Loose on the Wall

0:00 A Paper Map and No F Train

0:04 Watson: From the case log. August, two thousand fourteen. Brooklyn. A Friday evening, the twenty-ninth, hot enough that every window in the brownstone stood open to the street. The F train was out all weekend, so I had a paper map across the table, plotting my way to Saturday's clinic. Every teenager on the block carried a telephone that could do this. Holmes, unasked, stood at my shoulder doing it instead.

0:31 Holmes: You've gone through Borough Hall. Watson: I like Borough Hall. Holmes: The replacement buses do not. You'll spend Saturday behind a cement mixer.

0:40 Watson: Give me back the pencil, Holmes. Holmes: Not while you trust this map. It's a work of fiction.

0:47 Watson: The city printed it. Holmes: And I've written to the city. Watson: You have not.

0:53 Holmes: Twice. There's a bakery on here that closed under Eisenhower. Watson: Then I'll stop there for a roll.

1:00 Watson: Your flip phone, your windowsill, and I'm the one who gets up. Hello? Tremaine: Captain Tremaine ... Homicide. He there?

1:09 Watson: Doctor Watson here, and that fan is eating your voice. Who's dead? Tremaine: Nobody ... Doctor. Put him on.

1:17 Watson: He's shaking his head at the telephone. I'll hold it out. Tremaine: Tell him: Upper East Side, tonight, nine o'clock.

1:25 Watson: On whose say-so, Captain? Tremaine: Marsh. Owns Larkspur House ... the gallery. He wants Holmes there tonight. And all he wants from him ... is a name.

1:36 Watson: Well. The captain doesn't linger. Holmes: No. Nobody is dead, Watson.

1:42 Watson: You needn't sound so let down about it. Holmes: The man already has the police. What's left over for me?

1:49 Watson: That isn't all, Holmes. You're looking at my map. Holmes: You have the clinic at eight and no F train. And after— after my last three weeks, you owe me nothing.

2:00 Watson: I know what I'm owed. I kept the receipts. Holmes: Then stay and finish your—

2:05 Watson: A gallery owner with a homicide captain making his calls, and he still needs you. For one thing only: a name. Holmes: Fold the map. I concede Borough Hall.

2:17 Watson: Holmes, you're halfway down the stairs, and I haven't got my shoes on. Holmes: Then walk quickly. It's good practice for Saturday.

2:26 Watson: Case log, same evening: we left for the Upper East Side, and Holmes left with my pencil.

2:37 Nine O'Clock on a Long White Floor

2:41 Watson: We came to Larkspur House on the stroke of nine: a long white floor on Madison Avenue, Marsh, its owner, waiting, and Bellamy, his assistant, behind him. Holmes: Stop here, Mister Marsh. A pale square on the wall. What did that square cost you?

2:58 Marsh: One hundred and ten thousand dollars. An Anselmo Vidal drawing, gone eleven days. Watson: You had that ready.

3:07 Holmes: That's the drawing's price. I asked your cost. The air conditioning is off, in a room of works on paper. You're protecting the bill.

3:15 Marsh: All right. Rent: forty thousand dollars a month, on a lease I signed in a very good mood. Watson: My clinic could run half a year on that.

3:27 Marsh: Your clinic doesn't need collectors. Mine read the papers, and four have cancelled this week. Holmes: On what news?

3:35 Marsh: The Vidal came home by mail. Like a sweater. Customs impounded it at JFK.

3:41 Watson: You're joking. Holmes: So it's found, and still you send a homicide captain for— Marsh: Because there's a print on the package, and it matches no police file. My collectors won't stand in a room robbed by nobody. I want the name.

3:55 Watson: How many collectors does that leave? Marsh: Ask Bellamy. She keeps the book.

4:00 Bellamy: Mostly crossings-out now, Doctor. Collectors, the next show, the framer. That leaves one client still on the books.

4:11 Watson: Ouch.

4:14 A Buzzer at the Front Desk

4:18 Watson: The buzzer went before she had shut the book. At the front desk stood a man with a travel case at his feet. Bellamy: You're in my book, anyway. Mister Karras?

