“Do you have an appointment, Mr. Goodwin?” “Yes, but under an alias, Nero Wolfe.” That only confused her and made her suspicious, but I finally got it straightened out and she used the phone and asked me to wait. I was crossing to a chair when a door opened and Vernon Assa appeared. He stood a moment, wiping his brow and neck with a handkerchief, and then came to me. Short plump men are inclined to sweat, but it did seem that an LBA top executive might have finished wiping before entering the reception room. “Where’s Mr. Wolfe?” he asked. “At home. I’ll report. To all of you.” “I don’t think—” He hesitated. “Come with me.”
We passed through into a wide carpeted hall. The third door on the left was standing open and we turned in. It was a fairly large room and would be a handsome one after the cleaning women had been around, but at present it was messy. The gleaming top of the big mahogany table in the center had most of its gleam spotted with cigarette ashes and stray pieces of paper, and the nine or ten executive-size chairs were every which way. A cigar butt had spilled out of an ash tray onto the mahogany.
Three men, not counting Assa, looked at me, and I looked at them. Talbott Heery wasn’t so broad and tall when he had slid so far forward in his chair that most of him was underneath the table. Buffs white hair was tousled, and his round red face was puffy. He was seated across from Heery and had to twist around to look at me. Rudolph Hansen’s long thin neck had a big smudge below the right ear. He was standing to one side with his arms folded and his narrow shoulders slumped.
“Goodwin says he’ll report,” Assa told them. “We can hear what he has to say.”
“To all of you,” I said, not aggressively. “Including Mr. O’Garro.”
“He’s in a meeting and can’t be here.” “Then I’ll wait.” I sat down. “He canceled the agreement, and it wouldn’t do much good to come to an understanding with you if he phones as soon as I get back and cancels it.”
“That was on his own initiative,” Buff said, “and unauthorized.”
“Isn’t he a member of the firm?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll wait. If I’m in the way here, tell me where.”
“Get him in here,” Heery demanded. “He can get the goddam toothpaste account any time.”
They all started clawing, not at me but at each other. I sat and watched the bubbles, and heard them. LBA was certainly boiling over, and I tried to take it in, knowing that Wolfe would want a verbatim report, but it got a little confused. Finally they got it decided, I didn’t know exactly how, and Buff got at a phone and talked, and pretty soon the door opened and Patrick O’Garro was with us. He was still brown all over, and his quick brown eyes were blazing.
“Are you all feeble-minded?” he blurted. “I said I’d go along with whatever you decided. I don’t intend—”
I cut in. “Hold it, Mr. O’Garro. It’s my fault. I came to report for Mr. Wolfe, and you have got to be present. I’m willing to wait, but they’re in a hurry—some of them.”
He said something cutting to Heery, and the others chimed in, and I thought the boiling was going to start again, but Buff got up and took O’Garro’s arm and eased him to a chair. Then Buff returned to his own chair, which was next to me at the left.
“All right, Goodwin,” he said. “Go ahead.” I took a paper from my pocket and unfolded it. “First,” I announced, “here is a letter to Mr. Hansen, signed by Mr. Wolfe. It’s only one sentence. It says, ‘I herewith dismiss you as my attorney and instruct you not to represent me in any matter whatsoever.’ Mr. Wolfe told me to deliver it before witnesses.” I handed it to Assa, he handed it to O’Garro, and he handed it to Hansen. Hansen glanced at it, folded it, and put it in his pocket. “Proceed,” he said stiffly.
“Yes, sir. There are three points to consider. The first is the job itself and how you people have handled it. In the years I have been with Mr. Wolfe he has had a lot of damn fools for clients, but you have come pretty close to the record. Apparently you—”
“For God’s sake,” O’Garro demanded, “do you call that reporting? We want to know what he’s done!”
“Well, you’re not going to. Apparently you haven’t stopped to realize what the job’s like. I’ll put it this way: if he knew right now who went there and stole the wallet —and killed Dahlmann, put that in too—and all he needed was one additional piece of evidence and he knew he was going to get it tonight—if he knew all that, he wouldn’t tell any of you one single damn thing about it. Not before he had it absolutely sewed up. In the condition of panic you’re in, all of you except Mr. Hansen, I don’t know how much you can understand, but maybe you can understand that.”
“I can’t,” Buff said. “It sounds preposterous. We hired him and we’ll pay him.”
“Then I’ll spell it out. What would happen if he kept you posted on exactly what he had done and was doing and intended to do? God only knows, but judging from the way you’ve been acting this afternoon there would be a riot. One or another of you would be calling every ten minutes to cancel what the last one said and give him new instructions. Mr. Wolfe doesn’t take instructions, he takes a job, and you should have known that before you hired him. —You did, didn’t you, Mr. Hansen? You said that all of you would be at his mercy.”
“Not precisely in that sense.” The lawyer’s eyes, meeting mine, were cold and steady. “But I knew of Wolfe’s methods and manners, yes. I grant that the conflicting messages from us this afternoon were ill-advised, but we are under great pressure. We need to know at least whether any progress is being made.”
“You will, when he is ready to tell you. He’s under pressure too. You have to consider that he’s not working for you … or you … or you … or you … or you. He’s working for the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa. I can say this, if the men authorized to speak for the firm want to call it off, it may be possible to make another arrangement. Just a suggestion: do you want to ask Mr. Heery if he cares to take over and have Mr. Wolfe represent him instead of LBA?”
“No!” O’Garro blurted. Assa looked at Hansen and the lawyer shook his head. Buff said, “I can’t see that that would improve the situation any. Our interests are identical.” Heery, sending his eyes around, said, “If you want it that way, say so.”
Nobody said so. I gave them four seconds and went on. “Another point. I’ve told you that Inspector Cramer of Homicide came to see Mr. Wolfe last night. I’m not quoting him, but when he left Mr. Wolfe’s main impression was that he wasn’t completely sold on the idea that one of the contestants killed Dahlmann to get the paper in the wallet. Someone could have killed him for a quite different reason and didn’t take the wallet or anything else, and later one of you went there to see him and found him dead. You looked to see if the wallet was in his pocket, and it was, and you didn’t want it found on his body on account of the risk that what was on the paper might possibly be made public, so you took the wallet and beat it. That would—”
They all broke in. Hansen said, “Absurd. Mr. Wolfe certainly wasn’t—”
“Just a minute,” I stopped him. “Mr. Wolfe told Cramer that he thought it likely that one of the contestants took the wallet, and that he was assuming that whoever killed Dahlmann took the wallet, but that doesn’t mean he can toss Cramer’s idea in the garbage as a pipe dream. He has no proof it didn’t happen like that; all he has is what you men told him. So if he doesn’t want to run the risk of being made a monkey of, which he doesn’t, believe me, he has to keep that on the list of possibles, and in that case how can he tell you what he’s doing and going to do? Tell who? His client is Lippert, Buff and Assa, but there’s no such person as Lippert, Buff and Assa, it would have to be one of you, and it might be the very guy who went to Dahlmann’s place and retrieved the wallet. Therefore—“