I gave him what I had got from Cramer. When I had finished he sat frowning at me with his eyes half closed, through a long silence. Finally he spoke. “You reported in full to Mr. Cramer?”
“I did. You said to unload.”
“Yes. Then Mr. Helmar will soon know, if he doesn’t already, of our stratagem, and I doubt if it’s worth the trouble to communicate with him. He wanted his ward alive and well, so he said, and that’s out of the question.”
I disagreed, not offensively. “But he’s our only contact, and, no matter how sore he is, we can start with him. We have to start somewhere with someone?”
“Start?” He was peevish. “Start what? For whom? We have no client. There’s nothing to start.”
The simple and direct thing to do would have been to blow my top, and it would have been a satisfaction — but then what? I refused to boil, and kept my voice even. “I don’t deny,” I told him, “that that’s one way to look at it, but only one, and there is at least one other. Like this. She was here and wanted to stay, and we kicked her out, and she got killed. I should think that would have some bearing on your self-esteem, which you were discussing last night. I should think that you do have something to start — a murder investigation. And you also have a client — your self-esteem.”
“Nonsense!”
“Maybe.” I stayed calm. “I would like to explain at length why I think it’s up to us to get the guy that killed Priscilla Eads, but I don’t want to waste your time or my breath just for the hell of it. Would it do any good?”
“No.”
“You won’t even consider it?”