“Have you any reason to suppose or suspect that the man found dead in that alley was someone you had ever seen or heard of in any connection whatever?”
“That’s more like it,” Wolfe said approvingly. “That should settle it. The answer is no. May I ask one? Have you any reason to suppose or suspect that the answer should be yes?”
Cramer didn’t reply. He tilted his head until his chin touched the knot of his tie, pursed his lips, regarded me for a long moment, and then went back to Wolfe. He spoke. “This is why I came. With the message the boy sent you by his mother, and the way the car jumped him from a standstill and then tore off, already it didn’t look like any accident, and now there are complications, and when I find complicated trouble and you even remotely involved I want to know exactly where and how you got on — and where you get off.”
“I asked about reasons, not about animus.”
“There’s no animus. Here’s the complication. The car that killed the boy was found yesterday morning, with that floater Connecticut plate still on it, parked up on One hundred and eighty-sixth Street. Laboratory men worked on it all day. They cinched it that it killed the boy, but not only that, underneath it, caught tight where an axle joins a rod, they found a piece of cloth the size of a man’s hand. That piece of cloth was the flap torn from the jacket which was on the body of Matthew Birch when it was found. The laboratory is looking for further evidence that it was that car that killed Birch, but I’m no hog and I don’t need it. Do you?”
Wolfe was patient. “For a working hypothesis, if I were working on it, no.”
“That’s the point. You are working on it. You put that ad in.”
Wolfe’s head wagged slowly from side to side to punctuate his civilized forbearance. “I’ll stipulate,” he conceded, “that I am capable of flummery, that I have on occasion gulled and hoaxed you, but you know I eschew the crudeness of an explicit lie. I tell you that the facts we have given you in this matter are guileless and complete, that I have no client connected with it in any way, and that I am not engaged in it and do not intend to be. I certainly agree—”
The phone ringing stopped him. I got it at my desk. “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”
“May I speak to Mr. Wolfe, please?” The voice was low, nervous, and feminine.