The Gun with Wings

by Stout Rex

I had filled two notebooks when they left, more than two hours later.

If they had thought it through before they phoned for an appointment with Wolfe, they wouldn’t have phoned. All they wanted, as Wolfe pointed out, was the moon. They wanted him, first, to investigate a four-month-old murder without letting on there had been one; second, to prove that neither of them had killed Alberto Mion, which could be done only by finding out who had; and third, in case he concluded that one of them had done it, to file it away and forget it. Not that they put it that way, since their story was that they were both absolutely innocent, but that was what it amounted to.

Wolfe made it good and plain. “If I take the job,” he told them, “and find evidence to convict someone of murder, no matter who, the use I make of it will be solely in my discretion. I am neither an Astraea nor a sadist, but I like my door open. But if you want to drop it now, here’s your check, and Mr. Goodwin’s notebooks will be destroyed. We can forget you have been here, and shall.”

That was one of the moments when they were within an ace of getting up and going, especially Fred Weppler, but they didn’t. They looked at each other, and it was all in their eyes. By that time I had about decided I liked them both pretty well and was even beginning to admire them, they were so damn determined to get loose from the trap they were in. When they looked at each other like that their eyes said, “Let’s go and be together, my darling love, and forget this — come on, come on.” Then they said, “It will be so wonderful!” Then they said, “Yes, oh yes, but— But we don’t want it wonderful for a day or a week; it must be always wonderful — and we know ...”

It took strong muscles to hold onto it like that, not to mention horse sense, and several times I caught myself feeling sentimental about it. Then of course there was the check for five grand on Wolfe’s desk.

The notebooks were full of assorted matters. There were a thousand details which might or might not turn out to be pertinent, such as the mutual dislike between Peggy Mion and Rupert Grove, her husband’s manager, or the occasion of Gifford James socking Alberto Mion in front of witnesses, or the attitudes of various persons toward Mion’s demand for damages; but you couldn’t use it all, and Wolfe himself never needed more than a fraction of it, so I’ll pick and choose. Of course the gun was Exhibit A. It was a new one, having been bought by Mion the day after Gifford James had plugged him and hurt his larynx — not, he had announced, for vengeance on James but for future protection. He had carried it in a pocket whenever he went out, and at home had kept it in the studio, lying on the base of a bust of Caruso. So far as known, it had never fired but one bullet, the one that killed Mion.

When Dr. Lloyd had arrived and Weppler had taken him to the studio the gun was lying on the floor not far from Mion’s knee. Dr. Lloyd’s hand had started for it but had been withdrawn without touching it, so it had been there when the law came. Peggy was positive it had not been there when she and Fred had entered, and he agreed. The cops had made no announcement about fingerprints, which wasn’t surprising since none are hardly ever found on a gun that are any good. Throughout the two hours and a half, Wolfe kept darting back to the gun, but it simply didn’t have wings.

The picture of the day and the day’s people was all filled in. The morning seemed irrelevant, so it started at lunch time with five of them there: Mion, Peggy, Fred, one Adele Bosley, and Dr. Lloyd. It was more professional than social. Fred had been invited because Mion wanted to sell him the idea of writing a piece for the Gazette saying that the rumors that Mion would never be able to sing again were malicious hooey. Adele Bosley, who was in charge of public relations for the Metropolitan Opera, had come to help work on Fred. Dr. Lloyd had been asked so he could assure Weppler that the operation he had performed on Mion’s larynx had been successful and it was a good bet that by the time the opera season opened in November the great tenor would be as good as ever. Nothing special had happened except that Fred had agreed to do the piece. Adele Bosley and Lloyd had left, and Mion had gone up to the soundproofed studio, and Fred and Peggy had looked at each other and suddenly discovered the most important fact of life since the Garden of Eden.

An hour or so later there had been another gathering, this time up in the studio, around half-past three, but neither Fred nor Peggy had been present. By then Fred had walked himself calm and phoned Peggy, and she had gone to meet him in the park, so their information on the meeting in the studio was hearsay. Besides Mion and Dr. Lloyd there had been four people: Adele Bosley for operatic public relations; Mr. Rupert Grove, Mion’s manager; Mr. Gifford James, the baritone who had socked Mion in the neck six weeks previously; and Judge Henry Arnold, James’ lawyer. This affair had been even less social than the lunch, having been arranged to discuss a formal request that Mion had made of Gifford James for the payment of a quarter of a million bucks for the damage to Mion’s larynx.

Fred’s and Peggy’s hearsay had it that the conference had been fairly hot at points, with the temperature boosted right at the beginning by Mion’s getting the gun from Caruso’s bust and placing it on a table at his elbow. On the details of its course they were pretty sketchy, since they hadn’t been there, but anyhow the gun hadn’t been fired. Also there was plenty of evidence that Mion was alive and well — except for his larynx — when the party broke up. He had made two phone calls after the conference had ended, one to his barber and one to a wealthy female opera patron; his manager, Rupert Grove, had phoned him a little later; and around five-thirty he had phoned downstairs to the maid to bring him a bottle of vermouth and some ice, which she had done. She had taken the tray into the studio, and he had been upright and intact.