4:29 Karras: Karras, yes. Forgive the hour. I landed at six, and in my head it's four in the morning.

4:37 Marsh: Marsh. All those letters from your agency, and finally a face! Holmes: So you've never met. Miss Bellamy read him out of a book, and that's all either of you—

4:47 Bellamy: Nobody here's met him. Booked through an agency on Park Avenue. Their address is all I've got.

4:54 Karras: That's what agencies are for. I'm a fashion publicist; I bring thirty editors, one shoemaker, and I need a very good wall. Marsh: You've read about our drawing.

5:04 Karras: Everybody has read about your drawing. Such noise. Editors adore noise; the launch stands.

5:12 Marsh: Thank God. Karras: But your lights are wrong. I have an eye; it's all I have. I paid a deposit on this room. I'll go and see what it bought.

5:24 Bellamy: Paid. That deposit cheque bounced once. Watson: Did it, now?

5:30 Marsh: And he made it good inside the week. Bellamy— Bellamy: I'd settle for one that bounced. I'm owed three weeks.

5:37 Marsh: Not now. Watson: A bad cheque and an agency's address, Marsh. I'd want more than that.

5:43 Marsh: His launch fee is this month's rent, Holmes. There is— there's no next month.

5:50 Forklifts Under a Steel Roof

5:54 Watson: Holmes had been right about the buses. The next afternoon we stood at a customs cargo bench at Kennedy, Captain Tremaine and Inspector Okafor either side of a cardboard tube.

6:10 Tremaine: Homicide ... on a drawing. City Hall got rattled, Holmes. Holmes: And that's a door log in your hand, or you'd have stayed home.

6:20 Tremaine: Gallery door's on a buzzer. Between the last time anybody saw that Vidal and the minute it was missed ... one visitor. In, out. Fourteen minutes.

6:30 Watson: No camera, on Madison Avenue? Tremaine: A red light ... in an empty box. Watson: Wonderful.

6:38 Okafor: Doctor, hands off my bench, abeg. Okafor, Customs, and this tube is mine. Watson: Those smears have no ridges, Inspector. I've pulled off enough latex to know a glove.

6:50 Okafor: Good eye. We flagged every parcel for that gallery once we heard of the theft. Then this, from Athens, gloved inside and out.

7:00 Holmes: Gloved throughout? Okafor: Until he starts the tape. You can't find the end of a roll in gloves. So I've got a bare thumb on the sticky side.

7:08 Holmes: Careful, and new to it. A professional cuts his tape before he gloves up. Tremaine: Fine. Give me the tube, Inspector ... and the tape. My lab.

7:18 Okafor: Your lab had its lifted print, Captain. On a card. Tube, tape and drawing stay in my cage.

7:25 Tremaine: And my lab ran that card ... against every file we've got. Nothing. Okafor: So there it is, Mister Holmes. That thumb's in no police file. Bring me one that matches.

7:39 An Office Above the Cargo Floor

7:43 Watson: The captain left us there. Okafor's office sat above the cargo floor, and she shut the door herself. Holmes: You gave the captain a thumb, the word tape, and nothing more. How was it sealed, Inspector?

7:57 Okafor: You noticed that. Police reports leak, Mister Holmes. I've read my own seizures in the City Ledger.

8:05 Watson: So you keep secrets from a captain of Homicide? Okafor: Every crank in the city will claim he mailed that tube. I keep back one thing only the packer can tell me.

8:15 Holmes: A test, then, and a test can't leak from people who never saw it. Okafor: The captain's people get a print on a card, never the tape, never the inside of that tube. My log says this: tape inside, one strip, no more. That count never reached a single newspaper.

8:33 Holmes: Ah. Watson: Why tell two men with no badge? Okafor: No badge, no report. Write it in that notebook, Doctor, and keep it in your trousers. Not the captain, not your client.

8:47 Watson: Understood. Okafor: That's my seal back on the log. Now only this room and whoever packed that tube know.

8:55 Closing Time, Lights Half Down

8:59 Watson: Closing time found us back on the gallery floor, the lights half down, Bellamy with her bag on her shoulder, watching Holmes put his fingers on the frames. Holmes: Fixed. Screwed at the foot, every one on this floor. Now the bare place.

