The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

Around five, District Attorney Bowen walked in, accompanied by two underlings with bulging briefcases. Apparently there was to be a high-level conference. That might be educational, if I didn’t get bounced, so I unobtrusively left my chair near Skinner’s desk and went to a modest one over by the wall. Skinner was too occupied to notice me, and the others evidently thought he was saving me for dessert. They gathered chairs around the big desk and went to it. I have a good natural memory, and it has been well trained in the years I have been with Nero Wolfe, so I could give a full and accurate report of what I heard in the next half-hour, but I’m not going to. If I did I would go sailing out the next time I tried being a wallflower at a meeting of the big brains, and anyway who am I to destroy the confidence of the people in their highly placed public servants?

But something did happen that must be reported. They were in the middle of a hot discussion of what should and what should not be told to the FBI when an interruption came. First a phone rang and Skinner spoke into it briefly, and then a door opened to admit a visitor. It was Inspector Cramer. As he strode across to the desk he darted a glance at me, but his mind was on higher things. He confronted them and blurted, “That man Witmer that thought he could identify the driver of the car that killed the Drossos boy. He just picked Horan out of a line. He thinks he’d swear to it.”

They stared at him. Bowen muttered, “I’ll be damned.”

“Well?” Skinner demanded crossly.

Cramer frowned down at him. “I don’t know, I just this minute got it. If we take it, it twists us around again. It couldn’t have been Horan in the car with the woman Tuesday. We couldn’t budge his Tuesday alibi with a bulldozer, and anyway we’re assuming it was Birch. Then why did Horan kill the boy? Now that we’ve got that racket glued to him, of course we can work on him, but if he’s got murder on his mind we’ll never crack him. We’ve got to take this and dig at it, but it balls it up worse than ever. I tell you, Commissioner, there ought to be a law against eyewitnesses.”

Skinner stayed cross. “I think that’s overstating it, Inspector. Eyewitnesses are often extremely helpful. This may prove to be the break we’ve all been hoping for. Sit down and we’ll discuss it.”

As Cramer was pulling up a chair a phone rang. Skinner got it-the red one, first on the left-talked to it a little, and then looked up at Cramer.