“I think they will,” Wolfe persisted. “One will, I know. And open publication might be better than the sort of talk that would get around when once it’s started. You know how rumours get distorted; fools would even say that it wasn’t necessary to add anything to Starlite to poison Mr Orchard. Really, the blackmail potential of this is very high. And what do you have to do to stop it?
Something hideous and insupportable? Not at all. Merely tell me why you suddenly decided to scoot.” Anderson looked at Owen, but Owen was gazing fixedly at Wolfe as at the embodiment of evil.
“It will be useless,” Wolfe said, “to try any dodge. I’m ready for you. I spent all day yesterday on this, and I doubt very much if I’ll accept anything except what I have already specified: that someone or something had persuaded you that Miss Fraser herself was in.danger of being exposed as a murderer or a blackmailer. However, you can try.” “I don’t have to try.” He was a stubborn devil. “I told you yesterday. That was my reason then, and it’s my reason now.” “Oh, for God’s sake!” Fred Owen wailed. “Oh, my God!” “Goddam it,” Anderson blurted at him, CI gave my word! I’m sewed up! I promised!” “To whom?” Wolfe snapped.
“All right,” Owen said bitterly, “keep your word and lose your shirt. This is ruin! This is dynamite!” “To whom?” Wolfe persisted.
“I can’t tell you, and I won’t. That was part of the promise.” “Indeed. Then that makes it simple.” Wolfe’s eyes darted left. “Mr Meadows, a hypothetical question. If it was you to whom Mr Anderson gave the pledge that keeps him from speaking, do you now release him from it?” “It wasn’t me,” Bill said.
“I didn’t ask you that. You know what a hypothetical question is. Please answer to the if. If it was you, do you release him?” “Yes. I do.” “Mr Traub, the same question. With that if, do you release him?” “Yes.” “Miss Vance? Do you?” “Yes.” “Mr Strong. Do you?” Of course Tully Strong had had time, a full minute, to make up his mind what to say. He said it: “No!”
CHAPTER Twenty-Five
Eleven pairs of eyes fastened on Tully Strong.
“Aha,” Wolfe muttered. He leaned back, sighed deep, and looked pleased.
“Remarkable!” a voice boomed. It was Professor Savarese. “So simple!” If he expected to pull some of the eyes his way, he got cheated. They stayed on Strong.
“That was a piece of luck,” Wolfe said, “and I’m grateful for it. If I had started with you, Mr Strong, and got your no, the others might have made it not so simple.” “I answered a hypothetical question,” Tully asserted, “and that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.” “Correct,” Wolfe agreed. “In logic, it doesn’t. But I saw your face when you realized what was coming, the dilemma you would be confronted with in a matter of seconds, and that was enough. Do you now hope to retreat into logic?” Tully just wasn’t up to it. Not only had his face been enough when he saw it coming; it was still enough. The muscles around his thin tight lips quivered as he issued the command to let words through.
“I merely answered a hypothetical question,” was the best he could do. It was pathetic.
Wolfe sighed again. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to light it for you. I don’t blame you, sir, for being obstinate about it, since it may be assumed that you have behaved badly. I don’t mean your withholding information from the police; most people do that, and often for reasons much shoddier than yours. I mean your behaviour to your employers. Since you are paid by the eight sponsors jointly your loyalty to them is indivisible; but you did not warn all of them that Miss Fraser was, or might be, headed for disgrace and disaster, and that therefore they had better clear out; apparently you confined it to Mr Anderson. For value received or to be received, I presume—a good job?” Wolfe shrugged. “But now it’s all up.” His eyes moved. “By the way, Archie, since Mr Strong will soon be telling us how he knew it was Miss Fraser, you’d better take a look. She’s capable of anything, and she’s as deft as a bear’s tongue. Look in her bag.” Cramer was on his feet. “I’m not going—” “I didn’t ask you,” Wolfe snapped. “Confound it, don’t you see how ticklish this is? I’m quite aware I’ve got no evidence yet, but I’m not going to have that woman displaying her extraordinary dexterity in my office. Archie?” I had left my chair and stepped to the other end of Wolfe’s desk, but I was in a rather embarrassing position. I am not incapable of using force on a woman, since after all men have never found anything else to use on them with any great success when it comes right down to it, but Wolfe had by no means worked up to a point where the audience was with me. And when I extended a hand toward the handsome leather bag in Madeline Fraser’s lap, she gave me the full force of her grey-green eyes and told me distinctly: “Don’t touch me.” I brought the hand back. Her eyes went to Wolfe: “Don’t you think it’s about time I said something? Wouldn’t it look better?” “No.” Wolfe met her gaze. “I’d advise you to wait, madam. All you can give us now is a denial, and of course we’ll stipulate that. What else can you say?” “I wouldn’t bother with a denial,” she said scornfully. “But it seems stupid for me to sit here and let this go on indefinitely.” “Not at all.” Wolfe leaned toward her. “Let me assure you of one thing, Miss Fraser, most earnestly. It is highly unlikely, whatever you say or do from now on, that I shall ever think you stupid. I am too well convinced of the contrary.
Not even if Mr Goodwin opens your bag and finds in it the gun with which Miss Poole was shot.” “He isn’t going to open it.” She seemed to know what she was talking about. I glanced at Inspector Cramer, but the big stiff wasn’t ready to move a finger. I picked up the little table that was always there by the arm of the red leather chair, and moved it over to the wall, went and brought one of the small yellow chairs, and sat, so close to Madeline Fraser that if we had spread elbows they would have touched. That meant no more notes, but Wolfe couldn’t have everything. As I sat down by her, putting in motion the air that had been there undisturbed, I got a faint whiff of a spicy perfume, and my imagination must have been pretty active because I was reminded of the odour that had reached me that day in her apartment, from the breath of Deborah Koppel as I tried to get her on to the divan before she collapsed. It wasn’t the same at all except in my fancy. I asked Wolfe: “This will do. Won’t it?” He nodded and went back to Tully Strong. “So you have not one reason for reluctance, but several. Even so, you can’t possibly stick it. It has been clearly demonstrated to Mr Cramer that you are withholding important information directly pertinent to the crimes he is investigating, and you and others have already pushed his patience pretty far. He’ll get his teeth in you now and he won’t let go. Then there’s Mr Anderson. The promise he gave you is half-gone, now that we know it was you he gave it to, and with the threat I’m holding over him he can’t reasonably be expected to keep the other half.” Wolfe gestured. “And all I really need is a detail. I am satisfied that I know pretty well what you told Mr Anderson. What happened yesterday, just before he took alarm and leaped to action? The morning papers had the story of the anonymous letters—the blackmailing device by which people were constrained to make payments to Mr Orchard and Miss Poole. Then that story had supplied a missing link for someone. Who and how? Say it was Mr Anderson. Say that he received, some weeks ago, an anonymous letter Or letters blackguarding Miss Fraser. He showed them to her. He received no more letters. That’s all he knew about it. A little later Mr Orchard was a guest on the Fraser programme and got poisoned, but there was no reason for Mr Anderson to connect that event with the anonymous letters he had received. That was what the story in yesterday’s papers did for him; they made that connection. It was now perfectly plain: anonymous letters about Miss Fraser; Miss Fraser’s subscription to Track Almanac; the method by which those subscriptions were obtained; and Mr Orchard’s death by drinking poisoned coffee ostensibly intended for Miss Fraser. That did not convict Miss Fraser of murder, but at a minimum it made it extremely inadvisable to continue in the role of her sponsor. So Mr Anderson skedaddled.” “I got no anonymous letters,” Anderson declared.