Over My Dead Body

"I'll tell her that."

"Do so. I'll arrange for Mr Parker to represent her. What does she say about Miss Lovchen?"

"More ignorance. The first thing she did when she entered the room and looked at the floor was let out a yell for Carla."

"I see. That's too bad. By the way, where did you put those germination records on the oncidium hybrids? I want to check them over."

"Christalmighty," I said bitterly. "Here's your daughter sizzling on a spot, and here am I with blood on my fingers off of Faber's shirt, and you prate-why don't you try doing a little work for a change-?"

"I can't work with nothing to work on. Get away as soon as you can. Where did you put those records?"

I told him. He thanked me and rang off. I looked at Neya, sitting there with her jaw clamped and her fingers twisted, and observed grimly, "You certainly picked a lulu for an adopted daddy. Do you know what he's doing? Checking up on orchid seeds he planted a year ago! Incidentally, he says you are to answer any questions the cops ask about your movements since ten o'clock this morning. All other questions, refuse to answer until you see a lawyer. He's getting one."

"A lawyer for me?"

"Yes."

A police siren sounded through the window I had left open.

Chapter Fourteen At five minutes past two Wolfe sipped the last drop of his luncheon coffee, put down his cup, and made two distinct and separate oral noises. The first was meant to express his pleasure and satisfaction in the immediate past, the hour spent at the table; the second was a grunt of resigned dismay at the prospect of the immediate future, which was embodied in the bulky figure of Inspector Cramer, planted in a chair in the office. He had arrived on the stroke of two and was waiting.

Wolfe and I went in and sat down. The end of the unlighted cigar in Cramer's mouth described a figure-eight.

"I hate to hurry your meal," he said sarcastically.

Wolfe eructed.

The inspector turned the sarcasm on me. "Have you had any new ideas about the purpose of your going there with Miss Tormic?"

I shook my head. "No, sir. As I told you, we merely went there to get Miss Lovchen."

"And what were you going to do with her?"

"We were going to bring her to see Mr Wolfe. To go over things."

"Had she suddenly developed paralysis of the legs?"

"Please, Mr Cramer," Wolfe murmured. "That's childish, and you know it is. Flopping your arms around is no way to discuss anything. If Archie and Miss Tormic were engaged on a mysterious errand, you don't suppose you're going to squeeze it out of him, do you?"

With his fingers entwined, Cramer rubbed his thumb-tips together, back and forth, with the cigar in his mouth aimed at the ceiling.

Finally he said, "I've been sitting here thinking."

Wolfe nodded sympathetically. "It's a good room to think in. The faint sounds from the street are just right."

Silence.

Cramer said, "I'm not a fool."

Wolfe nodded again. "We all feel like that occasionally. The poison of conceit. It's all right if you keep an antidote handy."

"Hell, I'm not conceited." The inspector removed the cigar. "What I chiefly meant about not being a fool, I meant that I'm sitting here because I doubt very much if I'll get a start on this case anywhere except right here in this room."

"Well, as I say, it's a good room to think in."

"Yeah. I'm not talking about thinking. I'm talking about you. This case is a hush-hush and I don't know why, and as sure as God made little apples you do know why. I don't expect you to blurt it out, but you've given me a hint before and you might do it again. I wouldn't be surprised if you know right now who killed Ludlow and who killed Faber."

"You're wrong. I don't."

"Well, you know something about it that I don't know. Take your client, for instance. Why is that girl your client? Can she pay the kind of fee you charge? She ca

"Nonsense. Fred came directly here alone."

"You say."

"Well, ask Fritz who opened the door-"

"Nuts. What good does it do to ask questions of anybody who works for you? But we'll find Lovchen, and we'll find Zorka too, don't think we won't."

"You've found no trace of them?"

"Not yet. We will. We had a tail on Lovchen, but he hasn't reported and we don't know where he is. Another thing, you had Zorka right here in this house, on the grill-"

"She was drunk."

"She wasn't too drunk to climb down a fire escape. According to you." Cramer brandished the cigar at him. "Do you realize that this time I could actually slap a charge of obstructing justice on you?"

"I doubt it. Why don't you try?"

"For a damn good reason. Because the commissioner and the district attorney are both on the soft pedal."

Wolfe's brows went up. "They are?"

"Yes. Didn't I say it's a hush-hush? It's exactly the kind of thing that makes my guts turn over. I'm a cop. I am paid a salary to go and look at dead people and decide if they died as the result of a crime and, if they did, find the criminal and fasten it on him so it will stick. That's the job I'm paid to do. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I get official co-operation as required, but once in a while a bunch of politicians or influential citizens will try to rope me off. I don't like being roped off by anyone whatever." He stuck the cigar in his mouth and laid his heavy fists on the chair arms. "I do not like it."

"And you are being roped off from this case?"

"I am. The British Consul phoned the commissioner to express his deep concern at the violent death of a British subject, and his earnest hope and so forth. The commissioner saw him at eleven o'clock last night, and the consul was communicating with London as soon as possible. This morning I ask the commissioner for the dope, and he says the consul can furnish no information regarding Ludlow's activities, but of course it is to be hoped that justice will be done. Like it is to be hoped we'll have a mild winter. Then, a little later, talking with the district attorney, I suggested that he might phone the British embassy in Washington, and he vetoes it and says he doubts if it would be fruitful to pursue an investigation along that line. I damn near went ahead and phoned Washington myself!"

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I'm too old to look for another job. Besides, it wouldn't have been fruitful. But what I did this morning, within five minutes after I got there on 38th Street, I phoned right from that room to the German Consul-General and asked him about Faber, and he had the brass to tell me that he hadn't the faintest notion what Faber was doing in New York! After telling me last evening, in co

Wolfe shook his head.

Cramer glared at him a while in silence and then a

Wolfe murmured, "Indeed."

"Yes, indeed. That's the town those two girls came from. It's the address on their passports. They say they came over here because America is a land of opportunity. They were asked, in that case, why didn't they enter on the quota instead of visitors' visas? They said they wanted to see what it was like first."