cramer asserted. “It has to be.”

“By mandate? Yours?”

“Blah. You know damn well there’s not one chance in a million those pencils took that pattern by accident. Goodwin, you saw them. Were they like that?”

“Approximately,” I conceded. “I didn’t know there was a corpse in the closet at the time, so I wasn’t as interested in it as you were. But since you ask me, the pencil points were not all in the same direction, and an eraser from one of them was there in the middle.” I put a fingertip on the spot. “Right there.”

“Fix it as you saw it.”

I went around and joined them at Wolfe’s side of the desk and did as requested, removing an eraser from one of the pencils and placing it as I had indicated. Then it was like this:

“Of course,” I said, “you had the photographer shoot it. I don’t say that’s exact, but they were pointing in different directions, and the eraser was there.”

“Didn’t you realize it was a message?”

“Nuts. Someday you’ll set a trap that’ll catch me, and I’ll snarl. Sure, I thought it was Heller’s way of telling me he had gone to the bathroom and would be back in eight minutes. Eight pencils, see? Pretty clever. Isn’t that how you read it?”

“It is not.” Cramer was emphatic. “I think Heller turned it sideways to make it less likely that his attacker would see what it was. Move around here, please. Both of you. Look at it from here.”

Wolfe and I joined him at the left end of the desk and looked as requested. One glance was enough. You can see what we saw by turning the page a quarter-turn counterclockwise.

Cramer spoke. “Could you ask for a plainer NW?”

“I could,” I objected. “Why the extra pencil on the left of the W?”

“He put it there deliberately, for camouflage, to make it less obvious, or it rolled there accidentally, I don’t care which. It is unmistakably NW.” He focused on Wolfe. “I promised to connect you with a crime.”

Wolfe, back in his chair, interlaced his fingers. “You’re not serious.”

“The hell I’m not.” Cramer returned to the red leather chair and sat. “That’s why I came here, and came alone. You deny you sent Goodwin there, but I don’t believe you. He admits he was in Heller’s office ten minutes, because he has to, since the doorman saw him go up and five people saw him enter the waiting room. In a drawer of Heller’s desk is an envelope addressed to you, containing five hundred dollars in cash. But the clincher is that message. Heller, seated at his desk, sure that he is going to be killed in a matter of seconds, uses those seconds to leave a message. Can there be any question what the message was about? Not for me. It was about the person or persons responsible for his death. I am assuming that its purpose was to identify that person or persons. Do you reject that assumption?”

“No. I think it quite likely. Highly probable.”

“You admit it?”

“I don’t admit it, I state it.”

“Then I ask you to suggest any person or persons other than you whom the initials NW might identify. Unless you can do that here and now I’m going to take you and Goodwin downtown as material witnesses. I’ve got men in cars outside. If I didn’t do it the DA would.”

Wolfe straightened up and sighed deep, clear down. “You are being uncommonly obnoxious, Mr. Cramer.” He got to his feet. “Excuse me a moment.” Detouring around Cramer’s feet, he crossed to the other side of the room, to the bookshelves back of the big globe, reached up to a high one, took a book down, and opened it. He was too far away for me to see what it was. He turned first to the back of the book, where the index would be if it had one, and then to a page near the middle of it. He went on to another page, and another, while Cramer, containing his emotions under pressure, got a cigar from a pocket, stuck it in his mouth and sank his teeth in it. He never lit one.

Finally Wolfe returned to his desk, opened a drawer and put the book in it, and closed and locked the drawer. Cramer was speaking. “I’m not being fantastic. You didn’t kill him; you weren’t there. I’m not even assuming Goodwin killed him, though he could have. I’m saying that Heller left a message that would give a lead to the killer, and the message says NW, and that stands for Nero Wolfe, and therefore you know something, and I want to know what. I want a yes or no to this. Do you or do you not know something that indicates, or may indicate, who murdered Leo Heller?”

Wolfe, settled in his chair again, nodded. “Yes.”

“Ah. You do. What?”

“The message he left.”

“The message only says NW. Go on from there.”

“I need more information. I need to know—are the pencils still there on his desk as you found them?”

“Yes. They haven’t been disturbed.”

“You have a man there, of course. Get him on the phone and let me talk to him. You will hear us.”

Cramer hesitated, not liking it, then decided he might as well string along, came to my desk, dialed a number, got his man, and told him Wolfe would speak to him. Wolfe took it with his phone while Cramer stayed at mine.

