Over My Dead Body

"Yes. Didn't I say it's a hush-hush? It's exactly the kind of thing that makes my guts turn over. I'm a cop. I am paid a salary to go and look at dead people and decide if they died as the result of a crime and, if they did, find the criminal and fasten it on him so it will stick. That's the job I'm paid to do. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I get official co-operation as required, but once in a while a bunch of politicians or influential citizens will try to rope me off. I don't like being roped off by anyone whatever." He stuck the cigar in his mouth and laid his heavy fists on the chair arms. "I do not like it."

"And you are being roped off from this case?"

"I am. The British Consul phoned the commissioner to express his deep concern at the violent death of a British subject, and his earnest hope and so forth. The commissioner saw him at eleven o'clock last night, and the consul was communicating with London as soon as possible. This morning I ask the commissioner for the dope, and he says the consul can furnish no information regarding Ludlow's activities, but of course it is to be hoped that justice will be done. Like it is to be hoped we'll have a mild winter. Then, a little later, talking with the district attorney, I suggested that he might phone the British embassy in Washington, and he vetoes it and says he doubts if it would be fruitful to pursue an investigation along that line. I damn near went ahead and phoned Washington myself!"

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I'm too old to look for another job. Besides, it wouldn't have been fruitful. But what I did this morning, within five minutes after I got there on 38th Street, I phoned right from that room to the German Consul-General and asked him about Faber, and he had the brass to tell me that he hadn't the faintest notion what Faber was doing in New York! After telling me last evening, in connexion with Ludlow, that he could vouch for Faber absolutely! I phoned-the German embassy in Washington then and there, and got the same run-around. What the hell right have countries got to send guys to other countries to do things they're ashamed to talk about? Even when the guys get murdered?"

Wolfe shook his head.

Cramer glared at him a while in silence and then announced abruptly, "I sent a cable to a place in Yugoslavia called Zagreb."

Wolfe murmured, "Indeed."