The Silent Speaker (2 page)

THE LAST NUMBER ON the program proved to be the most complicated, chiefly because I was dealing with total strangers. I didn't know a soul connected with the National Industrial Association, and so had to start from scratch. The whole atmosphere, from the moment I entered the offices on the thirtieth floor of a building on Forty-first Street, made a bad impression on me. The reception room was too big, they had spent too much money on rugs, upholstery had been carried to extremes, and the girl at the desk, though not a bad specimen from the standpoint of design, had been connected up with a tube running from a refrigerating unit. She was so obviously congealed for good that there wasn't the slightest temptation to start thawing her out. With females between twenty and thirty, meeting a certain standard in contour and coloring, I do not believe in being distant, but I was with that one as I handed her a card and said I wanted to see Hattie Harding.

The hurdles I had to make, you might have thought Hattie Harding was the goddess of a temple and this was it, instead of merely the Assistant Director of Public Relations for the NIA, but I finally made the last jump and was taken in to her. Even she had space, rugs, and upholstery. Personally, she had quality, but the kind that arouses one or two of my most dangerous instincts, and I do not mean what some may think I mean. She was somewhere between twenty-six and forty-eight, tall, well put together, well dressed, and had skeptical, competent dark eyes which informed you with the first glance that they knew everything in the world.

'This is a pleasure,' she declared, giving me a firm and not cold handshake. 'To meet the Archie Goodwin, coming direct from the Nero Wolfe. Really a great pleasure. At least, I suppose you do'Come direct, I mean?'

I concealed my feelings. 'On a beeline, Miss Harding. As the bee from the flower.'

She laughed competently. 'What! Not to the flower?'

I laughed back. We were chums. 'I guess that's nearer the truth, at that, because I admit I've come to get a load of nectar. For Nero Wolfe. He thinks he needs a list of the members of the NIA who were at that dinner at the Waldorf Tuesday evening, and sent me here to get it. He has a copy of the printed list, but he needs to know who is on it that didn't come and who came that isn't on it. What do you think of my syntax?'

She didn't answer that, and she was through laughing. She asked, not as chum to chum, 'Why don't we sit down?'

She moved toward a couple of chairs near a window, but I pretended not to notice and marched across to one for visitors at the end of her desk, so she would have to take her desk chair. The Memo from me to Wolfe, initialed for Inspector Cramer by me, was now in the side pocket of my coat, destined to be left on the floor of Miss Harding's office, and with the corner of her desk between us the operation would be simple.

'This is very interesting,' she declared. 'What does Mr. Wolfe want the list for?'

'Being honest,' I smiled at her, 'I can but tell you an honest lie. He wants to ask them for their autographs.'

'I'm honest too,' she smiled back. 'Look, Mr. Goodwin. You understand of course that this affair is in the highest degree inconvenient for my employers. Our guest of the evening, our main speaker, the Director of the Bureau of Price Regulation, murdered right there just as the dinner was starting. I am in a perfectly terrible spot. Even if for the past ten years this office has done the best public relations job on record, which I am not claiming for it, all its efforts may have been destroyed by what happened there in ten seconds. There is no-'

'How do you know it happened in ten seconds?'

She blinked at me. 'Why-it must-the way-'

'Not proven,' I said conversationally. 'He was hit four times on the head with the monkey wrench. Of course the blows could all have been struck within ten seconds. Or the murderer could have hit him once and knocked him unconscious, rested a while and then hit him again, rested some more and hit him the third-'

'What are you doing?' she snapped. 'Just trying to see how objectionable you can be?'

'No, I'm demonstrating what a murder investigation is like. If you made that remark to the police, that it happened in ten seconds, you'd never hear the last of it. With me it goes in one ear and out the other, and anyhow I'm not interested, since I'm here only to get what Mr. Wolfe sent me for, and we'd greatly appreciate it if you would give us that list.'

I was all set for quite a speech, but stopped on seeing her put both hands to her face, and I was thinking my lord she's going to weep with despair at the untimely end of public relations, but all she did was press the heels of her palms against her eyes and keep them there. It was the perfect moment to drop the Memo on the rug, so I did.

She kept her hands pressed to her eyes long enough for me to drop a whole flock of memos, but when she finally removed them the eyes still looked competent.

