"Pleading not guilty, of course. Archie. A chair for Mr. Talbott."
"Of course," he agreed, thanking me with a smile for the chair I brought, and sitting down. "Otherwise
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lyou'd have no job. Shoot." Suddenly he flushed. "Un Ider the circumstances, I guess I shouldn't have said 'shoot.'"
"You could have said 'Fire away,'" Wayne Safford Epiped up from the rear.
"Be quiet, Wayne," Audrey Rooney scolded him. "Permit me--" Broadyke began, but Wolfe cut him off.
"No. Mr. Talbott has invited questions." He focused I on the inviter. "These other people think the police are H handling this matter stupidly and ineffectively. Do you I agree, Mr. Talbott?"
Vie considered a moment, then nodded. "On the whole, yes," he assented. "Why?"
"Well--you see, they're up against it. They're used to working with clues, and while they found plenty of H dues to show what happened, like the marks -on the bridle path and leading to the thicket, there aren't any that help to identify the murderer. Absolutely none whatever. So they had to fall back on motive, and right away they found a man with the best motive in the world."
Talbott tapped himself on the necktie. "Me. But then they found that his man--me--that I couldn't possibly have done it because I was somewhere else. They found I had an alibi that was--" "Phony!" From Wayne Safford. "Made to order." From Broadyke. "The dumbheads!" From Pohl. "If they had brains enough to give that switchboard girl--"
"Please!" Wolfe shut them up. "Go ahead, Mr. Talbott. Your alibi--but first the motive. What is the best motive in the world?"
86 Rex Stout
Vie looked surprised. "It's been printed over and over again."
"I know. But I don't want journalistic conjectures when I've got you--unless you're sensitive about it."
Talbott's smile had some bitterness in it. "If I was," he declared, "I've sure been cured this past week. I guess ten million people have read that I'm deeply in love with Dorothy Keyes or some variation of that. All right, I am! Want a shot--want a picture of me saying it?" He turned to face his fiancee. "I love you, Dorothy, better than all the world, deeply, madly, with all my heart." He returned to Wolfe. "There's your motive."
"Vie, darling," Dorothy told his profile, "you're a perfect fool, and you're perfectly fascinating. I really am glad you've got a good alibi."
"You demonstrate love," Wolfe said dryly, "by killing your beloved's surviving parent. Is that it?"
"Yes," Talbott asserted. "Under certain conditions. Here was the situation. Sigmund Keyes was the most celebrated and successful industrial designer in America, and--"
"Nonsense!" Broadyke exploded, without asking permission to say.
Talbott smiled. "Sometimes," he said, as if offering it for consideration, "a jealous man is worse than any jealous woman. You know, of course, that Mr. Broadyke is himself an industrial designer--in fact, he practically invented the profession. Not many manufacturers would dream of tooling for a new model --steamship, railroad train, airplane, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, alarm clock, no matter what--without consulting Broadyke, until I came along and took over the selling end for Sigmund Keyes. Incidentally, that's why I doubt if Broadyke killed Keyes. If he had got
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that desperate about it he wouldn't have killed Keyes, he would have killed me."
"You were speaking," Wolfe reminded him, "of love as a motive for murder under certain conditions."
"Yes, and Broadyke threw me off." Talbott cocked his head. "Let's see--oh, yes, and I was doing the selling for Keyes, and he couldn't stand the talk going around that I was mostly responsible for the big success we were having, but he was afraid to get rid of me. And I loved his daughter and wanted her to marry me, and will always love her. But he had great influence with her, which I did not and do not understand-- anyway, if she loved me as I do her that wouldn't have mattered, but she doesn't--"
"My God, Vie," Dorothy protested, "haven't I said a dozen times I'd marry you like that"--she snapped her fingers--"if it weren't for Dad? Really, I'm crazy about you!"
"All right," Talbott told Wolfe, "there's your motive. It's certainly old-fashioned, no modern industrial design to it, but it's absolutely dependable. Naturally that's what the police thought until they ran up against the fact that I was somewhere else. That got them bewildered and made them sore, and they haven't recovered their wits, so I guess my good friends here are right that they're being stupid and ineffective. Not that they've crossed me off entirely. I understand they've got an army of detectives and stool pigeons hunting for the gunman I hired to do the job. They'll have to hunt hard. You heard Miss Keyes call me a fool, but I'm not quite fool enough to hire someone to commit a murder for me."
"I should hope not." Wolfe sighed. "There's nothing better than a good motive. What about the alibi? Have the police given up on that?"
88 Rex Stout
"Yes, the damn idiots!" Pohl blurted. "That switchboard girl--"
"I asked Mr. Talbott," Wolfe snapped.
"I don't know," Talbott admitted, "but I suppose they had to. I'm still trembling at how lucky I was that I got to bed late that Monday night--I mean a week ago, the night before Keyes was killed. If I had been riding with him I'd be in jail now, and done for. It's a question of timing."
Talbott compressed his lips and loosened them. "Oh, boy! The mounted cop saw Keyes riding in the park near Sixty-sixth Street at ten minutes past seven. Keyes was killed near Ninety-sixth Street. Even if he had galloped all the way he couldn't have got there, the way that bridle path winds, before seven-twenty. And he didn't gallop, because if he had the horse would have shown it, and he didn't." Talbott twisted around. "You're the authority on that, Wayne. Casanova hadn't been in a sweat, had he?"
"You're telling it," was all he got from Wayne Saf ford.
"Well, he hadn't," Talbott told Wolfe. "Wayne is on record on that. So Keyes couldn't have reached the spot where he was killed before seven-twenty-five. There's the time for that, twenty-five minutes past seven."
"And you?" Wolfe inquired.
"Me, I was lucky. I often rode in the park with Keyes at that ungodly hour--two or three times a week. He wanted me to make it every day, but I got out of it about half the time. There was nothing social or sociable about it. We would walk our horses side by side, talking business, except when he felt like trotting. I live at the Hotel Churchill. I got in late Monday night, but I left a call for six o'clock anyway, because I
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hadn't ridden with Keyes for several days and didn't want to get him sore. But when the girl rang- my phone in the morning I was just too damn sleepy, and I told her to call the riding academy and say I wouldn't be there, and to call me again at seven-thirty. She did so, and I still didn't feel like turning out bat I had to because I had a breakfast date with an out-of-town customer, so I told her to send up a double orange juice. A few minutes later a waiter brought it up. So was I lucky? Keyes was killed uptown at twenty-five past seven at the earliest, and probably a little later. I was in my room at the Churchill, nearly three miles away, at half-past seven. You can have three guesses how glad I was I left that seven-thirty call!"
Wolfe nodded. "You should give the out-of-town customer a discount. In that armor, why did you take the trouble to join this gathering?"
"A switchboard girl and a waiter, for God's sake!" .Pohl snorted sarcastically.
"Nice honest people, Ferdy," Talbott told him, and answered Wolfe, "I didn't."
"No? You're not here?"
"Sure I'm here, but not to join any gathering. I came to join Miss Keyes. I don't regard it as trouble to join Miss Keyes. As for the rest of them, except maybe Broadyke--"