Before Midnight

Bill Gore laughed. I said something funny to him once back in 1948, and ever since he has had a policy of laughing whenever I open my trap. Bill is not too smart to live, but he's tough and hangs on. Orrie Gather is smarter and is not ashamed of it, and since he got rid of the idea that it would be a good plan for him to take over my job, some years ago, he has helped Wolfe with some very neat errands when called upon. Fred Durkin is just Fred Durkin and knows it. He thinks Wolfe could prove who killed Cock Robin any time he felt like spending half an hour on it. He thinks Wolfe could prove anything whatever. You've met Saul Panzer, the one and only.

As I finished my orange juice and started on griddle cakes, Wolfe expounded. He said the surprise was incidental; he had phoned them after I had gone to bed, when he had conceived a procedure.

"Fine," I approved, spreading butter to melt, "we've got a procedure. For these gentlemen?"

"For all of us," he said. "I have described the situation to them, as much as they'll need. It is a procedure of desperation, with perhaps one chance in twenty of success. After hours on it, most of the night, this was the best I could do. As you know, I was assuming that one of four men--Hansen, Buff, O'Garro, Heery--had killed Dahlmann and taken the wallet, and that because Assa had learned of it or suspected it he had been killed too."

"I know that's what you told Cramer."

"It's also what I told myself."

"Why would one of them kill Dahlmann?"

"I don't know, but if he did he had a reason. That remains, along with his identity. To search into motives would take long and toilsome investigation, and even then motive alone is nothing. I preferred to focus on identity. Which of the four? I went over and over every word they have uttered, to you and to me; all their tones and glances and postures. There was no hint--at least, not for me. I considered all possible lines of inquiry, and found that all of them either had already been pursued by the police, or were now being pursued, or were hopelessly tenuous. All I had left, at five o'clock this morning, that gave the slightest promise of some result without a prolonged and laborious siege, was the possibility of a satisfactory answer to the question: where did he get the poison?"