'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but I haven't slept for two nights and I'm a wreck. I'll have to ask you to go. There's to be another conference in Mr. Erskine's office about this awful business, it starts in ten minutes and I'll have to do myself for it, and anyway you know perfectly well I couldn't give you that list without approval from higher up, and besides if Mr. Wolfe is as intimate with the police as people say, why can't he get it from them'Talk about your syntax, look at the way I'm talking. Only one thing you might tell me, I sincerely hope you will, who has engaged Mr. Wolfe to work on this?'

I shook my head and got upright. 'I'm in the same fix you are, Miss Harding. I can't do anything important, like answering a plain simple question, without approval from higher up. How about a bargain'I'll ask Mr. Wolfe if I may answer your question, and you ask Mr. Erskine if you may give me the list. Good luck at your conference.'

We shook hands, and I crossed the rugs to the door without lingering, not caring to have her find the Memo in time to pick it up and hand it to me.

The midtown midday traffic being what it was, the short trip to West Thirty-fifth Street was a crawl all the way. I parked in front of the old stone house, owned by Nero Wolfe, that had been my home for over ten years, mounted the stoop, and tried to get myself in with my key, but found that the bolt was in and had to ring the bell. Fritz Brenner, cook, housekeeper, and groom of the chambers, came and opened up, and, informing him that the chances looked good for getting paid Saturday, I went down the hall to the office. Wolfe was seated behind his desk, reading a book. That was the only spot where he was ever really comfortable. There were other chairs in the house that had been made to order, for width and depth, with a guaranty for up to five hundred pounds-one in his room, one in the kitchen, one in the dining room, one in the plant rooms on the roof where the orchids were kept, and one there in the office, over by the two-foot globe and the book-shelves-but it was the one at his desk that nearly always got it, night and day.

As usual, he didn't lift an eye when I entered. Also as usual, I paid no attention to whether he was paying attention.

'The hooks are baited,' I told him. 'Probably at this very moment the radio stations are announcing that Nero Wolfe, the greatest living private detective when he feels like working, which isn't often, is wrapping up the Boone case. Shall I turn it on?'

He finished a paragraph, dog-eared a page, and put the book down. 'No,' he said. 'It's time for lunch.' He eyed me. 'You must have been uncommonly transparent. Mr. Cramer has phoned. Mr. Travis of the FBI has phoned. Mr. Rohde of the Waldorf has phoned. It seemed likely that one or more of them would be coming here, so I had Fritz bolt the door.'

That was all for the moment, or rather for the hour or more, since Fritz entered to announce lunch, which that day happened to consist of corn cakes with breaded fresh pork tenderloin, followed by corn cakes with a hot sauce of tomatoes and cheese, followed by corn cakes with honey. Fritz's timing with corn cakes was superb. At the precise instant, for example, that one of us finished with his eleventh, here came the twelfth straight from the griddle, and so on.

I CALLED IT OPERATION Payroll. That name for the preliminary project, the horning-in campaign, was not, I admit, strictly accurate. In addition to the salaries of Fritz Brenner, Charley the cleaning man, Theodore Horstmann the orchid tender, and me, the treasury had to provide for other items too numerous to mention. But on the principle of putting first things first, I called it Operation Payroll.

It was Friday morning before we caught the fish we were after. All that happened Thursday afternoon was a couple of unannounced visits, one from Cramer and one from G. G. Spero, and Wolfe had told me not to let them in, so they went away without crossing the sill. To show how sure I felt that the fish would sooner or later bite. I took the trouble Thursday afternoon and evening to get up a typed report of the Boone case as I knew it, from newspaper accounts and a talk I had had Wednesday with Sergeant Purley Stebbins. I've just read that report over again and decided not to copy it all down here but only hit the high spots.

Cheney Boone, Director of the government's Bureau of Price Regulation, had been invited to make the main speech at a dinner of the National Industrial Association on Tuesday evening at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. He had arrived at ten minutes to seven, before the fourteen hundred guests had gone to their tables, while everyone was still milling around drinking and talking. Taken to the reception room reserved for guests of honor, which as usual was filled with over a hundred people, most of whom weren't supposed to be there, Boone, after drinking a cocktail and undergoing a quantity of greetings and introductions, had asked for a private spot where he could look over his speech, and had been taken to a small room just off the stage. His wife, who had come with him to the dinner, had stayed in the reception room. His niece, Nina Boone, had gone along to the private spot to help with the speech if required, but he had almost immediately sent her back to the reception room to get herself another cocktail and she had remained there.

