and opened the door and told her good afternoon. She
said she wanted to see Nero Wolfe. I said Mr. Wolfe was
engaged, and besides, he saw people only by appoint-
ment. She said she knew that, but this was urgent. She
had to see him and would wait till he was free.
There were several factors: that we had nothing on
the fire at the moment; that the year was only five days
old and therefore the income-tax bracket didn’t enter
into it; that I wanted something to do besides recording
the vital statistics of orchids; that I was annoyed at him
for leaving the tie on his desk; and that she didn’t try to
push but kept her distance, with her dark eyes, good
eyes, straight at me.
“Okay,” I told her, “I’ll see what I can do,” and
stepped aside for her to enter. After taking her coat and
hanging it on the rack and escorting her to the office, I
gave her one of the yellow chairs near me instead of the
red leather one at the end ofWolfe’s desk. She sat with
her back straight and her feet together—nice little feet
in fairly sensible gray shoes. I told her that Wolfe
wouldn’t be available until six o’clock.
“It will be better,” I said, “if I see him first and tell
him about you. In fact, it will be essential. My name is
Archie Goodwin. What is yours?”
“I know about you,” she said. “Of course. If I didn’t I
wouldn’t be here.”
“Many thanks. Some people who know about me
have a different reaction. And your name?”
She was eyeing me. “I’d rather not,” she said, “until I
know if Mr. Wolfe will take my case. It’s private. It’s
very confidential.”
I shook my head. “No go. You’ll have to tell him what
your case is before he decides if he’ll take it, and I’ll be
sitting here listening. So? Also I’ll have to tell him more
about you than you’re thirty-five years old, weigh a
hundred and twenty pounds, and wear no earrings,
before he decides if he’ll even see you.”
She almost smiled. “I’m forty-two.”
I grinned. “See? I need facts. Who you are and what
you want.”
Her mouth worked. “It’s very confidential.” Her
mouth worked some more. “But there was no sense in
coming unless I tell you.”
“Right.”
She laced her fingers. “All right. My name is Bertha
Aaron. It is spelled with two A’s. I am the private
secretary of Mr. Lamont Otis, senior partner in the law
firm of Otis, Edey, Heydecker, and Jett. Their office is
6 Rex Stout
on Madison Avenue at Fifty-first Street. I’m worried
about something that happened recently and I want
Mr. Wolfe to investigate it. I can pay him a reasonable
fee, but it might develop that he will be paid by the firm.
It might.”
“Were you sent here by someone in the firm?”
“No. Nobody sent me. Nobody knows I’m here.”
“What happened?”
Her fingers laced tighter. “Maybe I shouldn’t have
come,” she said. “I didn’t realize . . . maybe I’d better
not.”
“Suit yourself, Miss Aaron, Miss Aaron?”
“Yes. I am not married.” Her fingers flew apart to
make fists and her lips tightened. “This is silly. I’ve got
to. I owe it to Mr. Otis. I’ve been with him for twenty
years and he has been wonderful to me. I couldn’t go to
him about this because he’s seventy-five years old and
he has a bad heart and it might kill him. He comes to the
office every day, but it’s a strain and he doesn’t do
much, only he knows more than all the rest of them put
together.” Her fists opened. “What happened was that
I saw a member of the firm with our opponent in a very
important case, one of the biggest cases we’ve ever had,
at a place where they wouldn’t have met if they hadn’t
wanted to keep it secret.”
“You mean with the opposing counsel?”
“No. The client. With opposing counsel it might pos-
sibly have been all right.”
“Which member of the firm?”
“I’m not going to say. I’m not going to tell Mr. Wolfe
his name until he agrees to take the case. He doesn’t
have to know that in order to decide. If you wonder why
I came, I’ve already said why I can’t tell Mr. Otis about
it, and I was afraid to go to any of the others because if
one of them was a traitor another one might be in it with
him, or even more than one. How could I be sure? There
are only four members of the firm, but of course there
are others associated—nineteen altogether. I wouldn’t
trust any of them, not on a thing like this.” She made
fists again. “You can understand that. You see what a
hole I’m in.”
The Homicide Trinity 7
“Sure. But you could be wrong. Of course that’s
unethical, a lawyer meeting with an enemy client, but
there could be exceptions. It might have been acciden-
tal. When and where did you see them?”
“Last Monday, a week ago today. In the evening.
They were together in a booth in a cheap restaurant—
more of a lunchroom. The kind of place she would never
go to, never. She would never go to that part of town.
Neither would I, ordinarily, but I was on a personal
errand and I went in there to use the phone. They didn’t
see me.”
“Then one of the members of the firm is a woman?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. I said ‘she.’ I meant the
opposing client. We have a woman lawyer as one of the
associates, just an employee really, but no woman firm
member.” She laced her fingers. “It couldn’t possibly
have been accidental. But of course it was conceivable,
just barely conceivable, that he wasn’t a traitor, that
there was some explanation, and that made it even
harder for me to decide what to do. But now I know.
After worrying about it for a whole week I couldn’t
stand it any longer, and this afternoon I decided the
only thing I could do was tell him and see what he said.
If he had a good explanation, all right. But he didn’t.
The way he took it, the way it hit him, there isn’t any
question about it. He’s a traitor.”
“What did he say?”
“It wasn’t so much what he said as how he looked. He
said he had a satisfactory explanation, that he was
acting in the interest of our client, but that he couldn’t
tell me more than that until the matter had developed
further. Certainly within a week, he said, and possibly
tomorrow. So I knew I had to do something, and I was
afraid to go to Mr. Otis because his heart has been
worse lately, and I wouldn’t go to another firm member.
I even thought of going to the opposing counsel, but of
course that wouldn’t do. Then I thought of Nero Wolfe,
and I put on my hat and coat and came. Now it’s urgent.
You can see it’s urgent?”
I nodded. “It could be. Depending on the kind of case
8 Rex Stout
The Homicide Trinity 9
involved. Mr. Wolfe might agree to take the job before
you name the alleged traitor, but he would have to
know first what the case is about—your firm’s case.
There are some lands he won’t touch, even indirectly.
What is it?”
“I don’t want . . .” She let it hang. “Does he have to
know that?”
“Certainly. Anyhow, you’ve told me the name of your
firm and it’s a big important case and the opposing
client is a woman, and with that I could—but I don’t
have to. I read the papers. Is your client Morton
Sorell?”
“Yes.”
“And the opposing client is Rita Sorell, his wife?”
“Yes.”
I glanced at my wrist watch and saw 5:39, left my
chair, told her, “Cross your fingers and sit tight,” and
headed for the hall and the stairs. Two new factors had
entered and now dominated the situation: that if our
first bank deposit of the new year came from the Sorell
pile it would not be hay; and that one of the kind of jobs
Wolfe wouldn’t touch, even indirectly, was divorce
stuff. It would take some doing, and as I mounted the
three flights to the roof of the old brownstone my brain
was going faster than my feet. In the vestibule of the
plant rooms I paused, not for breath but to plan the
approach, decided that was no good because it would
depend on his mood, and entered. You might think it
impossible to go down the aisles between the benches of
those three rooms—cool, tropical, and intermediate—
without noticing the flashes and banks of color, but that
day I did, and then was in the potting room.