The Golden Spiders - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Pete Drossos, a twelve-year-old from the neighborhood, rings Wolfe's doorbell one evening and interrupts his after dinner coffee. Wolfe has just thrown a tantrum, occasioned by Fritz's choice of herbs to garnish the entree. Archie regards Wolfe's behavior as childish, and so to twit him, Archie admits Pete – who says, "I gotta case."

Turning Archie's prank against him, Wolfe invites Pete to tell his story. He observes that Archie, who had been about to leave to watch a billiards match, will now have to stay and take detailed notes concerning Pete's case.

Pete has quite a tale. It seems that he was working the wipe racket when a woman driver with a male passenger mouthed an appeal to him: "Help. Get a cop." Pete had the presence of mind to note the time and the car's tag. Later, Pete reflected that the car was a Caddy and the driver was wearing gold earrings, shaped like spiders. So there might be money involved, and he decided to enlist Wolfe's assistance.

Hearing all this, Wolfe tells Archie to phone the police, give them the tag number, and suggest a routine check. After Archie phones the precinct, Wolfe lectures Pete at length on the attributes of a successful detective, among which are a robust ego and integrity in the matter of fees. The conference ends when Pete has to return home.

The next evening, Sergeant Purley Stebbins appears on the stoop. Admitted to the office, Stebbins wants to know why Archie reported a tag number the night before. Archie wants to know why Stebbins wants to know. Stebbins reveals that a boy named Peter Drossos was struck and killed, two hours earlier, by a Cadillac with that tag number.

After Archie reviews Pete's story for Stebbins, Pete's mother rings the doorbell. In the ambulance just prior to his death, Pete asked his mother to give Wolfe the $4.30 he has saved. Embarrassed to keep the money, Wolfe tells Archie to donate it to charity, but Archie suggests that they use it to buy an ad in the Times seeking information about a woman driving a Cadillac and wearing spider earrings.

The ad gets two responses. First Inspector Cramer arrives, wanting to know what they're up to. Archie explains, and Cramer then wants to know if they've ever heard of Matthew Birch: there is evidence to indicate that Birch, an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was also struck and killed by the Cadillac that killed Pete.

The other response is from a woman named Laura Fromm, a young and wealthy widow. She comes to the brownstone wearing gold earrings shaped like spiders, and wants information about Pete, but she won't say why. She retains Wolfe to provide help and advice, but first she wants to do some investigating herself. Wolfe satisfies himself that she is not the woman who asked Pete to get a cop, accepts her retainer, and warns her to beware – two people have already been murdered.

Mrs. Fromm apparently ignores Wolfe's advice, for the next day Wolfe and Archie learn that her body has been found, run over by car. They soon hear from a lawyer named Dennis Horan, counsel for Mrs. Fromm's favorite charity, Assadip. He wants to know about the check that Mrs. Fromm gave Wolfe as a retainer. He starts to warn Wolfe that outstanding checks written by a deceased person do not clear the issuing bank, but Wolfe informs Horan that the check has already been certified, and therefore will clear. Horan wants to know how Wolfe can justify keeping the retainer. Wolfe responds that Horan is not his mentor in propriety and ethics, but that he intends to earn it.

Archie heads for the Gazette to get information on Mrs. Fromm's death and on her associates. He learns that a few hours after meeting with Wolfe, she had attended a dinner party at the Horan apartment with several friends and associates, and after she left the party she was not seen until the discovery of her body. Seeking more information about Mrs. Fromm's activities after she left Wolfe's office, Archie scams his way, dressed as a mortician, into the Fromm household to question Jean Estey, Mrs. Fromm's personal secretary. He learns only that Mrs. Fromm had done nothing out of the ordinary, merely dictating some letters before dressing for the dinner party.

Wolfe gathers Saul Panzer, Orrie Cather and Fred Durkin to assist in his investigation. It's possible that there is a connection between Mrs. Fromm's death and Assadip, so Saul will pose as a refugee seeking Assadip's assistance, to see if anything unexpected results. Orrie will try to trace the spider earrings worn by the woman Pete saw in the car, and subsequently by Mrs. Fromm. Fred will explore Wolfe's conjecture that Matthew Birch was the passenger Pete saw in the Cadillac.

As the 'teers leave the brownstone, two lawyers arrive: Dennis Horan, counsel for Assadip, and James Albert Maddox, personal counsel for Mrs. Fromm — they are at odds over which of them has standing to represent Mrs. Fromm's interests. Maddox wants Wolfe to disgorge the $10,000 retainer that Mrs. Fromm paid him. Maddox implies that he will not pursue the funds if Wolfe will tell him the substance of his conversation with Mrs. Fromm. Wolfe refuses, and Maddox storms out, threatening to replevy the money. With Horan still present, Wolfe telephones the police, reports Maddox's behavior, hints that Maddox tried to bribe him, and asks that the information be given to Inspector Cramer. Horan nearly accuses Wolfe of slander, and then also leaves.

A couple of days later, Saul, Orrie and Fred each report progress. Orrie has tracked down the owner of a jewelry store where the spider earrings were once on display. Saul, after successfully posing at Assadip as a displaced person, has been visited by a man who demands money from him; Saul is now following the extortionist. And Fred has made contact with someone who knew Birch, but it sounds like he's in trouble. Archie sends Orrie to help Saul, and then goes to back Fred up.

When Archie catches up with Fred, he finds him in the basement of a public garage, relieved of his gun, and tied to a chair. A couple of goons, Egan and Ervin, are getting ready to torture him for information. In a spate of violence that is very rare in the Wolfe series, Archie shoots a gun out of Egan's hand, kicks Ervin in the stomach and slams Egan into a wall.

With the goons disabled, Archie unties Fred and goes back up to the garage, where he encounters Saul and Orrie. It turns out that it was Egan who tried to extort money from Saul, and Saul and Orrie have followed him to the garage. It's apparent that there's a blackmail operation going on: Egan carries a notebook filled with hundreds of names, including Leopold Heim, the alias that Saul used at Assadip. It also looks like Birch had something to do with the scheme, and Archie wants more information from Egan.

The book's plot continues with a scene even more rare in the series than the gun play: Archie, with help from Saul and Fred, proceeds to torture Egan. Egan's legs are twisted around one another and put under enough stress to make his face go gray. Although it is generally conceded that torture does not elicit dependable information, Archie believes what he hears: that Birch ran the blackmailing racket, that Egan saw Birch with a woman in a Cadillac on the same day that Pete wiped its windshield, and that Egan gets his leads via the phone, from a woman who identifies herself with the catchphrase, "Said a spider to a fly."

Then Horan unexpectedly shows up at the garage. Although he claims that Mrs. Fromm, before her murder, had asked him to investigate the activities there, it is clear that Horan has been a participant in the blackmail operation and showed up to help Egan. All involved – Archie, the 'teers, Egan, Ervin and Horan – adjourn to the brownstone for the remainder of the night, to await Cramer's arrival the next morning.

Egan is sewn up tight, for his assault on Fred, his attempt to blackmail Saul, and for the notebook with the names of blackmail victims in his possession. To avoid being implicated in Mrs. Fromm's death, he gives up Horan, who used his association with Assadip to obtain the names of recent immigrants, vulnerable people who would be easy to blackmail. Wolfe maneuvers Horan and Egan – with the assistance of the proprietor of a store in Newark – into identifying the other participant in the blackmail ring, the murderer of Pete Drossos, Matthew Birch and Laura Fromm.