When I rejoined them in the dining room the coffee pot was still on the table unthrown, but the battle was on. Wolfe was out of his chair, erect, rigid with rage.
“No, sir,” he was saying in his iciest tone, “I have not finished my gobbling now, as you put it. I would have eaten two more cakes, and I have not had my coffee. You broke in, and you’re here. If you were not an officer of the law Mr. Goodwin would knock you unconscious and drag you out.”
He moved. He stamped to the door, across the hall, and into the office. I was right behind him. By the time Cramer was there, seated in the red leather chair, Wolfe was seated too, behind his desk, breathing at double speed, with his mouth closed tight.
“Forget it,” Cramer rasped, trying to make up.
Wolfe was silent.
“All I want,” Cramer said, “is to find out why Cynthia Nieder came to see you. You have a right to ask why I want to know, and I would have told you if you hadn’t lost your temper just because I arrived while you were stuffing it in. There’s been a murder.”
Wolfe said nothing.
“Last night,” Cramer went on. “Time limits, eight P.M. and midnight. At the place of business of Daumery and Nieder on the twelfth floor of Four-ninety-six Seventh Avenue. Cynthia Nieder was there last night between nine and nine-thirty, she admits that; and nobody else as far as we know now. She says she went to get some drawings, but that’s got holes in it. The body was found this morning, lying in the middle of the floor in the office. He had been hit in the back of the head with a hardwood pole, one of those used to raise and lower windows, and the end of the pole with the brass hook on it had been jabbed into his face a dozen times or more — like spearing a fish.”
Wolfe had his eyes closed. I was considering that after all Cramer was the head of Homicide and he was paid for handling murders, and he always tried hard and deserved a little encouragement, so I asked in a friendly manner, “Who was it?”
“Nobody knows,” he said sarcastically and without returning the friendliness. “A complete stranger to all the world, and nothing on him to tell.” He paused, and then suddenly barked at me, “You describe him!”