Wolfe nodded. “I know. One more day and you would have killed me, with the suspicion centered on Miss Geer or Mr. Jensen, or both, on account of your flummery here this afternoon. And you would have disappeared, probably after again complaining that you don’t like a place where people get murdered.”
Jensen popped up, “You haven’t explained the flummery.”
“I shall, Mr. Jensen.” Wolfe got more comfortable in his chair. “But first that performance Tuesday evening.” He was keeping his eyes on Hackett. “That was a masterpiece. You decided to kill Mr. Jensen first, which was lucky for me, and, since all apartment-house service staffs are short-handed, got a job there as doorman with no difficulty. All you had to do was await an opportunity, with no passers-by or other onlookers. It came the day after you mailed the threat, an ideal situation in every respect except the presence of the man he had hired to guard him. Arriving at the entrance to the apartment house, naturally they would have no suspicion of the doorman in uniform. Mr. Jensen probably nodded and spoke to you. With no one else in sight, and the elevator man ascending with a passenger, it was too good an opportunity to lose. Muffling the revolver with some piece of cloth, you shot Mr. Doyle in the back, and when Mr. Jensen whirled at the sound you shot him in the front and skedaddled for the stairs to the basement and started stoking the water heater. I imagine the first thing you fed it was the cloth with which you had muffled the gun.”
Wolfe moved his eyes. “Does that rattle anywhere, Mr. Cramer?”
“It sounds tight from here,” Cramer conceded.
“That’s good. Because it is for those murders that Mr. Hackett — or Mr. Root, I suppose I should say — must be convicted. He can’t be electrocuted for hacking a little gash in his own ear.” Wolfe’s eyes moved again, to me. “Archie, did you find any tools in his pockets?”
“Only a Boy Scout’s dream,” I told him. “One of those knives with scissors, awl, nail file...”
“Let the police have it to look for traces of blood. Just the sort of thing Mr. Cramer does best.”
“The comedy can wait,” Cramer growled. “I’ll take it as is for Tuesday night and go on from there. What about today?”
Wolfe heaved a sigh. “You’re rushing past the most interesting point of all: Mr. Hackett’s answering my advertisement for a man. Was he sufficiently acute to realize that its specifications were roughly a description of me, suspect that I was the advertiser, and proceed to take advantage of it to approach me? Or was it merely that he was short of funds and attracted by the money offered? I lean to the latter, but I confess I am curious. I don’t suppose, Mr. Root, you would care to clear that up for me?”