Heydt cleared his throat. “I’m glad I don’t have to answer that,” he said. “I don’t have to answer it because I have no information that would help. I know Archie Goodwin and I might say we’re friends. If he’s really in a jam I would want to help if I could. You say Miss McLeod has said something to the police that set them on him, but you won’t tell us what she said.”
“Ask her. You can give me no information whatever?”
“No.”
Wolfe’s eyes moved right, to the other two, and back again. “I doubt if it’s worth the trouble,” he said. “Assuming that one of you killed that man, I doubt if I can get at him from the front; I must go around. But I may have given you a false impression, and if so I wish to correct it. I said that to lift the suspicion from Mr. Goodwin we must find out where it belongs, but that isn’t vital, for we have an alternative. We can merely shift the suspicion to Miss McLeod. That will be simple, and it will relieve Mr. Goodwin of further annoyance. We’ll discuss it after you leave, and decide. You gentlemen may view the matter differently when Miss McLeod is in custody, charged with murder, without bail, but that is your—”
“You’re a goddam liar.” Peter Jay.
“Amazing.” Max Maslow. “Where did you get your reputation? What do you expect us to do, kick and scream or go down on our knees?”
“Of course you don’t mean it.” Carl Heydt. “You said you’re satisfied that she didn’t kill him.”
Wolfe nodded. “I doubt if she would be convicted. She might not even go to trial; the police are not blockheads. It will be an ordeal for her, but it will also be a lesson; her implication of Mr. Goodwin may not have been willful, but it was inexcusable.” His eyes went to Maslow. “You have mentioned my reputation. I made it and I don’t risk it rashly. If tomorrow you learn that Miss McLeod has been arrested and is inaccessible, you may—”
“ ‘If’.” That crooked smile.
“Yes. It is contingent not on our power but on our preference. I am inviting you gentlemen to have a voice in our decision. You have told me nothing whatever, and I do not believe that you have nothing whatever to tell. Do you want to talk now, to me, or later, to the police, when that woman is in a pickle?”
“You’re bluffing,” Maslow said. “I call.” He got up and headed for the halt I got up and followed him out, got his hat from the shelf, and opened the front door; and as I closed it behind him and started back down the hall here came the other two. I opened the door again, and Jay, who had no hat, went by and on out, but Heydt stood there. I got his hat and he took it and put it on. “Look, Archie,” he said. “You’ve got to do something.”
“Check,” I said. “What, for instance?”
“I don’t know. But about Sue — my God, he doesn’t mean it, does he?”
“It isn’t just a question of what he means, it’s also what I mean. Damn it, I’m short on sleep, and I may soon be short on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Get the news every hour on the hour. Pleasant dreams.”
“What did Sue tell the police about you?”
“No comment. My resistance is low and with the door open I might catch cold. If you don’t mind?”
He went. I shut the door, put the chain bolt on, returned to the office, sat at my desk, and said, “So you thought it might be useful.”
He grunted. “Have you finished it?”
“Yes. Twelve pages.”
“May I see it?”
Not an order, a request. At least he was remembering that it was a joint affair. I opened a drawer, got the original, and took it to him. He inspected the heading and the first page, flipped through the sheets, took a look at the end, dropped it on his desk, and said, “Your notebook, please.” I sat and got my notebook and pen.
“There will be two,” he said, “one for you and one for me. First mine. Heading in caps, affidavit by Nero Wolfe. The usual State of New York, County of New York. The text: I hereby depose that the twelve foregoing typewritten pages attached hereto, comma, each page initialed by me, comma, are a full and accurate record of a conversation that took place in my office on October thirteenth, nineteen sixty-one, by Susan McLeod, comma, Archie Goodwin, comma, and myself, semicolon; that nothing of consequence has been omitted or added in this typewritten record, semicolon; and that the conversation was wholly impromptu, comma, with no prior preparation or arrangement A space for my signature, and below, the conventional formula for notarizing. The one for you, on the same sheet if there is room, will be the same with the appropriate changes.”
I looked up. “All right, it wasn’t just to keep me off your neck. Okay on the power. But there’s still the if on the preference. She didn’t kill him. She came to me and opened the bag. I’m her hero. She as good as told Maslow that she’d marry me if I asked her. Maybe she could learn how to dance if she tried hard, though I admit that’s doubtful. She makes a lot more than you pay me, and we could postpone the babies. You said you doubt if she would be convicted, but that’s not good enough. Before I sign that affidavit I would need to know that you won’t chuck the joint affair as soon as the heat is off of me.”
“Rrrhhh,” he said.
“I agree,” I said, “it’s a goddam nuisance. It’s entirely her fault, she dragged me in without even telling me, and if a girl pushes a man in a hole he has a right to wiggle out, but you must remember that I am now a hero. Heroes don’t wiggle. Will you say that it will be our joint affair to make sure that she doesn’t go to trial?”
“I wouldn’t say that I will make sure of anything whatever.”
“Correction. That you will be concerned?”
He took air in, all the way, through his nose, and let it out through his mouth. “Very well. I’ll be concerned.” He glanced at the twelve pages on his desk. “Will you bring Miss Pinelli to my room at five minutes to nine in the morning?”
“No. She doesn’t get to her office until nine-thirty.”
“Then bring her to the plant rooms at nine-forty with the affidavit” He looked at the wall clock. “You can type it in the morning. You’ve had no sleep for forty hours. Go to bed.”
That was quite a compliment, and I was appreciating it as I mounted the stairs to my room. Except for a real emergency he will permit no interruptions from nine to eleven in the morning, when he is in the plant rooms, but he wasn’t going to wait until he came down to the office to get the affidavit notarized. As I got into bed and turned the light off I was considering whether to ask for a raise now or wait till the end of the year, but before I made up my mind I didn’t have a mind. It was gone.
I never did actually make up my mind about passing the buck to Sue. I was still on the fence after breakfast Thursday morning, when I dialed the number of Lila Pinelli, who adds maybe two bucks a week to the take of her secretarial service in a building on Eighth Avenue by doubling as a notary public. Doing the affidavits didn’t commit me to anything; the question was, what then? So I asked her to come, and she came, and I took her up to the plant rooms. She was in a hurry to get back, but she had never seen the orchids, and no one alive could just breeze on by those benches, with everything from the neat little Oncidiums to the big show-offs like the Laeliocattleyas. So it was after ten o’clock when we came back down and I paid her and let her out, and I went to the office and put the document in the safe.
As I say, I never did actually make up my mind; it just happened. At ten minutes past eleven Wolfe, having come down at eleven as usual, was at his desk looking over the morning crop of mail, and I was at mine sorting the germination slips he had brought, when the doorbell rang. I stepped to the hall for a look, turned, and said, “Cramer. I’ll go hide in the cellar.”