If Death Ever Slept

“No, sir. If I had known that I would have called you here, not to give it up but to deliver a murderer. I would have been exalted, not mortified. I haven’t the slightest notion.”

“It was Jarrell himself. It was Jarrell, and he was your client, and you cut him loose, but you wouldn’t deliver him on account of your goddamn pride.”

Wolfe turned. “Archie. How much cash is in the safe?”

“Thirty-seven hundred dollars in the reserve and around two hundred in petty.”

“Bring me three thousand.”

I went and opened the door of the safe, unlocked the cash drawer and opened it, counted three grand from the reserve sack, and stepped to Wolfe’s desk and handed it to him. With it in his fist he faced Cramer.

“The wager is that when this is over and the facts are known you will acknowledge that at this hour, Monday evening, I had no inkling of the identity of the murderer, except that I had surmised that it was one of the seven people I have named, and I have told you that. Three thousand dollars to three dollars. One thousand to one. You have three dollars? Mr. Stebbins can hold the stakes.”

Cramer looked at Stebbins. Purley grunted. Cramer looked at me. I grinned and said, “For God’s sake grab it. A thousand to one? Give me that odds and I’ll bet you I did it myself.”

“That’s not as funny as you think it is, Goodwin. You could have.” Cramer looked at Wolfe. “You know I know you. You know I never yet saw you open a bag and shake it out without hanging on to a corner that had something in it you were saving for yourself. If you’re backing clear out, if you’ve got no client and no fee in sight, why do you want the reports on their movements from two o’clock Thursday to three o’clock Sunday?”

“To exercise my brain.” Wolfe put the stack of bills on the desk and put a paperweight-a chunk of jade that a woman had once used to crack her husband’s skull-on top. “It needs it, heaven knows. As I said, I want a crumb of satisfaction for myself. Do you believe in words of honor?”

“I do when the honor is there.”

“Am I a man of honor?”

Cramer’s eyes widened. He was flabbergasted. He started to answer and stopped. He had to consider. “You may be, at that,” he allowed. “You’re tricky, you’re foxy, you’re the best liar I know, but if anybody asked me to name something you had done that was dishonorable I’d have to think.”

“Very well, think.”

“Skip it. Say you’re a man of honor. What about it?”