“It’s a farce,” Chisholm muttered and followed him.
I fell in behind.
They were all in there. The four who were famous athletes, first-string Giants, didn’t look very athletic. Their sap had started draining with the first inning of that awful ball game, and it hadn’t stopped for more than ten hours. Lew Baker, catcher, and Con Prentiss, shortstop, were perched on a desk. Joe Eston, third baseman, and Nat Neill, center fielder, were on chairs.
Art Kinney, manager, was standing over by a window. Doc Soffer was seated at Kinney’s desk, bent over, with his elbows on his knees and his face covered by his hands. Beaky Durkin was propped against a table, saggy and bleary-eyed.
“It had better be good,” someone said — I didn’t know who, because I was placing a chair for Wolfe where he could see them all without spraining his neck. When he was in it, with nothing to spare between the arms, I crossed to a vacant seat over by the radio. Chisholm was there, at my right.
Wolfe’s head moved from side to side and back again. “I hope,” he said grumpily, “you’re not expecting too much.”
“I’m through expecting,” Kinney muttered.
Wolfe nodded. “I know how you feel, Mr. Kinney. All of you. You are weary and low in spirit. You have been personally and professionally humiliated. You have all been talked at too much. I’m sorry I have to prolong it, but I had to wait until the police were gone. Also, since I have no evidence, I had to let them complete their elaborate and skilled routine in search of some. They got none. Actually they have nothing but a druggist that Mr. Goodwin got for them.”
“They’ve got Bill Moyse,” Con Prentiss rumbled.
“Yes, but on suspicion, not on evidence. Of course I admit, because I must, that I am in the same fix. I too have a suspicion but no evidence, only mine is better grounded. I suspect one of you eight men of drugging the drinks and killing Ferrone. What I—”