Before Midnight

Speaking of pockets must have reminded him. He reached to his breast pocket and took out a cigar, and wrapped his fingers around it. "So," he said, "I thought you might answer a question. Now that you've told me what you're after, I think so even more. Was he killed in order to get the wallet, or not? If so, it was one of the contestants and we can more or less forget the others, for now anyway, and it was on account of the contest, and as I said, you've got the inside track on that. I'm not asking for Goodwin's notes of your talk with your clients and that lawyer. I'm only asking your opinion, if he was killed to get the wallet."

"I repeat, Mr. Cramer, I am not investigating the murder."

"Damn it, who said you were? How do you want me to put it?"

Wolfe's shoulders went up and down. "It doesn't matter. You only want my opinion. I am strongly inclined to think that your man, the murderer, and my man, the thief, are one and the same. It would seem to follow, therefore, that the answer to your question is yes. Does that satisfy you?"

From the look on Gamer's face, it didn't. "I don't like that 'strongly inclined,'" he objected. "You know damn well what's on my mind. And this privileged communication dodge. Why couldn't it be like this: after the meeting last night Dahlmann's associates talked it over, and they decided it was dangerous for him to have that paper in his wallet, and one of them went to his place to get it or destroy it. When he got there the door wasn't locked, and he went in and found Dahlmann on the floor, dead. He took the wallet from his pocket and beat it. Don't ask me why he didn't notify the police, ask him; he could have thought he would be suspected. Anyhow he didn't, but of course he had to tell his associates, and they all got hold of their lawyer and told him, and after talking it over they decided to hire you."

To do what?"

"To figure out a way of handling it so the contest wouldn't blow them all sky high. Of course the contestants would learn not only that Dahlmann had been killed but also that the wallet was missing, and they would suspect each other of getting the answers, and it would be a hell of a mess. But I'm not going to try to juggle that around, that's their lookout, and yours. My lookout is that if it happened that way the contestants are not my meat at all because he wasn't killed to get the wallet. And can you give me a reason why it couldn't have happened that way?'"

"No, sir."