“Possibly Miss Hatten paid the rent herself.”
“Sure,” Cramer conceded, “she paid it all right, but where did she get it from? No visible means of support — he sure wasn’t visible, and three good men spent a month trying to start a trail, and one of them is still at it. There was no doubt about its being that kind of a setup; we did get that far. She had only been living there two months, and when we found out how well the man who paid for it had kept himself covered, as tight as a drum, we decided that maybe he had installed her there just for the purpose. That was why we gave it all we had. Another reason was that the papers started hinting that we knew who he was and that he was such a big shot we were sitting on the lid.”
Cramer shifted his cigar one tooth over to the left. “That kind of thing used to get me sore, but what the hell, for newspapers that’s just routine. Big shot or not, he didn’t need us to do any covering for him — he had done too good a job himself. Now, if we’re to take it the way this Cynthia Brown gave it to Goodwin, it might have been the man who paid the rent and it might not. That makes it pie. I would hate to tell you what I think of the fact that Goodwin sat there in your office and was told right here on these premises and all he did was go upstairs and watch to see if anybody squeezed a flowerpot!”
“You’re irritated,” I said charitably. “Not that he was on the premises, that he had been. Also I was taking it with salt. Also she was saving specifications for Mr. Wolfe. Also—”
“Also I know you. How many of those two hundred and nineteen people were men?”
“I would say a little over half.”
“Then how do you like it?”
“I hate it.”
Wolfe grunted. “Judging from your attitude, Mr. Cramer, something that has occurred to me has not occurred to you.”
“Naturally. You’re a genius. What is it?”