Free Prisoner's Base by Rex Stout Page A

would have been quite different, but I didn’t.
    I had been bandied a good deal, though I had not yet been tossed in the coop or even charged. Escorted first to the Tenth Precinct on West Twentieth Street, where Cramer’s office is, I had sat neglected for half an hour, at the end of which I was told that if I wanted to see Inspector Cramer I would have to be taken elsewhere. I had expressed no desire to see Cramer, but I was tired of sitting, and when one in uniform invited me to accompany him I did so. He conveyed me in a taxi to 240 Centre Street, took me up in an elevator, and gripped my arm on a long walk around halls, winding up at an alcove with a bench, where he told me to sit. He also sat. After a while I asked him who or what we were waiting for.
    “Listen, bud,” he demanded aggressively, “do I look like I know much?”
    I hedged. “At first sight, no.”
    “Right. I don’t know one single thing about anything. So don’t ask me.”
    That seemed to settle it, and I sat. People, the assortment you expect and always get at 240 Centre Street, kept passing by along the corridor, both directions. I was at the point where I was shifting on the hard bench every thirty seconds instead of every two minutes when I saw a captain in uniform marching past and called to him. “Captain!”
    He stopped, whirled, saw me, and approached.
    “Captain,” I said, “I appeal to you. My name is Archie Goodwin, Nine-fourteen West Thirty-fifth Street, which is Nero Wolfe’s address. This officer must of course stick to me or I might escape. I appeal to you to send me a photographer. I want a picture of me in these things”—I lifted my manacled hands—“for evidence. A double-breasted ape named Rowcliff had me fettered, and I intend to sue him for false arrest and exposing me to shame, degradation, and public scorn.”
    “I’ll see what I can do,” he said sympathetically and went.
    I had of course stopped the captain and appealed to him as a diversion, just for something to do, and it was totally unexpected when, some twenty minutes later, a sergeant walked up to me and asked my name. I told him.
    He turned to my chaperon. “What’s this man’s name?”
    “He told you, Sergeant.”
    “I’m asking you!”
    “I don’t know of my own knowledge, Sergeant. Up at Homicide they said his name was Archie Goodwin, like he told you.”
    The sergeant made a noise, not complimentary, glanced at my cuffs, produced a ring of keys and usedone, and my hands were free. I had never seen that captain before and haven’t seen him since, and I don’t know his name, but if you ever get struck in an alcove at headquarters with handcuffs on, ask for a captain around fifty to fifty-five with a big red nose and a double chin, wearing metal-rimmed glasses.
    A little later another sergeant came with orders, and I was escorted down and out, to Leonard Street, up to the District Attorney’s layout, and to a room. There at last some attention was paid to me, by a Homicide dick named Randall, whom I knew a little, and an assistant DA I had never seen before, named Mandelbaum. They pecked at me for an hour and a half, and there was nothing in it for anybody, except that I got the impression that there would be no charge. When they left they didn’t even bother about a sentinel, merely telling me to stick. The third or fourth time I looked at my watch after their departure it was a quarter to six.
    As I said, I was bored and disillusioned and hungry. An encounter with Rowcliff was enough to ruin a day anyhow, and that was only one item of the record. I had to meet Lon Cohen at seven-thirty to buy him a steak as promised, and afterward I had to go home and pack a bag before finding a hotel room. That was okay, but there was no telling what frame of mind they had pestered Wolfe into, and if I went home he would probably be laying for me. Also I didn’t mind sleeping in a hotel room, but what about when I left it in the morning? What were my