The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

“Get Rowcliff and tell him to get on him fast.”

I left my chair, and Purley got in it and dialed. While he was phoning, Cramer sat holding his cigar in his fingers, frowning at it, and rubbing his lips with a knuckle of his other hand. It looked exactly as if he were trying to make up his mind whether to quit cigar-chewing. When Purley was through and back in his chair, Cramer looked at Wolfe. “Horan’s in it up to his neck, but we can’t hold him now.”

“I’m not holding him. He is voluntarily cleaving to his client.”

“Yeah, I know. I hand you that one. It tagged Horan all right. If we can make Egan sing we’ve got it.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not necessarily the murderer. Possibly Egan knows as little about the murders as you do.”

It was a dirty crack, but Cramer ignored it.

“We’ll give him a chance,” he declared. “Plenty. I’ve got to sort this out. It’s not absolutely tight that it was Birch in the car with the woman. Suppose it wasn’t? Suppose the man in the car was one of the poor devils they had their hooks into. The woman was the one in the racket, the one that phones Egan the leads. She thought the man was going to kill her, so she told the boy to get a cop. Somehow she got out of it, but that night she got hold of Birch, who was running the racket, and killed him. Then he knew the boy could identify him-he might even have killed the woman, and her body hasn’t been found-so the next day he killed the boy. Then he knew Mrs. Fromm was the head of that Association, so he killed her. My God, this makes it wide open, this racket and Horan in it. People like that are desperate, and there are thousands of them in New York-people here illegally and afraid of getting kicked out. They’re soup for blackmailers. There must be a list somewhere of the ones these bastards were nicking, and I wish I had it. I would make it even money that the name of the murderer is on it. Would you?”

“No.”

“Anything to be contrary. Why not?”

“You haven’t done enough sorting, Mr. Cramer. But your snatching at a blackmail victim as the culprit shows that you’re hard up. There have been three murders. Assuming, to keep it tidy, that there is only one murderer, have all the handy ones been eliminated?”

“No.”

“Who has been?”