The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

“I would like to if it’s convenient. My name’s Goodwin, and I work for Nero Wolfe, the detective. I want to ask you something about the murder of a boy-a twelve-year-old boy named Peter Drossos.”

His expression didn’t change. As I was to see, it never changed. “I know nothing about the murder of any boy,” he declared.

I contradicted him. “Yes, you do, but you don’t know you do. What you know may be essential to the discovery of the boy’s murderer. Mr. Wolfe thinks it is. May I come in for five minutes and explain?”

“Are you a policeman?”

“No, sir. Private detective. The boy was willfully run over by a car. It was a brutal murder.”

He stepped aside. “Come in.”

He took me not to the front, from where he had come, but along the hall in the other direction, into a small room with all its walls covered with books and pictures. There were a little desk in a corner, a chess table by a window, and two upholstered chairs. He motioned me to one, and, when I was seated, took the other.

I told him about Pete, not at great length, but enough for him to get the picture complete-his session with Wolfe and me, his second visit the next day only a few hours before Stebbins came with the news of his death, and Mrs. Drossos’s call to bring the message and the four dollars and thirty cents. I didn’t ham it, I just told it. Then I went after him.

“There are complications,” I said, “that I won’t go into unless you want them. For instance, Mrs. Damon Fromm was wearing gold spiders for earrings when she was killed Friday night. But what I’m asking your help on is who killed the boy. The police have got nowhere. Neither has Mr. Wolfe. In his opinion the best chance to start a trail is the earrings that Pete said the woman in the car was wearing. We can’t find anyone who has ever seen any woman with such earrings-except Mrs. Fromm, of course-and Mr. Wolfe decided to try starting at the other end. He put a man on it, a man named Cather, to dig up someone who had ever sold spider earrings. By this afternoon Cather was about ready to decide there was no such person or firm in New York, and then he hit it. A reliable person, who can be produced if necessary, told him that she saw a pair in the window of your shop a few weeks ago. He went to see you, and you said you had no memory of it.”

I paused to give him a chance to comment, but he offered none. His small tidy face displayed no reaction whatever.