I shut my eyes to look it over. The more I sorted it out, the messier it got. Mandel hadn’t been fooling when he asked the judge to put a fifty-grand tag on me; the wonder was that he hadn’t hit me with the big one.
I opened my itching eyes and had to blink to get her in focus. “For a frame,” I said, “it’s close to perfect, but I’m willing to doubt if you meant it. I doubt if you know the ropes well enough, and why pick on me? I am not a patsy. But whether you meant it or not, what are you here for? Why bother to come and tell me about it?”
“Because... I thought... don’t you understand, Archie?”
“I understand plenty, but not why you’re here.”
“But don’t you see, it’s my word against yours. They told me last night that you denied that we had arranged to meet there. I wanted to ask you... I thought you might change that, you might tell them that you denied it just because you didn’t want to be involved, that you had agreed to meet me there but you decided not to go, and they’ll have to believe you because of course you were somewhere else. Then they won’t have any reason not to believe me.” She put out a hand. “Archie... will you? Then it will be all right.”
“Holy saints. You think so?”
“Of course it will. The way it is now, they think either I’m lying or you’re lying, but if you tell them—”
“Shut up!”
She gawked at me; then all of a sudden she broke. Her head went down, and her hands up to cover her face. Her shoulders started to tremble and then she was shaking all over. If she had sobbed or groaned or something I would have merely waited it out, but there was no sound effect at all, and that was dangerous. She might crack. I went to Wolfe’s desk and got the vase of orchids, Dendrobium nobile that day, removed the flowers and put them on my desk pad, went to her, got fingers under her chin and forced her head up, and sloshed her good. The vase holds two quarts. Her hands came down and I sloshed her again, and she squealed and grabbed for my arm. I dodged, put the vase on my desk, went to the bathroom, which is over in the corner, and came back with a towel. She was on her feet, dabbing at her front. “Here,” I said, “use this.”
She took it and wiped her face. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“The hell I didn’t”. I got another chair and put it at a dry spot, went to my desk, and sat. “It might help if someone did it to me. Now listen. Whether you meant it or not, I am out on an extremely rickety limb. Ken did not tell me last Tuesday that you thought you were pregnant and he was responsible, he told me nothing whatever, but whether he lied to you or you’re lying to the cops and me, they think he did. They also think or suspect that you and I have been what they call intimate. They also expect you to say under oath that I agreed to meet you at the entrance of that alley yesterday at five o’clock, and I can’t prove I wasn’t there. There’s a man who will say he was with me somewhere else, but he’s a friend of mine and he often works with me when Mr. Wolfe needs more help, and the cops don’t have to believe him and neither would a jury. I don’t know what else the cops have or haven’t got, but any time now—”
“I didn’t lie to you, Archie.” She was on the dry chair, gripping the towel. A strand of wet hair dropped over her eye, and she pushed it back. “Everything I told—”
“Skip it. Any time now, any minute, I may be hauled in on a charge of murder, and then where am I? Or suppose I somehow made it stick that I did not agree to meet you there, that you’re lying to them, and I wasn’t there. Then where will you be? The way it stands, the way you’ve staged it, today or tomorrow either you or I will be in the jug with no out. So either I—”
“But Archie, you—”
“Don’t interrupt. Either I wriggle off by selling them on you — and by the way, I haven’t asked you.” I got up and went to her. “Stand up. Look at me.” I extended my hands at waist level, open, palms up. “Put your hands on mine, palms down. No, don’t press, relax, just let them rest there. Damn it, relax! Right Look at me. Did you kill Ken?”
“No.”
“Again. Did you kill him?”
“No, Archie!”
I turned and went back to my chair. She came a step forward, backed up, and sat. “That’s my private lie detector,” I told her. “Not patented. Either I wriggle off by selling them on you, and it would take some wriggling, which is not my style, or I do a job that is my style — I hope. As you know, I work for Nero Wolfe. First I see him and tell him I’m taking a leave of absence — I hope a short one. Then you and I go some place where we’re sure we won’t be interrupted, and you tell me things, a lot of things, and no fudging. Where I go from there depends on what you tell me. I’ll tell you one thing now, if you—”
The door opened and Wolfe was there. He crossed to the corner of his desk, faced her, and spoke. “I’m Nero Wolfe. Will you please move to this chair?” He indicated the red leather chair by a nod, circled around his desk, and sat. He looked at me. “A job that is your style?”
Well. As I remarked when he insisted that I see her in the office, if I hadn’t been pooped I would have given that offer a little attention. If I had been myself I would have known, or at least suspected, what he intended. I suppose he and I came as close to trusting each other as any two men can, on matters of joint concern, but as he had told Parker, this was my affair, and I was discussing it with someone in his office, keeping him away from his favorite chair, and I had just told him that nothing of what I had told Cramer was flummery. So he had gone to the hole in the alcove.
I looked back at him. “I said I hope. What if I heard the panel open and steered clear?”
“Pfui. Clear of what?”
“Okay. Your trick. But I think she has a right to know.”
“I agree.” Sue had moved to the red leather chair, and he swiveled. “Miss McLeod. I eavesdropped, without Mr. Goodwin’s knowledge. I heard all that was said, and I saw. Do you wish to complain?”
She had fingered her hair back, but it was still a sight “Why?” she asked.
“Why did I listen? To learn how much of a pickle Mr. Goodwin was in. And I learned. I have intruded because the situation is intolerable. You are either a cockatrice or a witling. Whether by design or stupidity, you have brought Mr. Goodwin to a desperate pass. That is—”
I broke in. “It’s my affair. You said so.”
He stayed at her. “That is his affair, but now it threatens me. I depend on him. I can’t function properly, let alone comfortably, without him. He just told you he would take a leave of absence. That would be inconvenient for me but bearable, even if it were rather prolonged, but it’s quite possible that I would lose him for good, and that would be a calamity. I won’t have it. Thanks to you, he is in grave jeopardy.” He turned. “Archie. This is now our joint affair. By your leave.”
I raised both eyebrows. “Retroactive? Parker and my bail?”
He made a face. “Very well. Intimate or not, you have known Miss McLeod three years. Did she kill that man?”
“No and yes.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“I know it doesn’t The ‘no’ because of a lot of assorted items, including the lie-detector test I just gave her, which of course you would hoot at it if you hooted. The ‘yes.’ chiefly because she’s here. Why did she come? She says, to ask me to change my story and back hers up, that we had a date to meet there. That’s a good deal to expect, and I wonder. If she killed him, of course she’s scared stiff and she might ask anybody anything, but if she didn’t, why come and tell me she went in the alley and saw him dead and scooted? I wonder. On balance, one will get you two that she didn’t One item for ‘no.’ when a man gets a girl pregnant her normal procedure is to make him marry her, and quick. What she wants most and has got to have is a father for the baby, and not a dead father. She certainly isn’t going to kill him unless—”