WOLFE: “Has he given you the information?”
MRS. SORELL: “No. He wanted too much in advance. Of course that was the difficulty. We couldn’t put it in writing and sign it.”
WOLFE: “No indeed. A signed document is of little value when neither party would dare to produce it. I presume you realize, Mrs. Sorell, that your purge will have to include your appearance on the stand at a murder trial. Are you prepared to testify under oath?”
MRS. SORELL: “I suppose I’ll have to. I knew I would have to when I decided to come to see you.”
Wolfe (in a new tone, the snap of a whip): “Then you’re a dunce, madam.”
Again that would have been my cue if I were needed. The whole point of the set-up, having the four members of the firm in the front room listening in, was to get Heydecker committed before witnesses. If his nerve had held it would have been risky for Wolfe to crack the whip. But he was done for. He hadn’t written out a confession and signed it, but he might as well have.
MRS. SORELL: “Oh, no, Mr. Wolfe. I’m not a dunce.”
WOLFE: “But you are. One detail alone would sink you. After you rang this number yesterday afternoon, and Miss Aaron answered, and you spoke with her, you got here as quickly as possible. Since you were not then contemplating murder, there was no reason for you to use caution. I don’t know if you have a car and chauffeur, but even if you have, to send for it would have meant delay, and minutes were precious. There is no crosstown subway. Buses, one downtown and one crosstown, would have been far too slow. Unquestionably you took a cab. In spite of the traffic that would have been much faster than walking. The doorman at the Churchill probably summoned one for you, but even if he didn’t, it will be a simple matter to find it. I need only telephone Mr. Cramer, the police inspector who was here this afternoon, and suggest that he locate the cab driver who picked you up at or near the Churchill yesterday afternoon and drove you to this address. In fact, that is what I intend to do, and that will be enough.”
Ann Paige stood up. She was in a fix. She wanted to go to Gregory Jett, where her eyes already were, but she didn’t want to leave Lamont Otis, who was slumped in his chair, his head sagging and his eyes shut. Luckily Jett saw her difficulty and went to her and put an arm around her. It scored a point for romance that he could have a thought for personal matters at the very moment his firm was getting a clout on the jaw.
WOLFE: “I shall also suggest that he send a man here to take you in hand until the cab driver is found. If you ask why I don’t proceed to do this, why I first announce it to you, I confess a weakness. I am savoring a satisfaction. I am getting even with you. Twenty-five hours ago, in this room, you subjected me to the severest humiliation I have suffered for many years. I will not say it gives me pleasure, but I confess it—”
There was a combination of sounds from the speaker: a kind of cry or squeal, presumably from Mrs. Sorell, a sort of scrape or flutter, and what might have been a grunt from Wolfe. I dived for the connecting door and went with it as I swung it open, and kept going, but two paces short of Wolfe’s desk I halted to take in a sight I had never seen before and never expect to see again: Nero Wolfe with his arms tight around a beautiful young woman in his lap, pinning her arms, hugging her close to him. I stood paralyzed.
“Archie!” he roared. “Confound it, get her!”
I obeyed.
Chapter 9
I would like to be able to report that Wolfe got somewhere with his effort to minimize the damage to the firm, but I have to be candid and accurate. He tried but there wasn’t much he could do, since Heydecker was the chief witness for the prosecution at the trial and was cross-examined for six hours. Of course that finished him professionally. Wolfe had better luck with another effort; the DA finally conceded that I was competent to identify Exhibit C, a brown silk necktie with little yellow curlicues, and Wolfe wasn’t called. Evidently the jury agreed with him, since it only took them five hours to bring in a verdict of guilty.
At that, the firm is still doing business at the old stand, and Lamont Otis still comes to the office five days a week, and I hear that since Gregory Jett’s marriage to Ann Paige he has quit being careless about the balance between income and outgo. I don’t know if his eleven-percent cut has been boosted. That’s a confidential matter.