Cramer cut in to shoot at me, “Is Fickler a racket boy?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. Blank. I’ve never been anything but a customer.”
“If he is we’ll get it.” Purley was riled and didn’t care who knew it. “Jimmie Kirk apparently only goes back three years, and he has expensive habits for a barber. Tom Yerkes did a turn in nineteen thirty-nine for assault, beat up a guy who took his young granddaughter for a fast weekend, and he is known for having a quick take-off. So I don’t think you can say we haven’t even started. We’ve got to take ’em all downtown and get through, especially about last night, sure we do. But I still want the Vardases.”
“Are all alibis for last night being checked?” Cramer demanded.
“They have been.”
“Do them over, and good. Get it going. Use as many men as you need. And not only alibis, records too. I want the Vardas pair as much as you do, but if the Stahl girl didn’t use that bottle on herself, I also want someone else. Get Biatti here. Let him have a try at her before you take her down.”
“He’s not on duty, Inspector.”
“Tell them to find him. Get him here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Purley moved. He went to the phone at the cashier’s counter. I went to the one in the booth at the end of the clothes rack and dialed the number I knew best. Fritz answered, and I asked him to buzz the extension in the plant rooms, since it was still a few minutes short of six o’clock.
“Where are you?” Wolfe demanded. He was always testy when interrupted up there.
“At the barber shop.” I was none too genial myself. “Janet was sitting in her booth and got hit on the head with a bottle of oil. They have gone through the routine and are still at the starting line. Her condition is no more critical than it was before she got hit. She insisted on seeing me, and I have had a long intimate talk with her. I can’t say I made no progress, because she asked me to be her manager, and I am now giving you notice, quitting at the end of this week. Aside from that I got nowhere. She’s one in a million. I would love to see you take her on. I have been requested to stick around. I’m willing, but I advise you to tell Fritz to increase the grocery orders until further notice.”
Silence. Then, “Who is there?”
“Everybody. Cramer, Purley, squad men, the staff. They quit letting customers in after Janet got rapped. The whole party will be moved downtown in an hour or so, including Janet. Everyone is glum, including me.”
“No progress whatever has been made?”
“Not as far as I know, except what I told you, I am now Janet’s manag—”
“Pfui.” Silence. In a moment, “Stay there.”
The connection went.
I left the booth. Neither Purley nor Cramer was in sight. Only one flatfoot was at the door, and the throng outside in the corridor was no longer a throng, merely a knot, and a small one. I moseyed toward the rear, with the line of empty barber chairs on my left and the row of waiting chairs against the partition on my right. Fickler was there, and three of the barbers — Ed being the missing one now — with dicks in between. They weren’t interested in me at all, and I made no effort to try to change their attitude.
The chair on the left of the magazine table was empty, and I dropped into it. Apparently no one had felt like reading today, since the same New Yorker was on top and the two-weeks-old Time was still on the shelf below. I would have been glad to employ my mind analyzing the situation if there had been anything to analyze, but there was no place to start, and after sitting a few minutes I became aware that I was trying to analyze Janet. Of course that was even more hopeless, and I mention it only to show you the condition I was in. But it did look as if Janet was the key, and in that case the thing to do was to figure some way of handling her. I sat and worked on that problem. There must be some practical method of digging up from her memory the fact or facts that we had to have. Hypnotize her, maybe? That might work. I was considering suggesting it to Cramer when I became aware of movement over at the door and lifted my eyes.
The flatfoot was blocking the entrance to keep a man fully twice his weight from entering, and was explaining the situation.
The man let him finish and then spoke. “I know, I know.” His eyes came at me over the flatfoot’s shoulder, and he bellowed, “Archie! Where’s Mr. Cramer?”
VI
I got up and made for the door in no haste or jubilation. There have been times when the sight and sound of Wolfe have given me a lift, but that wasn’t one of them. I had told him on the phone that I would love to see him take Janet on, but that had been rhetorical. One would get him ten he couldn’t make a dent in her.
“Do you want in?” I asked.
“What the devil,” he roared, “do you suppose I came for?”
“Okay, take it easy. I’ll go see—”
But I didn’t have to go. His first bellow had carried within, and Cramer’s voice came from right behind me. “Well! Dynamite?”
“I’ll be damned,” Purley, there too, growled.
The flatfoot had moved aside, leaving it to the brass, and Wolfe had crossed the sill. “I came to get a haircut,” he stated and marched past the sergeant and inspector to the rack, took off his hat, coat, vest, and tie, hung them up, crossed to Jimmie’s chair, the second in the line, and got his bulk up onto the seat. In the mirrored wall fronting him he had a panorama of the row of barbers and dicks in his rear, and without turning his head he called, “Jimmie! If you please?”
Jimmie’s dancing dark eyes came to Cramer and Purley, there by me. So did others. Cramer stood scowling at Wolfe. We all held our poses while Cramer slowly lifted his right hand and carefully and thoroughly scratched the side of his nose with his forefinger. That attended to, he decided to sit down. He went, not in a hurry, to the first chair in the line, the one Fickler himself used occasionally when there was a rush, turned it to face Wolfe, and mounted. He spoke.
“You want a haircut, huh?”
“Yes, sir. As you can see, I need one.”
“Yeah.” Cramer turned his head. “All right, Kirk. Come and cut his hair.”
Jimmie got up and went past the chair to the cabinet for an apron. Everybody stirred, as if a climax had been reached and passed. Purley strode to the third chair in the line, Philip’s, and got on it. That way he and Cramer had Wolfe surrounded, and it seemed only fair for me to be handy, so I detoured around Cramer, pulled Jimmie’s stool to one side, and perched on it.
Jimmie had Wolfe aproned, and his scissors were singing above the right ear. Wolfe barred clippers.
“You just dropped in,” Cramer rasped. “Like Goodwin this morning.”
“Certainly not.” Wolfe was curt but not pugnacious. There was no meeting of eyes, since Cramer had Wolfe’s profile straight and Wolfe had Cramer’s profile in the mirror. “You summoned Mr. Goodwin. He told me on the phone of his fruitless talk with Miss Stahl, and I thought it well to come.”
Cramer grunted. “Okay, you’re here. You won’t leave your place on business for anybody or any fee, but you’re here. And you’re not going to leave until I know why, without any such crap as murderers in your front room.”
“Not as short behind as last time,” Wolfe commanded.
“Yes, sir.” Jimmie had never had as big or attentive an audience and he was giving a good show. The comb and scissors flitted and sang.