you admit them, and go to your desk and stay there.
Proceed.”
I proceeded. After locking the box and returning the
keys to the cabinet, I moved four of the yellow chairs
up, in a row facing Wolfe’s desk, got the gun out, opened
the door to the front room, and invited them to enter.
The gentlemen followed the ladies. I went to my desk
and pronounced names, and when they were seated I
sat, with the gun in my hand resting on my thigh.
Wolfe’s eyes went right and then left. “This shouldn’t
take long,” he said. “First the situation. I shall not
resort to euphemism. You were being blackmailed by
Mr. Hazen, either collectively—please don’t interrupt.
Either collectively or separately. He had other victims,
but you four alone were paying him around a hundred
and fifty thousand dollars a year, ostensibly for profes-
sional services, but that was merely a subterfuge. I
don’t know whether the police know that or not, prob-
ably not, but I do. If there was any doubt it was re-
moved when Mr. Goodwin found you in that house
surreptitiously, looking for something, and you offered
him a large sum of money. So much—”
“I didn’t,” Mrs. Oliver blurted. “Mr. Perdis did.”
110 Rex Stout
“Pfui. You were there. Did you object? So much for
that. I am acting for my client, Mrs. Hazen. She is being
held under suspicion of killing her husband, and has
given me certain information. This is one item: one day
about a year ago her husband showed her a box, a metal
box, he had in his bedroom. To show it to her he re-
moved the bottom drawer of a chest and pried up the
board the drawer slid on, and the box was underneath
the board. He told her that if he died she should get the
box, have it opened by a locksmith, and burn the con-
tents without looking at them. It was to get that box
that Mr. Goodwin went there this evening, with Mrs.
Hazen’s key and authority. After you left the room he
removed the drawer and lifted the board, and got it. It’s
there on his desk.”
That was like him. I hadn’t told him that I had sent
them from the room before I got it, and that they hadn’t
seen it; he took it for granted. I appreciate his compli-
ments, but some day he may overestimate me. I had no
idea where or what he was headed for, but I thought a
little gesture wouldn’t hurt, so I got the box with my
left hand, the gun being in my right, and displayed it.
Four pairs of eyes were on it, glued to it. Anne Talbot
mumbled something. Perdis started up, thought better
of it, and sank back. Jules Khoury muttered, “So it was
there.” I had the gun, but there were four of them, so I
got up, detoured around them to the safe, opened the
safe door, put the box in, closed the door, and spun the
knob. As I returned to my chair Wolfe was speaking.
“I have a proposal to make, but first a question or
two. My objective, of course, is to demonstrate that
Mrs. Hazen did not kill her husband. Yesterday
evening you dined at her table. After dinner she went
to her room, and soon after that Mr. Weed left. I’m not
going to ask about the sequence and the times of your
departures, or where you went and what you did; the
police have got all that from you, and if the matter can
be resolved by such details they are extremely compe-
tent at that sort of thing, and they are ahead of me, with
an army. But I want to know about your conversation
The Homicide Trinity 111
with Mr. Hazen after his wife and Mr. Weed left. What
was said?”
“Nothing,” Khoury declared.
“Nonsense. Mr. Hazen had told his wife he was going
to discuss something with you. What?”
“Nothing of any importance. He opened champagne.
We discussed the stock market. He asked Mrs. Talbot
what plays she had seen. He got Perdis talking about
ships.”
“He talked about poisons,” Perdis said.
“He talked about his wife’s father,” Mrs. Oliver said.
“He said his wife’s father was a great inventor, a ge-
nius.”
Wolfe scowled at them. “This is egregious. If he
discussed some aspect of his peculiar relations with
you, naturally you didn’t tell the police about it. But I
know of those relations and the police don’t. I intend to
know what was said.”
“You don’t understand, Mr. Wolfe.” It was Anne
Talbot. She was leaning forward, appealing to him.
“You didn’t know him. He was a monster. He was a
demon. He didn’t want to discuss anything, he just
wanted to have us there together, and we had to go. It
was his special kind of torture. He wanted each of us to
know about the others and to know that the others
knew about us. He liked to see us trying to act as if it
were just a … just a dinner party. You didn’t know
him.”
“He was a devil,” Perdis said.
Wolfe surveyed them. “Did he reveal to any of you
the nature of his hold on the others, last evening or any
other time? Or hint at it?”
Anne Talbot and Khoury shook their heads. Mrs.
Oliver said, “No, oh, no.” Perdis said, “I think he hinted.
For instance, poison. I thought he hinted.”
“But no particulars?”
“No.”
“I must concede that he was not an estimable man.
Very well, he is dead, and here we are. As I said, I have
a proposal. It is highly likely, all but certain, that he
112 Rex Stout
kept in that box whatever support he had for his de-
mands on you. The box is in my safe. I don’t desire or
intend to inspect its contents. But Mrs. Hazen is my
client and I am committed to protect both her person
and her property. She is not bound to follow her hus-
band’s instructions to bum the contents of the box, and
it would be quixotic to destroy anything so valuable. I
will surrender it to you, you four, for one million dol-
lars.”
They gawked at him.
“That’s a large sum, but it is not exorbitant. In an-
other seven years, if Mr. Hazen had lived, you would
have paid him more than that, and that wouldn’t have
ended it. This will; this will be final. If I left it to you to
apportion the burden you would probably haggle, and
time is short, so I shall expect one quarter of the million
from each of you, either in currency or certified checks,
within twenty-four hours. There is no question of ex-
tortion by Mrs. Hazen or me; we haven’t seen the
contents of the box; I only say, as her agent, you may
have them at that price if you want them.”
“You haven’t opened the box,” Perdis said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“What if it’s empty?”
“You get nothing and you pay nothing.” Wolfe looked
up at the clock. “The box will be opened here tomorrow
at midnight, with all of you present, or earlier if and
when you meet the terms. If it is empty, so much for
that. If it isn’t, there will of course be a difficulty. None
of you will want the others to inspect the items that
pertain to him. I don’t want to look at any of them. I
suggest that Mr. Goodwin, who is thoroughly discreet,
may remove the items singly, examine each one only
enough to determine whom it applies to, and hand it
over. If you have a better procedure to suggest, do so.”
Mrs. Oliver was licking her lips and swallowing, by
turns. Perdis was hunched over, his lips tight, his heavy
broad shoulders rising and falling with his breathing.
Khoury had his chin up, his narrowed eyes aimed at
Wolfe past the tip of his long thin nose. Anne Talbot’s
The Homicide Trinity 113
eyes were closed, and a muscle at the side of her pretty
neck was twitching.
“I realize,” Wolfe said, “that it may not be easy to
produce so large a sum in so short a time, but it is not
impossible, and I dare not give you longer. While it is
true that the box and its contents are the property of
Mrs. Hazen, the police would no doubt regard it as
evidential in their investigation of a murder, and I can’t
undertake to withhold my knowledge of it longer than
twenty-four hours.” He pushed his chair back and rose.
“I shall await your pleasure.”
But if he was through they weren’t. Mrs. Oliver
wanted the box opened then and there, and a display of
its contents by me. Khoury said that there was a ques-
tion of extortion, that they were being told to fork over