Wolfe said gruffly, “I wouldn’t get five thousand. This is October. As my nineteen forty-five income now stands, I’ll keep about ten percent of any additional receipts after paying taxes. Out of five thousand, five hundred would be mine. If Mr. Blaney is as clever as you think he is, I wouldn’t consider trying to uncover him on a murder for five hundred dollars.” He stopped and opened his eyes to glare at the wife. “May I ask, madam, what you are looking so pleased about?” Wolfe couldn’t stand to see a woman look pleased. Mrs. Poor was regarding him with a little smile of obvious approval.
“Because,” she said, in a voice that was pleased too, and a nice voice, “I need help and I think you’re going to help me. I don’t approve of this. I didn’t want my husband to come here.”
“Indeed. Where did you want him to go, to the Atlantic Detective Agency?”
“Oh, no, if I had been in favor of his going to any detective at all, of course it would have been Nero Wolfe. But-may I explain?”
Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall. Three-forty. In twenty minutes he would be leaving for the plant rooms on the roof, to monkey with the orchids. He said curtly, “I have eighteen minutes.”
Eugene put in with a determined voice, “Then I’m going to use them-”
But his wife smiled him out of it. She went on to Wolfe, “It won’t take that long. My husband and Mr. Blaney have been business partners for ten years. They own the firm of Blaney and Poor, manufacturers of novelties-you know, they make things like matches that won’t strike and chairs with rubber legs and bottled drinks that taste like soap-”
“Good God,” Wolfe muttered in horror.
She ignored it. “It’s the biggest firm in the business. Mr. Blaney gets the ideas and handles the production, he’s a genius at it, and my husband handles the business part, sales and so on. But Mr. Blaney is really just about too conceited to live, and now that the business is a big success he thinks my husband isn’t needed, and he wants him to get out and take twenty thousand dollars for his half. Of course it’s worth a great deal more than that, at least ten times as much, and my husband won’t do it. Mr. Blaney is very conceited, and also he will not let anything stand in his way. The argument has gone on and on, until now my husband is convinced that Mr. Blaney is capable of doing anything to get rid of him.”
“Of killing him. And you don’t agree.”
“Oh, no. I do agree. I think Mr. Blaney would stop at nothing.”
“Has he made threats?”
She shook her head. “He isn’t that kind. He doesn’t make threats, he just goes ahead.”
“Then why didn’t you want your husband to come to me?”
“Because he’s simply too stubborn to live.” She smiled at Eugene to take out any sting, and back at Wolfe. “There’s a clause in the partnership agreement, they signed it when they started the business, that says if either one of them dies the other one owns the whole thing. That’s another reason why my husband thinks Mr. Blaney will kill him, and I think so too. But what my husband wants is to make sure Mr. Blaney gets caught, that’s how stubborn he is, and what I want is for my husband to stay alive.”
“Now, Martha,” Eugene put in, “I came here to-” So her name was Martha. I had no prejudice against women named Martha.
She kept the floor. “It’s like this,” she appealed to Wolfe. “My husband thinks that Mr. Blaney is determined to kill him if he can’t get what he wants any other way, and I think so too. You yourself think that if a man is determined to kill another man nothing can stop him. So isn’t it perfectly obvious? My husband has over two hundred thousand dollars saved up outside the business, about half of it in war bonds. He can get another twenty thousand from Mr. Blaney for his half of the business-”
“It’s worth twenty times that,” Eugene said savagely, showing real emotion for the first time.
“Not to you if you’re dead,” she snapped back at him and went on to Wolfe. “With the income from that we could live more than comfortably-and happily. I hope my husband loves me-I hope he does-and I know I love him.” She leaned forward in her chair. “That’s why I came along today-I thought maybe you would help me persuade him. It isn’t as if I wouldn’t stand by my husband in a fight if there was any chance of his winning. But is there any sense in being so stubborn if you can’t possibly win? If instead of winning you will probably die? Now does that make sense? I ask you, Mr. Wolfe, you are a wise and clever and able man, what would you do if you were in my husband’s position?”
Wolfe muttered, “You put that as a question?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well. Granting that you have described the situation correctly, I would kill Mr. Blaney.”
She looked startled. “But that’s silly.” She frowned. “Of course you’re joking, and it’s no joke.”
“I’d kill the bastard in a second,” Eugene told Wolfe, “if I thought I could get away with it. I suppose you could, but I couldn’t.”
“And I’m afraid,” Wolfe said politely, “you couldn’t hire me for that.” He glanced at the clock. “I world advise against your consulting even your wife. An undetected murder is strictly a one-man job. Her advice, sir, is sound. Are you going to take it?”
“No.” Eugene sounded as stubborn as she said he was.
“Are you going to kill Mr. Blaney?”
“No.”
“Do you still want to pay me five thousand dollars?”
“Yes, I do.”
Mrs. Poor, who was rapidly becoming Martha to me, tried to horn in, but bigger and louder people than her had failed at that when orchid time was at hand.
Wolfe ignored her and went on to him, “I advise you against that too, under the circumstances. Here are the circumstances-Archie, take your notebook. Make a receipt reading, ‘Received from Eugene R. Poor five thousand dollars, in return for which I agree, in case he dies within one year, to give the police the information he has given me today, and to take any further action that may seem to me advisable.’ Sign my name and initial it as usual. Get all details from Mr. Poor.” Wolfe pushed back his chair and got the levers of his muscles in position to hoist the bulk.
Eugene’s eyes were moist with tears, but they came, not from emotion, but from smoke from his second cigar. In fact, throughout the interview his nervousness seemed to concentrate on his cigar. He had dropped it twice, and the smoke seemed determined to go down the wrong way and make him cough. But he was able to speak all right.
“That’s no good,” he objected. “You don’t even say what kind of action. At least you ought to say-”
“I advised you against it under the circumstances.” Wolfe was on his feet. “Those, sir, are the circumstances. That’s all I’ll undertake. Suit yourself.” He started to move.
But Eugene had another round to fire. His hand went into a pocket and came out full of folded money. “I hadn’t mentioned,” he said, displaying the pretty objects, “that I brought it in cash. Speaking of income tax, if you’re up to the ninety percent bracket, getting it in cash would make it a lot more-”