Over My Dead Body

"If you can it's news to me. Who made any law about an innocent man being overcome with repugnance at the sight of blood and taking a taxi home?"

"Where did you see any blood?"

"I didn't. Figure of speech."

"Metonymy," Wolfe muttered.

"Kid me. I like it." Cramer glared at Wolfe. "So you've got a client."

Wolfe made a face. "Tentatively I have. Archie accepted the commission. I say tentatively, because I have never met her. When I've seen her and talked with her I shall know whether she's guilty or not."

"You admit she may be."

"Certainly she may be." Wolfe wiggled a finger. "May I made a suggestion, Mr Cramer? If you want consilience. It would be doubly unprofitable for you to question me, since you have stated that you will believe nothing I tell you, and since all those people are strangers to me and I am completely ignorant of what went on."

"You say."

"Yes, sir, I say. But it might help for me to question you. It would certainly help me, and in the long run it might even help you."

"Great idea. Wonderful idea."

"I think so."

Cramer put his mangled cigar in the tray, got out another one and stuck it in his mouth. "Shoot."

"Thank you. First, of course, achieved results. Have you arrested anyone?"

"No."

"Have you found adequate motive?"

"No."

"Are there any definite conclusions in your mind?"

"No. Nor indefinite either."

"I see. No indictments from the mechanical routine-fingerprints, photographs, blabbing objects?"

"No. There's one object, and maybe two, that ought to be there and we can't find it. Do you know anything about fencing?"

Wolfe shook his head. "Nothing whatever."

"Well, the thing he was killed with is called an йpйe. It's triangular in section, with no cutting edge, and the point is so blunted that if you thrust at a man hard enough to go through him it would merely break the blade, which is quite flexible. In fencing, they fasten a little steel button on the end, and the button has three tiny points. The points are only to show on your opponent's jacket when you've made a hit; the thick body of the button wouldn't permit the йpйe to pierce through the pad they wear or the mask over their face."

I said, "He didn't have any mask on."