A choking noise came from her throat.
“Naturally, that alarmed you,” Wolfe continued. “But the steps were of only one person, and that a woman. So you stood behind the screen with the weight in your hand, hoping that, whoever it was, she would come straight to that room and enter it, and she did. As she passed the edge of the screen, you struck. Then you got an idea upon which you immediately acted by pressing her fingers around the knife handle, from which, of course, your own prints had been wiped—”
A stifled gasp of horror from Carrie Murphy interrupted him. He answered it without moving his eyes from Miss Yates: “I doubt if you had a notion of incriminating Miss Duncan. You probably calculated — and for an impromptu and rapid calculation under stress is was a good one — that when it was found that the weight had been wiped and the knife handle had not, the inference would be, not that Miss Duncan had killed Tingley, but that the murderer had clumsily tried to pin it on her. That would tend to divert suspicions from you, for you had been on friendly terms with her and bore her no grudge. It was a very pretty finesse for a hasty one. Hasty, because you were now in a panic and had not found the jar. I suppose you had previously found that the safe door was open and had looked in there, but now you tried it again. No jar was visible, but a locked metal box was there on the shelf. You picked it up and shook it, and it sounded as if the jar were in it.”
Cramer growled, “I’ll be damned.”
“Or,” Wolfe went on, “it sounded enough like it to satisfy you. The box was locked. To go to the factory again and get something to pry it open with — no. Enough. Besides, the jar was in no other likely place, so that must be it. You fled. You took the box and went, leaving by a rear exit, for there might be someone in front — a car, waiting for Miss Duncan. You hurried home through the rain, for it was certainly raining then, and had just got your umbrella stood in the tub and your things off when Miss Murphy arrived.”
“No!” Carrie Murphy blurted.
Wolfe frowned at her. “Why not?”
“Because she — she was—”
“Dry and composed and herself? I suppose so. An exceptionally cool and competent head has for thirty years been content to busy itself with tidbits.” Wolfe’s gaze was still on Miss Yates. “While you were talking with Miss Murphy you had an idea. You would lead the conversation to a point where a phone call to Tingley would be appropriate, and you did so; and you called his home first and then his office, and faked conversation with him. The idea itself was fairly clever, but your follow-up was brilliant. You didn’t mention it to the police and advised Miss Murphy not to, realizing it would backfire if someone entered the office or Miss Duncan regained consciousness before eight o’clock. If it turned out that someone had, and Miss Murphy blabbed about the phone call, you could say that you had been deceived by someone imitating Tingley’s voice, or even that you had faked the phone call for its effect on Miss Murphy; if it turned out that someone hadn’t, the phone call would stick, with Miss Murphy to corroborate it.”
A grunt of impatience came from Cramer.
“Not much more,” Wolfe said. “But you couldn’t open the box with Miss Murphy there. And then the police came. That must have been a bad time for you. As soon as you got a chance you forced the lid open, and I can imagine your disappointment and dismay when you saw no jar. Only a pair of child’s shoes and an envelope! You were in a hole, and in your desperation you did something extremely stupid. Of course, you didn’t want the box in your flat, you wanted to get rid of it, but why the devil did you mail it to Mr. Cramer? Why didn’t you put something heavy in it and throw it in the river? I suppose you examined the contents of the envelope, and figured that if the police got hold of it their attention would be directed to Guthrie Judd and Philip. You must have been out of your mind. Instead of directing suspicions against Philip or Judd, the result was just the opposite, for it was obvious that neither of them would have mailed the box to the police, and therefore some other person had somehow got it.”
Gwendolyn Yates was sitting straight and stiff. She was getting a hold on herself, and doing a fairly good job of it. There were no more inarticulate noises from her throat, and she wasn’t shouting about lies and wasn’t going to. She was a tough baby and she was tightening up.
“But you’re not out of your mind now,” Wolfe said, with a note of admiration in his tone. “You’re adding it up, aren’t you? You are realizing that I can prove little or nothing of what I’ve said. I can’t prove what Tingley said to you yesterday, or what time you left there, or that you got the box from the safe and took it with you, or that it was you who mailed it to Mr. Cramer. I can’t even prove that there wasn’t someone there at eight o’clock who imitated Tingley’s voice over the telephone. I can’t prove anything.”
“Except this.” He shoved his chair back, opened a drawer of his desk, and got something, arose, walked around the end of the desk, and displayed the object in front of Carrie Murphy’s eyes.
“Please look at this carefully, Miss Murphy. As you see, it is a small jar two-thirds full of something. Pasted on it is a plain white label bearing the notation in pencil, ‘Eleven dash fourteen dash Y.’ Does that mean anything to you? Does that ‘Y’ stand for Yates? Look at it—”
But Carrie had no chance to give it a thorough inspection, let alone pronounce a verdict. The figure of Miss Yates, from eight feet away, came hurtling through the air. She uttered no sound, but flung herself with such unexpected speed and force that the fingers of her outstretched hand, missing what they were after, nearly poked Wolfe’s eye out. He grabbed for her wrist but missed it, and then the dick was out of his chair and had her. He got her from behind by her upper arms and had her locked.
She stood, not trying to struggle, looked at Wolfe, who had backed away, and squeaked at him, “Where was it?”
He told her...
We were sitting down to a dinner that was worthy of the name when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it.
The pair that entered certainly needed a tonic. Leonard Cliff looked like something peeking out at you from a dark cave. Amy Duncan was pale and puffy, with bloodshot eyes.
“We’ve got to see Mr. Wolfe,” Cliff stated. “We’ve just been talking with a lawyer, and he says—”
“Not interested,” I said brusquely. “Wolfe’s out of the case. Through. Done.”
Amy gasped. Cliff grabbed my arm. “He can’t be! He can’t! Where is he?”
“Eating dinner. And, by the way. I’ve been trying to get you folks on the phone. Some news for you. Miss Yates is under arrest: they just took her away from here. Mr. Wolfe would like to have her prosecuted for feeding him quinine, but the cops prefer to try her for murder. She’s guilty of both.”
“What!”
“What!”
“Yep.” I waved airily. “I got the evidence. It’s all over. You won’t get your pictures in the paper anymore.”
“You mean — she — they — it — we—”
“That’s one way of putting it. I mean, the operation has been brought to a successful conclusion. You’re just ordinary citizens again.”
They stared at me, and then at each other, and then went into a clinch. The condition they were both in, it certainly couldn’t have been merely physical attraction. I stood and regarded them patiently. Pretty soon I cleared my throat. They didn’t pay any attention.
“When you get tired standing up,” I said, “there’s a chair in the office that will hold two. We’ll join you after dinner.”
I returned to help Wolfe with the snipe fired with brandy.