“No. Impossible.”
“Then I must try to get him.” Buff was leaving his chair. “Not here. From my room.”
I stopped him by taking his arm. He was going to pull away, but I don’t take a murderer’s arm the way I do a nymph’s, and he ended back in his chair. I released him, but got up and stood beside him.
“I wish,” Wolfe said, “to extend you gentlemen all possible courtesy, but I must transfer the responsibility for that bottle of poison as soon as may be. Need I wait longer?”
For three seconds no one spoke, and then O’Garro said, “Use the phone on your left.”
Chapter 22
The most important result from the standpoint of the People of the State of New York came a couple of months later, in June, when Oliver Buff was tried and convicted of the first degree murder of Vernon Assa, Cramer and the DA’s office having collected a batch of evidence which did, after all, include one good fingerprint from the KCN bottle. But from our standpoint the most important result came much earlier, in fact the very next day, when Rudolph Hansen phoned after lunch and made a date for him and O’Garro and Heery to see Wolfe at six o’clock. They came right on the dot, just as Wolfe got down from the plant rooms. When I took them to the office I saw that O’Garro got the red leather chair, thinking he rated it as the surviving partner. Probably his name would now go into the firm’s title. They sure needed some new ones.
They still looked as if they could use some sleep, say about a week, but at least they had their hair combed. They were gloomy but polite. After some recent developments had been mentioned, such as a statement by Buff’s secretary that on Monday afternoon she had seen Assa in Buff’s room, talking with him, with a brown wallet in his hand, Hansen opened up. He said that in spite of everything it would be a great relief to proceed with the contest in a manner that would leave no loopholes for contention or litigation, and in connection with that process they wanted Wolfe’s help. Wolfe asked him how.
“We want you to handle it,” Hansen said. “We want you to write the verses, give them to the contestants, and set the conditions and deadline, and, when the answers are received, check them and award the prizes. We want to leave the whole thing to you. Heery refuses to let LBA handle it, and in the circumstances we can’t blame him, and it’s his money. You’ll have full authority. There’ll be no interference from anybody. For this service LBA will agree to pay you fifty thousand dollars, plus expenses.”
“I won’t do it,” Wolfe said flatly.
“Damn it, you must!” Heery rapped out.
“No, sir. I must not. I have stretched my dignity pretty thin on occasion to keep myself going, but I will not write verses for a perfume contest. That is not to impugn the dignity of any other man who may undertake it. Dignities are like faces; no two are the same. I beg you not to insist; I won’t consider it. I confess that my refusal might give me a sharper twinge but for the fact that I am about to send the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa a bill for precisely that amount-fifty thousand dollars. Plus expenses.”
“What for?” Hansen was cold.
“For the job I was hired for and have completed.”
“We’ve discussed that,” O’Garro said. “We don’t see it.”
“You didn’t do the job,” Hansen said, settling it.
“No? Who did?”
“Nobody. Circumstances beyond our control and out of your control. If anybody did it, it was Buff himself, when he sent the answers to the contestants. Also Assa learning that Buff had the wallet, but the main thing was the contestants getting the answers. That was what saved the contest.”
“You acknowledge that?”
“Certainly we acknowledge it. It’s obvious.”
“Very well. I suppose this was unavoidable.” Wolfe turned. “Archie, give Mr. Hansen a dollar.”
I got one out and went and proffered it, but Hansen didn’t take it. “What’s this?” he demanded.
“I am retaining you as my attorney, as before. I wish what I am going to tell you to have the protection of a confidential relationship between you and me. Since the interest of Mr. O’Garro and Mr. Heery runs with mine I’ll trust their discretion. You may end the relationship at any moment. That’s what you told me. You and I began with a privileged communication; we’ll end with one.”
Hansen took the dollar, not enthusiastically, and I returned to my desk. “Go ahead,” he said.
“You’re gouging this out of me.” Wolfe was frowning. “I would have preferred to keep it to myself, but rather this than a prolonged wrangle. When you get the list of expenses accompanying my bill there will be an item on it, ‘One second-hand Underwood typewriter, eighty-two dollars.’ It is now at the bottom of the river, because I wanted to exclude all possibility of a slip, but I have several pages that were typed on it—or rather, I know where they are and can easily get them—and if you will secure from Inspector Cramer one of the sheets of answers that were received by the contestants, or a good facsimile, I’ll arrange an opportunity for you to make a comparison. You’ll find that the answers sent to the contestants were typed on the machine charged for in my expense list.”
Heery burst out laughing. In the pressure of events I had forgotten what a good laugher he was, and that time he really meant it. After a few healthy roars he stopped to blurt, “You amazing sonofabitch!” and then roared some more. Hansen and O’Garro were staring, O’Garro with a deep frown, chewing at it.
When Heery had subsided enough for a normal voice to be heard Hansen spoke. “You’re saying that you sent the answers to the contestants?”
“They were sent by a man in my employ. I can produce him if you insist, but I would prefer not to name him.”
“I think we won’t insist. Pat?”
“No.” O’Garro’s frown was going. “I will be damned.”
“No wonder,” Hansen told Wolfe, “you wanted it a privileged communication. This changes things.”
“It should,” Wolfe said drily. “Since you have just declared that sending the answers to the contestants saved the contest. It was to them— advantage too, most of them. That was one of my objects, and the other, of course, was to spur somebody into doing something. I didn’t know who or what, but I thought that would stimulate action, and it did.”
“It certainly did,” O’Garro agreed. “Too much action, but you couldn’t help it.”
“I should have helped it. Mr. Assa should be alive. I blundered.” Wolfe tightened his lips. He released them. “Do you want me to get the pages that were typed on that machine for comparison?”
“No,” Hansen said. “Pat?”
“No.”
“But,” Hansen told Wolfe, “we still want you to handle the contest. The payment will of course be in addition to the bill you’re sending. It won’t be—”
“No!” Wolfe bellowed, and I didn’t blame him. Turning down fifty grand just once to keep your dignity in order is tough enough, and to be compelled to keep on turning it down is too much. They tried to insist, and Heery especially wouldn’t let go, but finally they had to give it up. When they left and I went to the hall with them they corralled me by the rack and tried to sell me the idea of talking him into it, with some broad hints that it wouldn’t cost me anything, but I gave them no hope. My mind wasn’t really on their problem at all. It was on one of my own, and when I had closed the door behind them and returned to the office I tackled it without preamble.
“Okay,” I told Wolfe, “it was a brilliant stroke. It was a masterpiece. It was a honey. But not only did you change the rules and tell me a direct lie, you also piled another one on by telling me that you had not changed the rules. How’s that for a confidential relationship? Why do I ever have to believe anything you say?”
His mouth twisted. He thought he was smiling. “You can always believe me, Archie. With your memory, which is matchless, you can recall my words. I made just two categorical statements to you, when we were alone, on that matter. I said, first, / hadn’t hoped for anything as provocative as this. That was true; I hadn’t hoped for it; I was sure of it, since I had arranged it. I said, second, / hadn’t listed this among the possibilities. That was likewise true; it wasn’t a possibility, it was a certainty. I have never told you a direct lie and never will—and if I quibbled it was only to save you the necessity of telling one to Mr. Stebbins or any one else who might challenge you. Have I quoted myself correctly?”