Shortly after Boone and his niece had departed for the murder room, as the papers called it, Phoebe Gunther had showed up. Miss Gunther was Boone's confidential secretary, and she had with her two can openers, two monkey wrenches, two shirts (men's), two fountain pens, and a baby carriage. These were to be used as exhibits by Boone for illustrating points in his speech, and Miss Gunther wanted to get them to him at once, so she was escorted to the murder room, the escort, a member of the NIA, wheeling the baby carriage, which contained the other items, to the astonished amusement of the multitude as they passed through. Miss Gunther remained with Boone only a couple of minutes, delivering the exhibits, and then returned to the reception room for a cocktail. She reported that Boone had said he wanted to be alone.

At seven-thirty everybody in the reception room was herded out to the ballroom, to find their places on the dais and at the tables, where the fourteen hundred were settling down and the waiters were ready to hurl themselves into the fray. About seven forty-five Mr. Alger Kates arrived. He was from the Research Department of the BPR, and he had some last-minute statistics which were to be used in Boone's speech. He came to the dais looking for Boone, and Mr. Frank Thomas Erskine, the President of NIA, had told a waiter to show him where Boone was. The waiter had led him through the door to backstage and pointed to the door of the murder room.

Alger Kates had discovered the body. It was on the floor, the head battered with one of the monkey wrenches, which was lying nearby. The implication of what Kates did next had been hinted at in some newspapers, and openly stated in others: namely, that no BPR man would trust any NIA man in connection with anything whatever, including murder. Anyhow, instead of returning to the ballroom and the dais to impart the news, Kates had looked around backstage until he found a phone, called the hotel manager, and told him to come at once and bring all the policemen he could find.

By Thursday evening, forty-eight hours after the event, something like a thousand other details had been accumulated, as for instance that nothing but smudges were found on the handle of the monkey wrench, no identifiable prints, and so forth and so forth, but that was the main picture as it had been painted when I was typing my report.

Chapter 7

FRIDAY WE GOT THE bite. Since Wolfe spends every morning from nine to eleven up in the plant rooms, I was in the office alone when the call came. The call took the regular routine in this Land of the Secretary.

'Miss Harding calling Mr. Wolfe. Put Mr. Wolfe on, please.'

If I put it all down it would take half a page to get me, not Mr. Wolfe, just me, connected with Miss Harding. Anyhow I made it, and got the idea across that Wolfe was engaged with orchids and I would have to do. She wanted to know how soon Wolfe could get up there to see Mr. Erskine, and I explained that he seldom left the house for any purpose whatever, and never merely on business.

'I know that!' she snapped. She must have missed another night's sleep. 'But this is Mr. Erskine!'

I knew we had him now, so I snooted her. 'To you,' I agreed, 'he is all of that. To Mr. Wolfe he is nothing but a pest. Mr. Wolfe hates to work, even at home.'

Instructed to hold the wire, I did so, for about ten minutes. Finally her voice came again:

'Mr. Goodwin?'

'Still here. Older and wiser, but still here.'

'Mr. Erskine will be at Mr. Wolfe's office at four-thirty this afternoon.'

I was getting exasperated. 'Listen, Public Relations,' I demanded, 'why don't you simplify it by connecting me with this Erksine'If he comes at four-thirty he'll wait an hour and a half. Mr. Wolfe's hours with orchids are from nine to eleven in the morning and from four to six in the afternoon, and nothing short of murder-I mean nothing-has ever changed it or ever will.'

'That's ridiculous!'

'Sure it is. So is this ring-around-the-rosy method for a man communicating with another man, but I stand for it.'

'Hold the wire.'

I never got connected with Erskine, that was too much to expect, but in spite of everything we finally completed an arrangement, fighting our way through the obstacles, so that when Wolfe come downstairs at eleven o'clock I was able to announce to him:

'Mr. Frank Thomas Erskine, President of the National Industrial Association, with outriders, will be here at ten minutes past three.'

'Satisfactory, Archie,' he muttered.

Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It's childish.