Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07 by Over My Dead Body Page B

getting? Now you try to tell me that in the space of ten seconds, just like that, your man accepted a murder case for you! Nuts!” He hit the desk again. “I know what your abilities are, no one knows that betterthan I do! And like a fool I came here expecting a little disinterested discussion and you tell me you’ve got a client! Why have you always got to have a goddam client? Naturally from now on I can’t believe a single solitary thing—”
    My waving paw finally stopped his bellowing; the phone had rung and I couldn’t hear. It was a request for him. With a grunt he got up and came to my desk for it, and I made way for him. For several minutes his part of it was mostly listening, and then apparently he was told something disagreeable, judging from the way he violated the law against the use of profanity on the telephone. He gave some instructions, banged the thing into its cradle, and said in a quiet but very sarcastic voice, “That’s nice, now.”
    He went back to his chair and sat there a minute chewing his lip. “That’s just fine,” he said. “The case is as good as solved. I won’t have to go to any bother about it.”
    “Indeed,” Wolfe murmured.
    “Yes indeed. Three Federals have blown in up there. Anybody might suppose that a murder in Manhattan is the business of the homicide squad of which I happen to be the head, but who am I compared with a G-man? If we throw them out on their tail, the commissioner will say tut-tut, we’ve got to co-operate. It has two pleasant aspects. First, it means an entirely new angle we haven’t even suspected, and that’s a cheerful idea. Second, whoever solves it and however and whenever, the G-men will grab the credit. They always do.”
    “Now, Inspector,” I remonstrated. “A G-man is the representative of the American people, in fact it would hardly be going too far to say that a G-man is America—”
    “Shut up. I wish you’d get an F.B.I. job yourself and they’d send you to Alaska. I can pull you in, you know.”
    “If you can it’s news to me. Who made any law about an innocent man being overcome with repugnance at the sight of blood and taking a taxi home?”
    “Where did you see any blood?”
    “I didn’t. Figure of speech.”
    “Metonymy,” Wolfe muttered.
    “Kid me. I like it.” Cramer glared at Wolfe. “So you’ve got a client.”
    Wolfe made a face. “Tentatively I have. Archie accepted the commission. I say tentatively because I have never met her. When I’ve seen her and talked with her I shall know whether she’s guilty or not.”
    “You admit she may be.”
    “Certainly she may be.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “May I make a suggestion, Mr. Cramer? If you want consilience. It would be doubly unprofitable for you to question me, since you have stated that you will believe nothing I tell you, and since all those people are strangers to me and I am completely ignorant of what went on.”
    “You say.”
    “Yes, sir, I say. But it might help for me to question you. It would certainly help me, and in the long run it might even help you.”
    “Great idea. Wonderful idea.”
    “I think so.”
    Cramer put his mangled cigar in the tray, got out another one and stuck it in his mouth. “Shoot.”
    “Thank you. First, of course, achieved results. Have you arrested anyone?”
    “No.”
    “Have you found adequate motive?”
    “No.”
    “Are there any definite conclusions in your mind?”
    “No. Nor indefinite either.”
    “I see. No indictments from the mechanical routine—fingerprints, photographs, blabbing objects?”
    “No. There’s one object, and maybe two, that ought to be there and we can’t find it. Do you know anything about fencing?”
    Wolfe shook his head. “Nothing whatever.”
    “Well, the thing he was killed with is called an épée. It’s triangular in section, with no cutting edge, and the point is so blunted that if you thrust at a man hard enough to go through him it would merely break the blade,