Before Midnight

"I'll admit anything you please. I have had cause for chagrin before now, Mr. Cramer, but nothing to compare with this. I didn't know that mortification could cut so deeply. One more stab and it would have got the bone. If Mr. Assa had had the wallet in his possession, actually on his person--then it would have been consummate. That would have finished me,"

"He did."

"He did what?"

"He had the wallet. In his breast pocket. It has been identified as the one Dahlmann was carrying--sufficiently identified. There was no paper in it containing the answers."

Wolfe swallowed. He swallowed again. "I am humiliated beyond expression, Mr. Cramer. Go and get the murderer. But lock me in here; I would only botch it for you. The rest of the house is yours."

Cramer and I regarded him, not with pity. We both knew him too well. Naturally he was bitter, since he had got the stage all set for one of his major performances, with him as the star, and had actually started his act, only to have a prominent member of the cast, presumably the villain, up and die on him, there before his eyes. It was certainly upsetting, but neither Cramer nor I was sap enough to believe that he was humiliated beyond expression--or anything else beyond expression.

Cramer didn't go to pat his shoulder. He merely asked, "What if he wasn't murdered? What if he dosed his drink himself?"

"Pfui," Wolfe said, and I lifted a hand to hide a grin. He went on, "If he did, he had the paper of cyanide in his pocket when he left wherever he was to come here. With a choice of places for ending his life, I refuse to believe he selected the audience he knew he would have in my office--and with that wallet in his pocket."

"Something might have happened after he got here."

"I don't believe it. He had had ample opportunity to talk with his associates beforehand."

"He might have wanted to throw suspicion on someone."

"Then for an intelligent man he was remarkably clumsy about it. Unless you have details unknown to me?"

"No. I think he was murdered." Cramer dumped that by turning his hand over. "If I understand you, after he came and tried to get you to call off the meeting, you assumed he had killed Dahlmann and taken the wallet, and you intended to screw it out of him tonight Was that it?"

"No, sir. You forget that I was not interested in the murder. I assumed, of course, that points relevant to the murder would be broached, and that was why I invited you to come. I also assumed that Assa had taken the wallet, because--"