He glared at me. "I wasn't informed that I had an appointment."
"No, sir. You didn't."
"I didn't stop to phone," Ellen Yeager said. "It's urgent." She went to the red leather chair and took it as if she owned it, put her bag on the stand, and aimed sharp little eyes at Wolfe. "I want to hire you to do something." She reached for the bag, opened it, and took out a checkfold. "How much do you want as a retainer?"
Client number four, not counting the phony Yeager. When I go scouting for clients I get results.
She was going on. "My husband was murdered, you know about that. I want you to find out who killed him and exactly what happened, and then I will decide what to do about it. He was a sick man, he was oversexed, I know all about that. I've kept still about it for years, but I'm not going to let it keep me from - ''
Wolfe cut in. "Shut up," he commanded.
She stopped, astonished.
"I'm blunt," he said, "because I must be. I can't let you rattle off confidential information under the illusion that you are hiring me. You aren't and you can't. I'm already engaged to investigate the murder of your husband."
"You are not," she declared.
"Indeed?"
"No. You're engaged to keep it from being investigated, to keep it from coming out, to protect that corporation, Continental Plastic Products. One of the directors has told me all about it. There was a meeting of the board this morning, and Benedict Aiken told them what he had done and they approved it. They don't care if the murderer of my husband is caught or not. They don't want him caught. All they care about is the corporation. I'll own a block of stock now, but that doesn't matter. They can't keep me from telling the District Attorney about that room if I decide to."
"What room?"
"You know perfectly well what room. In that house on Eighty-second Street where Julia McGee went last night and you got her and brought her here. Benedict Aiken told the board about it, and one of them told me." Her head jerked to me. "Are you Archie Goodwin? I want to see that room. When will you take me there?" She jerked back to Wolfe. That's a bad habit, asking a question and not waiting for an answer, but it's not always bad for the askee. She opened the checkfold. "How much do you want as a retainer?"
She was impetuous, no question about that, but she was no fool, and she didn't waste words. She didn't bother to spell it out: and if Wolfe tried to do what she thought he had been hired to do, clamp a lid on it, she could queer it with a phone call to the DA's office, and therefore he had to switch to her.
He leaned back and clasped his fingers at the center of his frontal mound. "Madam, you have been misinformed. Archie, that paper Mr. Aiken signed. Let her read it."
I went and got it from the cabinet and took it to her. To read it she got glasses from her bag. She took the glasses off. "It's what I said, isn't it?"
"No. Read it again. Archie, the typewriter. Two carbons."
I sat, pulled the machine around, arranged the paper with carbons, and inserted them. "Yes, sir."
"Single-spaced, wide margins. The date. I, comma, Mrs. Thomas G. Yeager, comma, hereby engage Nero Wolfe to investigate the circumstances of the death of my late husband. The purpose of this engagement is to make sure that my husband's murderer is identified and exposed, comma, and Wolfe is to make every effort to achieve that purpose. If in doing so a conflict arises between his obligation under this engagement and his obligation under his existing engagement with Continental Plastic Products it is understood that he will terminate his engagement with Continental Plastic Products and will adhere to this engagement with me. It is also understood that I will do nothing to interfere with Wolfe's obligation to Continental Plastic Products without giving him notice in advance."
He turned to her. "No retainer is necessary; I have none from Mr. Aiken. Whether I bill you or not, and for what amount, will depend. I wouldn't expect a substantial payment from two separate clients for the same services. And I would expect none at all from you if, for instance, I found that you killed your husband yourself."
"You wouldn't get any. There was a time when I felt like killing him, but that was long ago when the children were young." She took the original from me and put on her glasses to read it. "This isn't right. When you find out who killed him you tell me and I decide what to do."
"Nonsense. The People of the State of New York will decide what to do. In the process of identifying him to my satisfaction and yours I will inevitably get evidence, and I can't suppress it. Archie, give her a pen."
"I'm not going to sign it. I promised my husband I would never sign anything without showing it to him."
A corner of Wolfe's mouth went up - his version of a smile. He was always pleased to get support for his theory that no woman was capable of what he called rational sequence. "Then," he asked, "shall I rewrite it, for me to sign? Committing me to my part of the arrangement?"
"No." She handed me the papers, the one Aiken had signed and the one she hadn't. "It doesn't do any good to sign things. What counts is what you do, not what you sign. How much do you want as a retainer?"
He had just said he didn't want one. Now he said, "One dollar."
Apparently that struck her as about right. She opened her bag, put the checkfold in it, took out a purse, got a dollar bill from it, and left the chair to hand it to Wolfe. She turned to me. "Now I want to see that room."
"Not now," Wolfe said with emphasis. "Now I have some questions. Be seated."
"What kind of questions?" *T need information, all I can get, and it will take some time. Please sit down."
"What kind of questions?"
"Many kinds. You said that you have known for years that your husband was oversexed, that he was sick, so it may be presumed that you took the trouble to inform yourself as well as you could of his efforts to allay his ailment. I want names, dates, addresses, events, particulars."
"You won't get them from me." She adjusted her stole. "I quit bothering about it long ago. Once when the children were young I asked my doctor about it, if something could be done, perhaps some kind of an operation, but the way he explained it I knew my husband wouldn't do that, and there was nothing else I could do, so what was the use? I have a friend whose husband is an alcoholic, and she has a worse - "
The doorbell rang. Dropping the papers in a drawer and stepping to the hall, I did not see another prospective client on the stoop. Inspector Cramer of Homicide West has been various things - a foe, a menace, a neutral, once or twice an ally, but never a client; and his appearance through the one-way glass, the set of his burly shoulders and the expression on his big round red face, made it plain that he hadn't come to ante a retainer. I went and slipped the chain bolt on, opened the door the two inches it permitted, and spoke through the crack.
"Greetings. I don't open up because Mr. Wolfe has company. Will I do?"
"No. I know he has company. Mrs. Thomas G. Yeager has been here nearly half an hour. Open the door."
"Make yourself at home. I'll see." I shut the door, went to the office, and told Wolfe, "The tailor. He says his man brought the suit nearly half an hour ago, and he wants to discuss it."
He tightened his lips and scowled, at me, then at her, and back at me. Whenever an officer of the law appears on the stoop and wants in, his first impulse is to tell him he's busy and can't be disturbed, and all the better if it's Inspector Cramer. But the situation was already ticklish enough. If the cops had found a trail to that house and had followed it and found Fred Durkin there, the going would be fairly tough, and making Cramer pry his way in with a warrant would only make it tougher. Also there was Mrs. Yeager. Since Cramer knew she had been here nearly half an hour, obviously they had a tail on her, and it wouldn't hurt to know why. Wolfe turned to her.
"Inspector Cramer of the police is at the door, and he knows you're here."