The Second Confesion

Six hours later I pushed my chair back from the dining-table, stretched all the way, and allowed myself a good thorough yawn without any apology, feeling that I had earned it. Ordinarily I have my breakfast in the kitchen with Fritzy, and Wolfe has his in his room, but that day wasn't exactly ordinary.

A gang of fourteen men, not counting Theodore, was up on the roof cleaning up and salvaging, and an army of glaziers was due at noon. Andy Krasicki had come in from Long Island and was in charge. The street was roped off, because of the danger from falling glass. The cops were still nosing around out in front and across the street, and presumably in other quarters too, but none was left in our house except Captain Murdoch, who, with Wolfe, was seated at the table I was just leaving, eating griddle cakes and honey.

They knew all about it, back to a certain point. The people who lived in the house directly across the street were away for the summer. On its roof they had found a hundred and ninety-two shells from an SM and a tommy-gun, and they still had scientists up there collecting clues to support the theory that that was where the assault had come from, in case the lawyer for the defence should claim that the shells had been dropped by pigeons. Not that there was yet any call for a lawyer for the defence, since there were no defendants. So far there was no word as to how they had got to the roof of the unoccupied house. All they knew 34 Was that persons unknown had somehow got to that roof and from it, at 2.24 a.m., had shot hell out of our plant rooms, and had made a getaway through a passage into Thirty-sixth Street, and I could have told them that much without ever leaving our premises.

I admit we weren't much help. Wolfe didn't even mention the name of Sperling or Rony, let alone anything beginning with Z. He refused to offer a specific guess at the identity of the perpetrators, and it wasn't too hard to get them to accept that as the best to be had, since it was quite probable that there were several inhabitants of the metropolitan area who would love to make holes not only in Wolfe's plant rooms but in Wolfe himself. Even so, they insisted that some must be more likely to own tommy guns and more willing to use them in such a direct manner, but Wolfe said that was irrelevant because the gunners had almost certainly been hired on a piece-work basis.