Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 by Three Men Out Page A

emphatic. “I think Heller turned it sideways to make it less likely that his attacker would see what it was. Move around here, please. Both of you. Look at it from here.”
    Wolfe and I joined him at the left end of the desk and looked as requested. One glance was enough. You can see what we saw by turning the page a quarter-turn counterclockwise.
    Cramer spoke. “Could you ask for a plainer NW?”
    “I could,” I objected. “Why the extra pencil on the left of the W?”
    “He put it there deliberately, for camouflage, to make it less obvious, or it rolled there accidentally, I don’t care which. It is unmistakably NW.” He focused on Wolfe. “I promised to connect you with a crime.”
    Wolfe, back in his chair, interlaced his fingers. “You’re not serious.”
    “The hell I’m not.” Cramer returned to the red leather chair and sat. “That’s why I came here, and came alone. You deny you sent Goodwin there, but I don’t believe you. He admits he was in Heller’s office ten minutes, because he has to, since the doorman saw him go up and five people saw him enter the waiting room. In a drawer of Heller’s desk is an envelope addressed to you, containing five hundred dollars in cash. But the clincher is that message. Heller, seated at his desk, sure that he is going to be killed in a matter of seconds, uses those seconds to leave a message. Can there be any question what the message was about? Not for me. It was about the person or persons responsible for his death. I am assuming that its purpose was to identify that person or persons. Do you reject that assumption?”
    “No. I think it quite likely. Highly probable.”
    “You admit it?”
    “I don’t admit it, I state it.”
    “Then I ask you to suggest any person or persons other than you whom the initials NW might identify. Unless you can do that here and now I’m going to take you and Goodwin downtown as material witnesses. I’ve got men in cars outside. If I didn’t do it the DA would.”
    Wolfe straightened up and sighed deep, clear down. “You are being uncommonly obnoxious, Mr. Cramer.” He got to his feet. “Excuse me a moment.” Detouring around Cramer’s feet, he crossed to the other side of the room, to the bookshelves back of the big globe, reached up to a high one, took a book down, and opened it. He was too far away for me to see what it was. He turned first to the back of the book, where the index would be if it had one, and then to a page near the middle of it. He went on to another page, and another, while Cramer, containing his emotions under pressure, got a cigar from a pocket, stuck it in his mouth and sank his teeth in it. He never lit one.
    Finally Wolfe returned to his desk, opened a drawer and put the book in it, and closed and locked the drawer. Cramer was speaking. “I’m not being fantastic. You didn’t kill him; you weren’t there. I’m not even assuming Goodwin killed him, though he could have. I’m saying that Heller left a message that would give a lead to the killer, and the message says NW, and that stands for Nero Wolfe, and therefore you know something, and I want to know what. I want a yes or no to this. Do you or do you not know something that indicates, or may indicate, who murdered Leo Heller?”
    Wolfe, settled in his chair again, nodded. “Yes.”
    “Ah. You do. What?”
    “The message he left.”
    “The message only says NW. Go on from there.”
    “I need more information. I need to know—are the pencils still there on his desk as you found them?”
    “Yes. They haven’t been disturbed.”
    “You have a man there, of course. Get him on the phone and let me talk to him. You will hear us.”
    Cramer hesitated, not liking it, then decided he might as well string along, came to my desk, dialed a number, got his man, and told him Wolfe would speak to him. Wolfe took it with his phone while Cramer stayed at mine.
    Wolfe was courteous but crisp. “I understand those pencils are there on the desk