9:14 Holmes: Hear that? One plain hook, no screw at the foot. Alone in this room, the Vidal came off like a hat.

9:22 Bellamy: The police did all this, Mister Holmes. Holmes: And you sat at that desk through those fourteen minutes, Miss Bellamy, without— Bellamy: Never left it. Not for a second. You can write that down, Doctor.

9:35 Holmes: The visitor? Bellamy: Head down. Only a linen coat.

9:39 Holmes: A person at a desk sees faces. A coat is what one sees going away. Bellamy: I wouldn't know him if he walked in again. That's what you've got.

9:50 Holmes: Very sure of your desk, Miss Bellamy. Very vague about— Bellamy: You want loose? Installers did every frame in this room but that one. Marsh shooed them off and hung it with his own hands.

10:01 Watson: He what? She meant me to hear that. All the same. Why would Marsh hang his own Vidal loose, unless he wanted it gone?

10:12 Before the Doors Opened

10:16 Watson: Monday, before the gallery doors opened. Captain Tremaine stood under the pale square with a precinct report, Marsh stood facing it, and Holmes and I were the audience. Holmes: Every paper gives the same figure, to the dollar, with no "sources say." Those headlines all came from one place. How did they—

10:36 Marsh: Papers talk to dealers, Holmes. It's a small town. Tremaine: Small town ... so I'll read it to your face. Precinct report. A city desk calls the station house for comment on a stolen Vidal. Twenty minutes later ... the owner reports it stolen.

10:54 Watson: In that order? Tremaine: Exactly so. You gave them the price before the police, Mister Marsh.

11:00 Marsh: I'd been— I'd been robbed, Captain. I made some calls. Tremaine: And City Hall clips everything. Wire pickup, from their press office. One hundred and ten thousand dollars ... London. Paris. Athens ran it too.

11:17 Holmes: Athens. So whoever carried that drawing there opened a newspaper and found his parcel priced. Watson: Nothing to add, Marsh? Why the papers first?

11:26 Marsh: I hired a man to name a thief, Doctor, not read my telephone bill. Excuse me. Watson: He didn't even trouble to explain, Holmes. Who rings the papers before the police, unless he wants paying?

11:41 A Closet Office, Door Propped Open

11:45 Watson: His office was a closet behind the white wall, door propped open for want of air: Marsh at the desk, Holmes in the spare chair, I in the doorframe. Holmes: Those fourteen minutes, Mister Marsh. You weren't on your floor. Where were you?

12:01 Marsh: In a taxi on Lexington, coming back from my landlord. You can imagine the mood. Watson: Can anyone swear to that taxi?

12:09 Marsh: My cell phone can. I rang the gallery from the back seat. It's logged, to the minute, inside your fourteen.

12:16 Watson: Is that right. Holmes: A man fresh from his landlord rings to ask if anything has sold. Then what?

12:23 Marsh: Twelve rings, then the machine. A working day on Madison Avenue, and nobody at that desk. Bellamy: Bad signal, in a bad taxi. I've sworn to that desk twice. Want it in blood?

12:38 Watson: And the police never heard this, Marsh? Two weeks, and an alibi with a minute on— Marsh: She's the last person here who comes in unpaid. Who do I— who do I accuse? Bellamy, I never—

12:48 Bellamy: You were in a taxi, Marsh. I'm the one who watches every card drop in that bowl. Holmes: A bowl. Nobody has mentioned a bowl. Show it to me, would you, Miss Bellamy?

13:01 The Corner of the Front Desk

13:05 Watson: A plain glass bowl sat at the corner of the front desk; I had passed it a dozen times. Captain Tremaine came up to watch Bellamy reach in. Tremaine: Precinct skipped that ... on Miss Bellamy's word. Nothing in it but old clients.

13:20 Bellamy: That's what's in it. Mostly. Holmes: From the top, in order, Miss Bellamy. Who leaves a card at a robbed gallery? Your top one came in with the last stranger.

13:32 Bellamy: This one's not— this one's not mine. Never booked it. That's the one card from Athens in the whole bowl.