Wolfe was courteous but crisp. “I understand those pencils are there on the desk as they were found, that all but one of them have erasers in their ends, and that an eraser is there on the desk, between the two groups of pencils. Is that correct?”

“Right.” The dick sounded bored. I was getting it from the phone on the table over by the globe.

“Take the eraser and insert it in the end of the pencil that hasn’t one in it. I want to know if the eraser was loose enough to slip out accidentally.”

“Inspector, are you on? You said not to disturb—”

“Go ahead,” Cramer growled. “I’m right here.”

“Yes, sir. Hold it, please.”

There was a long wait, and then he was back on. “The eraser couldn’t have slipped out accidentaly. Part of it is still clamped in the end of the pencil. It had to be pulled out, torn apart, and the torn surfaces are bright and fresh.
I can pull one out of another pencil and tell you how much force it takes.”

“No, thank you, that’s all I need. But to make certain, and for the record, I suggest that you send the pencil and eraser to the laboratory to check that the torn surfaces fit.”

“Do I do that, Inspector?”

“Yeah, you might as well. Mark them properly.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cramer returned to the red leather chair, and I went to mine. He tilted the cigar upward from the corner of his mouth and demanded, “So what?”

“You know quite well what,” Wolfe declared. “The eraser was yanked out and placed purposely, and was a part of the message. No doubt as a dot after the N to show it was an initial? And he was interrupted permanently before he could put one after the W?”

“Sarcasm don’t change it any. It’s still NW.”

“No. It isn’t. It never was.”

“For me and the district attorney it is. I guess we’d better get on down to his office.”

Wolfe upturned a palm. “There you are. You’re not hare-brained, but you are pigheaded. I warn you, sir, that if you proceed on the assumption that Mr. Heller’s message says NW, you are doomed; the best you can expect is to be tagged a jackass.”

“I suppose you know what it does say.”

“Yes.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“I’m waiting.”

“You’ll continue to wait. If I thought I could earn this money”—Wolfe tapped his pocket—“by deciphering that message for you, that would be simple, but in your present state of mind you would only think I was contriving a humbug.”

“Try me.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe half closed his eyes. “An alternative. You can go on as you have started and see where it lands you, understanding that Mr. Goodwin and I will persistently deny any knowledge of the affair or those concerned in it except what has been given you, and I’ll pursue my
own course; or you can bring the murderer here and let me at him—with you present.”

“I’ll be glad to. Name him.”

“When I find him. I need all six of them, to learn which one Heller’s message identifies. Since I can translate the message and you can’t, you need me more than I need you, but you can save me much time and trouble and expense.”

Cramer’s level gaze had no trace whatever of affection or sympathy. “If you can translate that message and refuse to disclose it, you’re withholding evidence.”

“Nonsense. A conjecture is not evidence. Heaven knows your conjecture that it says NW isn’t. Nor is mine, but it should lead to some if I do the leading.” Wolfe flung a hand impatiently, and his voice rose. “Confound it, am I suggesting a gambol for my refreshment? Do you think I welcome an invasion of my premises by platoons of policemen herding a drove of scared and suspected citizens?”

“No. I know damn well you don’t.” Cramer took the cigar from his mouth and regarded it as if trying to decide exactly what it was. That accomplished, he glanced at Wolfe and then looked at me, by no means as a bosom friend.

“I’ll use the phone,” he said, and got up and came to my desk.

With three of the six scared citizens, it was a good thing that Wolfe didn’t have to start from scratch. They had been absolutely determined not to tell why they had gone to see Leo Heller, and, as we learned from the transcripts of interviews and copies of statements they had signed, the cops had had a time dragging it out of them.

By the time the first one was brought to us in the office, a little after eight o’clock, Wolfe had sort of resigned himself to personal misery and was bravely facing it. Not only had he had to devour his dinner in one-fourth the usual time; also he had been compelled to break one of his strictest rules and read documents while eating—and all that in the company of Inspector Cramer, who had accepted an
invitation to have a bite. Of course Cramer returned to the office with us and called in, from the assemblage in the front room, a police stenographer, who settled himself in a chair at the end of my desk. Sergeant Purley Stebbins, who once in a spasm of generosity admitted that he couldn’t prove I was a hoodlum, after bringing the citizen in and seating him facing Wolfe and Cramer, took a chair against the wall.