Skinner growled,
“Don’t start stalling, Wolfe.
Let’s get—”
“I’m not stalling, sir.
An excellent word, Mr. Cramer?”
The inspector dropped his cigar in the tray.
“Well, Walsh stopped at a lunch counter on Franklin near Broadway and ate.
He kept looldng around, but Stebbins thinks he didn’t wise up.
Then he took a surface car north and got off at Twenty-seventh Street and walked west.
He went in the Seaboard Building and took the elevator and got off at the thirty-second floor and went into the executive offices of the Seaboard Products Corporation.
Stebbins waited out in the hall.
Walsh was in there nearly an hour.
He took the elevator down again, and Stebbins didn’t want to take the same one and nearly lost him.
He walked east and went into a drug store and used a telephone in a booth.
Then he took the subway and went to a boarding house in East Sixty-fourth Street, where he lived, and he left again a little after half past five and walked to his job at Fifty-fifth Street.
He got there a little before six.”
Wolfe had leaned back and closed his eyes.
They all looked at him.
Cramer got out another cigar and bit off the end and fingered his tongue for the shreds.
Hombert demanded,
“Well, are you asleep?”
Wolfe didn’t move, but he spoke.
“About that visit Mr. Walsh made at the Seaboard Products Corporation.
Do you know whom he saw there?”
“No, how could I?
Stebbins didn’t go in.
Even if there had been any reason—the office was closed by the time I got Stebbins’s report.
What difference does it make?”
“Not much.” Wolfe’s tone was mild, but to me, who knew it so well, there was a thrill in it. “No, not much.
There are cases when a conjecture is almost as good as a fact—even, sometimes, better.”
Suddenly he opened his eyes, sat up, and got brisk.
“That’s all, gentlemen.
It is past two o’clock, and Mr. Goodwin is yawning.
You will hear from me tomorrow—today, rather.”
Skinner shook his head wearily.
“Oh, no no no.
Honest to God, Wolte, you’re the worst I’ve ever seen for trying to put over fast ones.
There’s a lot to do yet.
Could I have another highball?”
Wolfe sighed.
“Must we start yapping again?” He wiggled a finger at the District Attorney. “I offered you a bargain, sir.
I said if I could get replies to a few questions I would consider them and would then do what I could for you.
Do you think I can consider them properly at this time of night?
I assure you I cannot.
I am not quibbling.
I have gone much further than you gentlemen along the path to the solution of this puzzle, and I am confronted by one difficulty which must be solved before anything can be done.
When it will be solved I cannot say.
I may light on it ten minutes from now, while I am undressing for bed, or it may require extended investigation and labor.
Confound it, do you realize it will be dawn in less than four hours?
It was past three when I retired last night.”