13:40 Watson: Whose name? Bellamy: Nobody's. Athens, printed small at the foot. Where the name goes there's foil, rubbed blank.

13:50 Watson: Foil goes first. Drug reps' cards do that, loose in a coat pocket. Holmes: You watch every card drop, you told us, not ten minutes ago. And this one?

14:01 Bellamy: I look down sometimes. I've got a book to cross things out of. Tremaine: Mine now. Lab raises the name ... and any thumbprint, to go up against that lifted print. Two days.

14:15 Watson: She's had her hand through that whole bowl, Captain. Tremaine: Then we print Miss Bellamy too ... and rule her out. Bellamy: Doctor. Two days is a long time. Ask who's drowning in rent with an insured Vidal.

14:31 Cartons on the Consulting-Room Table

14:29 Watson: Hm.

14:35 Watson: Home to Brooklyn, by a route of Holmes's choosing. We ate out of cartons at the consulting-room table, two men and two days to wait on a laboratory.

14:52 Holmes: Two facts, side by side. Touch neither yet. Watson: One. Every frame screwed down but the one Marsh put up himself.

15:01 Holmes: Two. On top of the bowl, Athens, with the name worn away. Watson: They make a pair.

15:07 Holmes: Do they? The first wants a man who owns the wall. The second, a man who came in off the street.

15:15 Watson: I know what I'm asking Marsh in the morning. Holmes: Pass the rice.

15:20 Everyone With Business Left on That Floor

15:24 Watson: Next morning everyone with business left on that floor was there: Marsh, Bellamy with her book, Karras at the far wall frowning at a lamp, Holmes letting me go first. Marsh. What was that Vidal worth to you gone?

15:38 Marsh: Worth? What kind of— Watson: Forty thousand dollars a month you can't pay. Installers sent away. Miss Bellamy told us the boss hung it with his own hands, on one plain hook.

15:49 Bellamy: Don't look at me, Marsh. You did send them home. Watson: Then a visitor, paid to walk it out while you collect the insurance. Only you ring the papers first, he reads the price in Athens, panics, and posts it home in a cardboard tube.

16:03 Marsh: I hired you! Holmes, you're— you're letting him say this? Holmes: The doctor's sum is sound as far as it goes, Mister Marsh. Your hook, your hand, your figure in every headline.

16:15 Marsh: Insurance! You don't know what you're saying about that policy! Watson: Then fetch it. Put it on that desk.

16:21 Marsh: I will not— not out here, not with— you don't know what you're saying! Holmes: "That policy." Not "my policy." You can't even say it like it's yours. There's a line in it you won't read aloud.

16:34 Karras: Forgive me; this room carries. This is the great crime? A plain hook, a frightened errand boy, a tube with one strip of tape. My shoemaker plots better.

16:46 Marsh: Mister Karras, it's a misunderstanding, it's nonsense— Karras: Noise I can sell. A man robbing his own wall, and badly, I cannot. I cancel. The launch, the room. I'll come back for my deposit.

17:00 Marsh: No, wait— please— Bellamy: That's the last name in the book. Marsh: That was the rent. That was— that was all of it, the whole— I came to you for a name!

17:13 Watson: Marsh— Marsh: Get out. Both of you. Off my floor, Holmes, before I— get out!

17:19 A Torn Envelope on the Sidewalk

17:23 Watson: The bolt went across behind us on Madison Avenue. Captain Tremaine was coming up the sidewalk with a torn envelope.

17:37 Holmes: Torn with a thumb, on the move. You wanted that letter badly, Captain, and it hasn't pleased you. Tremaine: The insurer. Asked for it the day this landed on me. Hartford won't talk on a telephone, not to a captain ... lawyers first. Two weeks.

17:55 Watson: Well, it's come in time. What did he stand to— Tremaine: Doctor ... I pulled this to clear him or hang him. It says Marsh cancelled the Vidal's cover months ago. To save rent.

18:07 Watson: Cancelled? No. He'd have— he stood there shouting about that policy. Holmes: The line he wouldn't read aloud. I knew it was there and never asked which way it cut. I backed you, Watson. Log that too.

18:22 Tremaine: No cover ... no claim. A hired thief earns nothing. Marsh is cleared. You got an answer to that, Doctor?

