“I forwent salad, cheese, and coffee,” he said, “and came at once.”
“Yes, sir. I fully appreciate it. I can—”
“Shut up. You regard my rule not to leave my house on a business errand as one of the stubborn poses of a calculated eccentricity. It is no such luxury; it is merely a necessity for a tolerable existence. Without such a rule a private detective is the slave of all the exigencies of his neighbors, and in New York there are ten million of them. Are you too headstrong to understand me?”
“No. But I can—”
“Shut up.” He had relaxed enough to tighten his lips and glare. He shook his head. “No. Talk.”
I moved a chair and planted it in front of him, knowing that he disliked tilting his head to look up at people. When I sat I was close enough to keep my voice down almost to a whisper. “I’m fairly sure this room isn’t wired for sound,” I said, “and that there’s no one hiding in here, but we don’t have to bellow. I would like to tell you what has happened in the last three hours. It will take seven minutes.”
“I’m here,” he growled. “Talk.”
I did so, going overtime some, but not much. There was a pained and peevish look on his face throughout, but I could tell by his eyes that he was listening. Having covered the events, such as they were, I proceeded to cover me.
“When I left the dinner table and went upstairs,” I declared, “I fully intended to glance in at the corpse and call the cops. But as I stood looking down at him I realized that I would have to call you first to tell you what I was going to do, and I didn’t want to call you from here. I needed instructions. When the cops came, if I told them what Lewent had hired us to do, and the inmates here told them what I had said he had hired us to do, I would be in the middle of another of those goddam tangles that have been known to keep me on a straight-backed-chair in the DA’s office for ten hours running. You would be in it too. I had to ask you to consider that and decide it, and I didn’t want to leave here to go out to phone.”
He grunted, not sympathetically.
“After all,” I submitted, “no bones are broken, except Lewent’s skull. You can tell me what to do and say, and go back home and have your salad and cheese and coffee. After you’re safely outside I’ll go up to our client’s room to ask him something and will be horrified to find him dead, and will rush to notify the household and call the police. As for the thousand bucks he paid you, surely he would admit that you have earned it by coming up here to tell me how to manage things so that his death will cause us as little inconvenience as possible.”
He eyed me. It was precisely the kind of situation that would normally have called for an outraged roar, in the privacy of his office, but here he had to hold it.
“Poppycock,” he muttered bitterly. “You know quite well what you have done and are doing, and so do I. The police, and especially Mr. Cramer, would never believe that you would dare to trick me into coming here for anything less than murder, and they know that without a trick I wouldn’t come at all. So I’ll have to discuss murder with these people. Is there a decent chair in Mr. Huck’s room?”
“Yeah, one that will do, but don’t expect to like it.”
“I won’t.” He stood up. “Very well. Let’s go.”
6
The chair problem in Huck’s room required a little handling. After Wolfe had been introduced to Huck and Dorothy Riff, and Huck assented, without enthusiasm, to Wolfe’s desire to discuss the affairs of his client Herman Lewent, there remained the fact that Paul Thayer was occupying the only chair that could take Wolfe without squeezing, and Thayer, who was still sulking, paid no attention to my polite hint. When I asked him to move and even said please, he gave me a dirty look as he complied.
As Wolfe sat and turned his head from left to right and back again, taking them in, and they focused on him, I was not utterly at ease because I had slid out from under the responsibility. He had said he would have to discuss murder with them, and in the heat of his resentment at my having foxed him into taking a two-mile taxi ride he might regard it as funny to manage it so that I would have not less to explain to the cops, but more.
Huck spoke. “I have explained to Mr. Goodwin that I tolerated his intrusion out of deference to my brother-in-law.” His tone wasn’t very deferential. “But now your barging in — frankly, Mr. Wolfe, there is a limit to my forbearance.”
Wolfe nodded. “I don’t blame you, sir. I return your candor and confess that the fault is Mr. Goodwin’s. On account of a defect in his make-up he has botched his errand here so badly that I was compelled to intervene. When he phoned me, twice, some four hours ago, not from this house, I suspected that he had been so thoroughly bewitched by one of these women that his mental processes were in suspense. It hits him like that. When later he phoned again, this time from your study, my fear was verified, and I was even able to identify the witch.”
He looked straight at Mrs. O’Shea, then at Miss Riff, then at Miss Marcy, but got no return because they were all looking at me. I didn’t mind, provided he was now willing to call it even.
He was going on. “Plainly there was no other alternative, so I came to supersede him; and now that I am here I refuse to employ the puerile stratagem that Mr. Lewent and Mr. Goodwin were determined to try. They should have known that their pretended concern about a large sum left secretly by Mr. Lewent’s sister with one of you to be passed to him at her death — they should have known that none of you would take it seriously.” He looked at Huck. “You, sir, even assumed that it was merely a blackmailing device, didn’t you?”
“I thought it possible.” Huck, being a millionaire, was giving no ground for a suit for slander. “You say it was a stratagem?”
“Yes.” Wolfe flipped a hand. “Let’s dismiss it. Slithering around looking for cracks is not to my taste. I’d much rather be forthright and tell you straight that I came here to discuss murder.”
There were noises, but not explosive. Paul Thayer’s head jerked up. My private reaction was absolutely unfavorable. Since he had blurted it out, a call to the police was in order right now, and exactly where would I be?
“Murder?” Huck was disbelieving his ears. “Did you say murder?”
“Yes, sir, I did.” Wolfe was at a disadvantage. Working on an audience in his office, it wasn’t difficult to keep all the faces in view, but there they made almost half a circle, with Huck in his wheelchair in the center, and Wolfe had to keep turning his head and moving his eyes. “There’s no point,” he declared, “in going on with the rigmarole started by Mr. Goodwin. I much prefer the directness and vigor of Mr. Lewent’s original suggestion when he called at my office this morning to hire me. He suggested that Mr. Goodwin should come here and tell you that he, Lewent, suspected that one of these three women had murdered his sister, poisoned her, and that he had engaged me to investigate. I now propose—”
This time the noises could be called explosions, especially the one contributed by Mrs. O’Shea. Also she moved. She bounced out of her chair and started for the door, and when Wolfe sharply demanded where she was going and she didn’t stop, I dived across and headed her off. White-faced, she ordered me, “Get out of my way! The dirty little rat!”
I held the pass. Wolfe’s voice came. “If you’re going for Mr. Lewent, madam, I beg you to consider. He came to me and paid me money because he lacked the spunk to tackle this himself. You can drag him in here, and the three of you can screech and scratch, but what good will it do? I’m willing to try to work this out, but not in pandemonium.”
She turned and took a step.
“You should all realize,” Wolfe told them, “what the situation is. You may think that this notion of Mr. Lewent’s is preposterous, that he is in effect deranged, but that doesn’t dispose of it or him. If he clings to it and speaks of it, it can become extremely ugly for all of you. Suing him for slander might settle him, but it wouldn’t settle the stench. From the fact that he chose me to investigate for him, and from his paying me in advance what was for him a substantial sum, I assume that he has high regard for my sagacity, judgment, and integrity. If I am convinced that his suspicions are baseless and unmerited, I think I can persuade him to abandon them; and it may be that you can convince me here and now. Do you want to try?”