“How did she get cut?”
“I was proceeding to tell you. She said she had gone in the late afternoon to a conference in her business office, made urgent by the death of her husband and the arrest of Pompa. It had lasted longer than expected. Riding back uptown, she had dismissed her chauffeur, sent him home in a taxi, and had driven herself around the park for a while. Then she drove to her house. As she got out of her car someone seized her from behind, and she thought she was being kidnaped. She gouged with her elbows and kicked, and suddenly her assailant released her and darted away. She crossed the sidewalk to her door, rang, and was admitted by Borly, the butler. Only after she was inside did she learn that she had been stabbed, or cut. The sons and
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daughters were there, and they phoned me and got her upstairs. They also, directed by her, cleaned up; indoors and out. The butler washed the sidewalk with a hose. He was doing that when I arrived. Mrs. Whitten explained to me that the haste in cleaning up was on account of her desire to have no hullabaloo, as she put it. Under the circumstances the episode would naturally have been greatly—uh, magnified. She asked me to do her the favor of exercising professional discretion, and I saw no sufficient reason to refuse. I shall explain to her that your threat to have a police doctor see her left me no choice.”
He turned up his palms. “Those are the facts.”
I nodded. “As you got them. Who was it that jumped her?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“Man or woman?”
“She doesn’t know. She was attacked from behind, and it was after dark. When her assailant dashed off, by the time she got straightened and turned he—or she—was the other side of a parked car. Anyway, she was frightened, and her concern was safety.”
“She didn’t see him before he jumped her? As she drove up?”
“No. He could have been concealed behind the parked car.”
“Were there no passers-by?”
“None. No one appeared.”
“Did she scream?”
“I didn’t ask her.” He was getting irritated. “I didn’t subject her to an inquisition, you know. She had been hurt and needed attention, and I gave it to her.”
“Sure.” I stood up. “I won’t say much obliged because I squeezed it out. I accept your facts—that is, what you were told—but I ought to wain you that you may get a phone call from Nero Wolfe. I can find my way out.”
He stood up. “I think you used the word ‘confidential.’ May I tell Mrs. Whitten that she need not expect a visit from a police doctor?”
“I’ll do my best. I mean it. But if I were you I wouldn’t give her any more quick promises. They’re apt not to stick.”
I reached for the doorknob, but he was ahead of me and opened it. He took me back down the hall and let me out, and even told me good night. The elevator man kept slanted eyes on me, evidently having been told of the vulgar message I had sent up to a tenant, so I told him that his starting lever needed oil, which it did. Outside I climbed in the car and rolled downtown a little faster than I was supposed to. The clock on the dash said ten minutes to midnight.
When I’m not in the house, especially at night, the front door is always chain bolted, so I had to ring for Fritz to let me in. I went along with him to the kitchen, got a glass and a pitcher of milk, took them to the office, and
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announced, “Home again, and I brought no company. But I’ve got a tool I think you can pry Pompa loose with, if you want to play it that way. I need some milk on my stomach. My nerves are doubling in brass.” “What is it?” Marko demanded, out of his chair at me. “What did you—” “Let him alone,” Wolfe muttered, “until he has swallowed something. He’s hungry.”
v
“IF YOU don’t tell the police about this at once, I will,” Marko said emphatically. He hit the chair arm with his fist. “This is magnificent! It is a masterpiece of wit!”
I had finished my report, along with the pitcher of milk, and Wolfe had asked questions, such as whether I had seen any bloodstains, inside or out, which the cleaners had overlooked. I hadn’t. Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, and Marko was pacing back and forth. I was smirking, but not visibly.
“They must release him at once!” Marko exclaimed. “Tell them now! Phone! If you don’t-”
“Shut up,” Wolfe said rudely.
“He’s using his brain,” I informed Marko, “and you’re breaking the rules. Yell at me if you want to, but not at him. It’s not as simple as it looks. If we pass it to the cops it’s out of our hands, and if they’re stubborn and still like the idea of Pompa where are we? We couldn’t get through to that bunch again with anything less than a Sherman tank. If we don’t tell the cops but keep it for our private use, and we monkey around until whoever used a knife on Mrs. Whitten uses it again only more to the point, the immediate question would be how high the judge would set our bail.”
“Including me?” Marko demanded.
“Certainly including you. You especially, because you started the con spiracy to spring Pompa.”
Marko stopped pacing to frown at me. “But you make it impossible. We can’t tell the police, and we can’t not tell the police. Is this what I called a masterpiece?”
“Sure, and you were right. It was so slick that I’m going to ask for a raise. Because there’s a loophole, namely we don’t have to monkey around. We can keep going the way I started. We’ve got a club to use on Mrs. Whitten, which means all of them, and if she hadn’t just been sliced and had her side sewed up we could phone her that we want her down here within the hour, along with the family. As it is, I guess that’s out. The alternative
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is for Mr. Wolfe and me to get in the car, which is out at the curb, and go there—now.”
I ignored a little grunt from Wolfe’s direction.
“It has been years,” I told Marko, “since I tried to get him to break his rule never to go anywhere outside this house on business, and I wouldn’t waste breath on it now. But this has nothing to do with business. You’re not a client, and Pompa isn’t, and he has told you that he wouldn’t take your money. This is for love, a favor to an old friend, which makes it entirely different. No question of rule-breaking is involved.”
Marko was gazing at me. “You mean go to Mrs. Whitten’s home?”
“Certainly. Why not?”
“Would they let you in?”
“You’re damn right they would, if that doctor has phoned her, and it’s ten to one he did.”
“Would it accomplish anything?”
“The least it would accomplish would be that there wouldn’t be a second murder as long as we were there. Beyond that—circumstances might offer suggestions. I might add, not being a candidate for president, that when I went there alone it accomplished a little something.”
Marko wheeled to Wolfe with his arms extended. “Nero, you must go! At once! You must!”
Wolfe’s eyes came half open, slowly. “Pfui,” he said scornfully.
“But it is the only thing! Let me tell you what Archie—”
“I heard him.” The open eyes saw an unfinished glass of beer, and he picked it up and drank. He looked at me. “There was a flaw. You assume that if we withhold this information from the police, and Mrs. Whitten gets killed, we’ll be in a pickle. Why? Technically it is not murder evidence; it has no necessary connection with a committed crime. Legally we are clear. Morally we are also clear. What if we accept and credit Mrs. Whitten’s explanation as she gives it? Then there is no menace to her from the members of her family.”
“You mean you buy it?” I demanded. “That she couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman?”
“Why not?”
I got up, threw up my hands, and sat down again.
“But this is not logical,” Marko protested earnesdy. “Your questions indicated that you thought she had lied to the doctor. I don’t see why—”
“Nuts,” I said in disgust. “He knows damn well she lied. If he liked to bet he would give you odds that it was one of the family that cut her up, either in the house or out, and she knows who it was and so do the rest of them. I know him better than you do, Marko. If he did leave his damn house and ride at night through the dangerous streets, when he got there he