18:30 Watson: No. And I said it— I said it in front of his last client.

18:36 Packed Into the Office Again

18:40 Watson: Marsh drew the bolt for the captain's letter, not for us. We packed into his closet of an office again, Tremaine at the desk, Bellamy in the doorframe. I was wrong, Marsh, and wrong in front of your last client. I'm sorry.

18:55 Marsh: You were loud, Doctor. I could've lived with wrong. Tremaine: Hartford says you cancelled the Vidal's cover months ago. Two weeks on lawyers ... you could've—

19:05 Marsh: Said what? My lease says insured contents, Captain. My landlord hears that, I'm on the sidewalk. Same reason I sent the installers home one frame short: they bill by the hour.

19:16 Bellamy: No cover? All this time? Watson: You sent me after it, Miss Bellamy. Drowning in rent, you said, with an insured Vidal.

19:26 Holmes: It led us away from your desk, and now it's closed. Captain, you haven't heard about the taxi. Marsh: I rang here from Lexington, inside the fourteen minutes. Twelve rings, then the machine.

19:39 Tremaine: So I've got a sworn statement ... and a phone log saying there was nobody at that desk. Which one do I keep, Miss Bellamy? Bellamy: I told you, I never—

19:49 Holmes: Head down, only a coat. That's a man seen from a back-room door. Bellamy: All right. I left the— the desk. For a second. He dropped a card, he looked like money, and I thought, he'll keep. So I slipped into the back.

20:05 Watson: For what? Bellamy: To beg. On my cell, to a rival in Chelsea, with my wages already late. And the desk line starts up, through the wall—

20:15 Marsh: You heard it. Bellamy: Twelve times, Marsh. I counted. I stood there telling them how I loved their program, and I— I let it ring...

20:26 Marsh: What are they offering? Bellamy: Real money. Every Friday. Marsh, I can't—

20:32 Marsh: Take it, Bellamy. Take the better job. I can't match it. I couldn't match it if I sold the hook.

20:39 Bellamy: You're impossible...

20:42 One Lamp Over the Bare Wall

20:46 Watson: We had the floor on a borrowed key that night. One lamp burned over the bare wall, Holmes beneath it with his eyes shut, my notebook on my knee. Holmes: The same leaf, three times. You're rereading your speech, and it won't improve. Find me the page from Okafor's office.

21:04 Watson: Tape inside the tube: a single strip, no more. Held back from the captain. Not a word in print.

21:12 Holmes: Now this morning, this floor. The insult you took down because it stung. Watson: "A frightened errand boy, a tube with one strip of tape. My shoemaker plots better." It's a man being rude, Holmes. What's that got to—

21:26 Holmes: Two pages, one fact. Where could anyone have read that? Watson: But that would...

21:33 Two Days to the Hour

21:36 Watson: The laboratory kept its two days to the hour. Captain Tremaine carried its envelope up to Okafor's office at Kennedy, and the door shut on the four of us. Holmes: You drove that to Queens, Captain, when a telephone would do. So it holds a thumb, and you want the inspector watching.

21:54 Tremaine: Lab's finished with the one card from Athens. Miss Bellamy's ruled out ... and one thumb's left over. Okafor: Then here's my own card, the one your lab's was copied from. That's your bare thumb on the sticky side, Captain, and the tape stays in my cage.

22:10 Tremaine: Don't need the tape ... Same whorl. Same nick across the ridges. Same thumb.

22:18 Okafor: Ehen. There it is. Watson: In the bowl before the theft, in the tube after it. One hand. Read me the name on it, Captain.

22:27 Tremaine: Lab raised the foil too. I can't read it ... looks like a fraternity house. Okafor: Give it here, abeg. Twelve years of Athens manifests. Kappa. Alpha. Rho, rho. Alpha. Sigma. That's Karras.

22:43 Watson: Karras. Then he stood at that desk, in front of Bellamy— Holmes: Who saw a coat, in a gallery where no one had ever met him.

22:50 Watson: Good grief. Tremaine: Then I've got a collar. Holmes: Bring your log to Madison Avenue, Inspector.

