“What?”
“To search the body. We are now coming to things I haven’t said before. You preferred not to show me the list of articles found on the body, so I preferred not to tell you that I knew something had been taken from it. The way I knew it was that Mr. Goodwin had himself made an inventory when he found the body.”
“The hell he had!”
“It would have been better,” Archer said in a nasty voice for him, “to tell us that. What had been taken?”
“A membership card, in the name of William Reynolds, in the American Communist party.”
“By God!” Sperling cried, and left his chair. There were exclamations from others. Sperling was following his up, but Archer’s voice cut through.
“How did you know he had one?”
“Mr. Goodwin had seen it, and I had seen a photograph of it.” Wolfe pointed a finger. “Please let me tell this without yanking me around with questions. I have to go back to Saturday evening a week ago. Mr. Goodwin was there ostensibly as a guest, but actually representing me in behalf of my client, Mr. Sperling. He had reasons to believe that Mr. Rony was carefully guarding some small object, not letting it leave his person. There were refreshments in the living room. Mr. Goodwin drugged his own drink and exchanged it for Mr. Rony’s. He drank Mr. Rony’s. But it had been drugged by someone else, as he found to his sorrow.”
“Oh!” A little cry came from behind me, in the voice of the little cabbage. Wolfe frowned past my shoulder.
“Mr. Goodwin had intended to enter Mr. Rony’s room that night to learn what the object was, but didn’t, because he was himself drugged and Mr. Rony was not. Instead of swallowing his drink, Mr. Rony had poured it into the ice bucket. I am still giving reasons why I assumed that he was not killed by accident, and that’s one of them: his drink had been drugged and he either knew it or suspected it. Mr. Goodwin was mortified, and he is not one to take mortification lightly; also he wanted to see the object. The next day, Sunday, he arranged to have Mr. Rony return to New York in his car, and he also arranged for a man and woman — both of them have often worked for me — to waylay them and blackjack Mr. Rony.”