“Yes, sir. The repetition will take less time if you don't interrupt. Another point, better than either of those, why was the body dragged more than fifty feet to be concealed behind a shrub? If it had been an accident, and the driver decided not to disclose his part in it, what would he have done? Drag the body off the road, yes, but surely not fifty feet to find a hiding place.” “You said that before too,” Ben Dykes objected. “And I said the same argument would apply just as well to a murderer.” “Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “but you were wrong. The murderer had a sound reason for moving the body where it couldn't be seen from the drive if someone happened to pass.” “What?” “To search the body. We are now coming to things I haven't said before. You preferred not to show me the list of articles found on the body, so I preferred not to tell you that I knew something had been taken from it. The way I knew it was that Mr Goodwin had himself made an inventory when he found the body.” “The hell he had!” “It would have been better,” Archer said in a nasty voice for him, “to tell us that. What had been taken?” “A membership card, in the name of William Reynolds, of the American Communist Party.” “By God!” Sperling cried, and left his chair. There were exclamations from others. Sperling was following him up, but Archer's voice cut through.
“How did you know he had one?” “Mr Goodwin had seen it, and I had seen a photograph of it.” Wolfe pointed a finger. “Please let me tell this without yanking me around with questions. I have to go back to Saturday evening a week ago. Mr Goodwin was there ostensibly as a guest, but actually representing me on behalf of my client, Mr Sperling. He had reason to believe that Mr Rony was carefully guarding some small object, not letting it leave his person. There were refreshments in the living-room. Mr Goodwin drugged his own drink and exchanged it for Mr Rony's. He drank Mr Rony's. But it had been drugged by someone else, as he found to his sorrow.” “Oh!” A little cry came from behind me, in the voice of the little cabbage.
Wolfe frowned past my shoulder.
“Mr Goodwin had intended to enter Mr Rony's room that night to learn what the object was, but didn't because he was himself drugged and Mr Rony was not.
Instead of swallowing his drink, Mr Rony poured it into the ice bucket. I am still giving reasons why I assumed that he was not killed by accident, and that's one of them: his drink had been drugged and he either knew it or suspected it. Mr Goodwin was mortified, and he is not one to take mortification lightly; also he wanted to see the object. The next day, Sunday, he arranged to have Mr Rony return to New York in his car, and he also arranged for a man and woman-both of them have often worked for me-to waylay them and blackjack Mr Rony.” That got a reaction from practically everybody. The loudest, from Purley Stebbins, reached me through the others from twenty feet off. “Jeez! Can you beat him?” Wolfe sat and let them react. In a moment he put up a hand.
That's a felony, I know, Mr Archer. You can decide what to do about it at your leisure, when it's all over. Your decision may be influenced by the fact that if it hadn't been committed the killer of Mr Rony wouldn't have been caught.” He took in the audience, now quiet again. “All they took from him was the money in his wallet. That was necessary in order to validate it as a hold-up-and by the way, the money was spent in my investigation of his death, which I think he would regard as fitting. But Mr Goodwin did something else. He found on Mr Rony the object he had been guarding, and took some photographs of it, not taking the object itself. It was a membership card, in the name of William Reynolds, in the American Communist Party.” Then I was right!” Sperling was so excited and triumphant that he yelled it. “I was right all the time!” He glared indignantly, sputtering, “Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't-” “You were as wrong,” Wolfe said rudely, “as a man can be. You may be a good business man, Mr Sperling, but you had better leave the exposure of disguised Communists to competent persons. It's a task for which you are disqualified by mental astigmatism.” “But,” Sperling insisted, “you admit he had a membership card-” “I don't admit it, I announce it. But it would have been witless to assume that William Reynolds was necessarily Louis Rony. In fact, I had knowledge of Rony that made it unlikely. Anyway, we have the testimony of three persons that the card was in his possession-you'll find that a help in the courtroom, Mr Archer.
So at that time the identity of William Reynolds-whether it was Mr Rony or another person-was an open question.” Wolfe turned a hand up. “But twenty-four hours later it was no longer open.
Whoever William Reynolds was, almost certainly he wasn't Louis Rony. Not only that, it was a workable assumption that he had murdered Rony, since it was better than a conjecture that he had dragged the body behind a bush in order to search it, had found the membership card, and had taken it. I made that assumption, tentatively. Then the next day, Tuesday, I was carried a step further by the news that it was my car that had killed Rony. So if William Reynolds had murdered Rony and taken the card, he was one of the people there present. One of those now in this room.” A murmur went around, but only a murmur.
“You've skipped something,” Ben Dykes protested. “Why did it have to be Reynolds who murdered and took the card?” “It didn't,” Wolfe admitted. These were assumptions, not conclusions. But they were a whole; if one was good, all were; if one was not, none. If the murderer had killed and searched the body to get that card, surely it was to prevent the disclosure that he had joined the Communist Party under the name of William Reynolds, a disclosure threatened by Rony-who was by no means above such threats. That's where I stood Tuesday noon. But I was under an obligation to my client, Mr Sperling, which would be ill met if I gave all this to the police-at least without trying my own hand at it first. That was what I had decided to do'-Wolfe's eyes went straight to Sperling-”when you jumped in with that confounded statement you had coerced Mr Kane to sign. And satisfied Mr Archer, and fired me.” His eyes darted to Kane. “I wanted you here for this, to repudiate that statement. Will you? Now?” “Don't be a fool, Web,” Sperling snapped. And to Wolfe, “I didn't coerce him!” Poor Kane, not knowing what to do, said nothing. In spite of all the trouble he had caused us, I nearly felt sorry for him.
Wolfe shrugged. “So I came home. I had to get my assumptions either established or discredited. It was possible that Mr Rony had not had the membership card on his person when he was killed. On Wednesday Mr Goodwin went to his apartment and made a thorough search-not breaking and entering, Mr Stebbins.” “You say,” Purley muttered.
“He had a key,” Wolfe asserted, which was quite true. The card wasn't there; if it had been, Mr Goodwin would have found it. But he did find evidence, no matter how or what, that Mr Rony had had in his possession one or more objects, probably a paper or papers, which he had used as a tool of coercion on one or more persons here present. It doesn't matter what his demands were, but in passing let me say that I doubt that they were for money; I think what he required, and was getting, was support for his courtship of the younger Miss Sperling-or at least neutrality. Another-” “What was the evidence?” Archer demanded.