22:58 Tremaine: What log? Holmes: Put those cuffs away, Captain. He's coming back for his deposit. A thumb says he touched some tape; a lawyer says he did a friend a favour. Let Karras talk first.

23:09 Tremaine: You'd better be right.

23:13 Noon on the Long Floor

23:17 Watson: He came for his money at noon. Marsh waited on the long floor with an envelope; Tremaine, Okafor, Holmes and I admired the lamps. Karras: My deposit, Mister Marsh. And an audience.

23:30 Holmes: Packed, by that sound, for Kennedy. You were amusing on this floor, Mister Karras. A tube with one strip of tape, you called it.

23:39 Karras: So? It was in the papers. Everybody has read your—

23:43 Okafor: Okafor, Customs, and that's my tube. They printed the mailing. The count inside never reached a single newspaper.

23:51 Okafor: My log. My seal on it, whole until this minute, and that count inside. Karras: Then your— your police. Police talk, the whole world knows it. Ask the captain.

24:05 Tremaine: Ask me. My lab got a print ... on a card. I never saw that tape. I'm hearing that count right now.

24:13 Karras: Then these two! The doctor made his speech right here— Watson: I said a cardboard tube. The count stayed in my pocket, even while I made a fool of myself.

24:23 Marsh: He said tube. Nobody said tape. I was standing here losing my rent.

24:29 Holmes: This room carries, you told us. It carried you. That log knew, and the hands that packed.

24:37 Tremaine: And the thumb on that tape ... is the thumb on your card. Out of the bowl. Karras: My card. I paid extra for that foil.

24:47 Tremaine: Did you, now. Marsh: Why my wall? Karras: The agency's real, the publicist's real, and I owe in Athens, I owe in Milan, to men who don't write letters. I came to see your wall before I signed. I dropped my card, and she left me alone with it.

25:05 Holmes: So you tried the frames. Karras: Screwed. Screwed. Screwed. Then one moved under my finger. A hook! One hundred and ten thousand dollars, hanging like a coat in a restaurant.

25:20 Marsh: And you just walked out. Karras: With a shopping bag, in the sunshine. Home to Athens. And there at the kiosk, your drawing, your price, and every dealer I know has read it.

25:34 Marsh: So nobody would touch it. Karras: Nobody. And burn it? A Vidal? I have an eye, it's all I— So. Gloves, a tube, the post.

25:46 Watson: And then you flew back here. Why? Karras: A man who cancels gets looked at. So I stood under your lamps until the doctor handed me my reason, and I needed only the— only the money, I needed...

26:00 Tremaine: That's enough. Hands. You're under arrest, Mister Karras.

26:05 Tremaine: The long way ... past the wall. You've got an eye. Take a look at that pale square.

26:13 The Last Page of the Case Log

26:17 Watson: From the case log, the last page of this one: our consulting room in Brooklyn, Marsh in the good chair with a bottle he could not afford. Marsh: Karras is charged. The Vidal's back on my wall, screwed at the foot.

26:31 Holmes: About time. Watson: A thief safe in Athens. Why did that tube come home at all?

26:37 Holmes: Ask him. Nobody crosses the river with a bottle to report a screw. Marsh: Because I'd made sure it couldn't sell, Doctor. I put the price before the police on purpose. Once a drawing's that famous, nobody can sell it. It's only got one place to go.

26:53 Watson: You let me call you a fraud sooner than say so? Marsh: In that room? It carries. And I never knew whose head I was frightening. He was checking my lamps.

27:04 Holmes: Athens ran it too, the captain told you on your own floor. So the headlines that frightened him were yours. Marsh: Guilty.

27:13 Watson: And when did you have him, Holmes? Holmes: He handed us Athens at the desk, the first night. Past nine here, four in the morning in his head: seven hours on, an Athens clock. I filed it under fatigue.

27:25 Watson: And what did it cost you, Marsh? Marsh: Bellamy. The launch. But two collectors rang. They'll stand in a room robbed by somebody.

27:36 Watson: Holmes. My pencil. Holmes: I concede the pencil.

27:41 Watson: Case log, then. One Vidal, out the front door, home by post.