The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

Wolfe turned a palm up. "Actually," he said, "the situation isn't tangled at all. We all want the same thing. I want to get rid of an obligation. You, Mr Wragg, want it made manifest that your men are not criminally implicated in a murder. You, Mr Cramer, want to identify and bring to account the person who killed Morris Althaus. It couldn't be simpler. You, Mr Wragg, give Mr Cramer the bullet you have in your pocket and tell him where it came from. You, Mr Cramer, have a comparison made of that bullet with one fired from the gun which was taken this afternoon from the apartment of Sarah Dacos, and along with other evidence which no doubt your men are securing now, that will settle it. There is no-"

"I haven't said I have a bullet in my pocket."

"Nonsense. I advise you to pull in your horns, Mr Wragg. Mr Cramer has good reason to suppose that you have on your person an essential item of evidence in a homicide which occurred in his jurisdiction. Under the statutes of the State of New York he may legally search you, here and now, and get it. Is that correct, Mr Cramer?"

"Yes."

"But," Wolfe told Wragg, "that shouldn't be necessary. You do have a brain. Obviously it is to your interest and that of your bureau that you give Mr Cramer that bullet."

"The hell it is," Wragg said. "And one of my men gets on the stand and says under oath that he was in that apartment and took it? The hell it is."

Wolfe shook his head. "No. No indeed. You wouldn't. You give Mr Cramer your word, here privately, that that's where the bullet came from, and one of his men gets on the stand and says under oath that he took it from that apartment. There will-"

"My men are not perjurers," Cramer said.

"Bah. This is not being recorded. If Mr Wragg hands you a bullet and says it was found on the floor of Morris Althaus's apartment around eleven o'clock in the evening of Friday, November twentieth, will you believe him?"

"Yes."

"Then save your posing for audiences that will appreciate it. This one isn't sufficiently naive. I don't think-"

"He might not be posing," Wragg cut in. "He might go on the stand himself and tell how he got it. Then I'm called to the stand."

Wolfe nodded. "Fine. He might. But he wouldn't. If he did, I too would be called to the stand, and Mr Goodwin, and a much larger audience than this one would learn how the murderer of Morris Althaus had been disclosed after the police and the District Attorney had spent eight futile weeks on it. He wouldn't."