The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

"Yeah. Neat and coolheaded. Judging from the wound, it was a thirty-eight or bigger. Now two facts. One: for three weeks Althaus had been collecting material for an article on the FBI for Tick-Tock magazine, and not a sign of it, nothing, was there in the apartment. Two: about eleven o'clock that Friday night three FBI men left the house at Sixty-three Arbor Street and went around the corner to a car and drove off."

I sat and looked at him. There are various reasons for keeping your mouth shut, but the best one is that you have nothing to say.

"So they killed him," Cramer said. "Did they go there to kill him? Certainly not. There are several ways to figure it. The one I like best is that they rang his number and he wasn't answering the phone, so they thought he was out. They went and rang his bell and he wasn't answering that either, so they opened the door and went in for a bag job. He pulled a gun, and one of them shot before he did. They train them good in that basement in Washington. They looked for what they wanted and got it and left, taking the bullet because it was from one of their guns."

I was listening. I never listened better. I asked, "Did he have a gun?"

"Yes. S and W thirty-eight. He had a permit. It wasn't there. They took it, you'd have to ask them why. There was a box of cartridges, nearly full, in a drawer."

I sat and looked some more, then said, "So you have cracked it. Congratulations."

"You'd clown in the hot seat, Goodwin. Do I have to describe it?"

"No. But, after all- Who saw them?"

He shook his head. "I'll give you everything but that. He couldn't help you anyway. He saw them leave the house and go to the car and drive off, and he got the license number. That's how we know and all we know. We're hogtied. Even if we could name them, where would that get us? I've seen plenty of murderers I could name, but so what, if I couldn't prove it. But this one, that goddam outfit, I'd give a year's pay to hook them and make it stick. This isn't their town, it's mine. Ours. The New York Police Department. They've had us gritting our teeth for years. Now, by God, they think they can break and enter people's houses and commit homicide in my territory, and laugh at me!"

"Did they? Laugh?"