Over My Dead Body

"Nothing to stun you with, I'm afraid. Frankly, sir, I have no bomb to explode under you. But the point is this: Mr Cramer here doesn't like murder. He doesn't like to see it practised with impunity under any circumstances whatever, but in this case he was impeded by a wall of reluctance which he couldn't possibly have breached. By luck I had made a hole in the wall, and I've let him through, and if you knew him as I do you would realize that he can't be chased out again. He has it now, and he'll hang on to it, unless you can get him ditched, which I doubt. He has that paper, and he'll arrest the princess, so your deal's off anyway. He has enough to take your son as a material witness. With that paper, he can get a court order to examine your records and correspondence. But you know as well as I do what this will mean if you try to fight it. If you try to shield a murderess from the penalty she has earned. The fact is…"

I missed some then because I had to answer the doorbell. It was Charlie Heath. He started for the office as if he owned the place, but I blocked him off and demanded, "Would you mind explaining what it was that took so long?"

"I'll report to the inspector."

"He's busy, and you'll wait in here." I opened the door to the front room, where Fred Durkin was sitting with a magazine. "What used up all the time?"

"Nothing used it up. I mean I got back ten minutes ago. I've been out front."

"You have?"

"I have."

"Okay. Wait here."

I went back to the office and ran into a scowling match, and took advantage of it to report the return of Heath. All Cramer did was to favour me with five seconds of his share of the scowl. Wolfe didn't even look at me. Apparently he was still trying to undermine Barrett without a bomb and was finding it hard digging.

"No," he said, "I wouldn't expect that. We don't expect much from you, Mr Barrett, in any event. But you seem to have overlooked one thing, at least: You seem to be ignoring the existence of a person who knows as much about all this as the princess herself does. Including your part in it, and your son's part. I mean, of course, the friend who came here with the princess from Zagreb."

"Maybe he's ignoring it," Cramer put in, "but I'm not. And you let her go, and gave her money to go with. That was cute."

"No," Wolfe asserted, "I did not."

Cramer stared. Wolfe said, "Archie, get that package from the safe and give it to Mr Cramer."

I went and got it and handed it over. Cramer started to unfold it.