The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

“Yesterday he went to the office of the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons, gave the name of Leopold Heim and as his address a cheap hotel on First Avenue, and talked both with Miss Angela Wright and a man named Chaney. He told them that he was in this country illegally and in fear of being exposed and deported, and asked for help. They said his plight was outside their field of activity, advised him to go to a lawyer, and gave him the name of Dennis Horan. He went and talked with Mr. Horan, and then went to his hotel. Shortly before eight o’clock in the evening a man arrived at his room and offered to protect him against exposure or harassment upon payment of ten thousand dollars. Mr. Panzer will give you all details. He was given twenty-four hours to scrape up all the money he could, and when the man left, Mr. Panzer followed him. He is pre-eminent at that.”

“I know he is. Then what?”

“We’ll shift to Mr. Goodwin. Before he proceeds I should explain that I had made an assumption about the man in the car with the woman last Tuesday when the woman told the boy to get a cop. I had assumed that the man was Matthew Birch.”

Cramer’s eyes widened. “Why Birch?”

“I don’t have to expound it because it has been validated. It was Birch. Another fact.”

“Show me. This one will have to be filled in good.”

“By Mr. Goodwin. He’ll get to it. Archie, start with Fred’s phone call last evening and go on through.”

I complied. Having known that this would be somewhere on the program, I had spent most of an hour carefully going over it, while I had been on guard duty in the front room from three-thirty to four-thirty, and had decided that only two major items should be omitted: the kind of stimulation used on Lips Egan, and Egan’s notebook. The latter wouldn’t be mentioned, and wasn’t. Wolfe had said, during our session up in his room, that if it proved later to be essential evidence we would have to produce it, but not otherwise.

Except for those two items I delivered the crop. Stebbins started taking notes but quit halfway through. It was too much for him. I handed him Mort’s gun and exhibited the pliers, which had black tape wrapped thick around the jaws to keep them from breaking skin and bruising flesh. When I finished, Cramer and Stebbins sat looking at each other.

Cramer turned to Wolfe. “This needs some sorting out.”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed. “It does indeed.”

Cramer turned to Stebbins. “Do we know this Egan?”

“I don’t, but I’ve been on Homicide all my life.”