Рекс Стаут - Gambit

“We are friends.” She stayed stiff. “But only because he and my husband are friends. My daughter has given you a wrong impression.” She turned to the daughter. “I’m not blaming you, Sally, but you have.” Back to Wolfe. “If you didn’t mean to offend... very well. But I’m just what I am, a middle-aged woman, and what you suggest, I can’t believe it. I certainly can’t believe it of Charles Yerkes.”

Obviously she meant every word. Lon Cohen had been right, she simply didn’t know it. Wolfe’s eyes were narrowed at her. The minute we were alone he would ask his expert on females for the low-down on her, and the expert was ready.

“Then we’ve wasted ten minutes,” he said. He looked up at the wall clock. “What is to be done, what can be done, now depends on what Mr. Goodwin learns from your husband, and speculation on that would be idle. Can you reach Mr. McKinney now? To tell him that the permit must be for Mr. Goodwin?”

“Yes. At his office. He said he would be there.”

“Do you know his number?”

She said she did, and floated up, and I vacated my chair for her; and she came and took it and dialed. My eyes went to Sally, and the look she gave me said as plain as words, And now of course you’ve fallen for her too. Which was a lie. I merely agreed with Wolfe that she had a person and a personality capable of arousing desire, a purely objective judgment.

At a quarter to five that afternoon I was seated on a wooden chair at a wooden table, face to face with Matthew Blount, with my notebook on the table and my pen in my hand. After years of practice I had proved more than once that I could report verbatim, without notes, an hour-long three- or four-way conversation, but I was taking no chances with this one. Once before, six years back, I had been admitted to the hoosegow to confer with a man in for the big one, by name Paul Herold, alias Peter Hays, but that time there had been a grill between us, in a big room which contained other inmates and visitors. This time the room was small and we had no company; the guard who had brought him was standing outside the glass door. Of course there were two reasons why the DA had let me come at an off hour and given us some privacy: one, Blount was a prominent citizen with plenty of prominent friends; and two, the murder of Kalmus had made him suspect that he had hold of the short end of the stick.

Matthew Blount, forty-seven, Harvard 1937, did not look as you would expect of a man who had been in the jug for twelve days on a murder rap. Not that he was chipper, but the skin of his well-arranged face, shaved that day, was smooth and clear, his hair had been trimmed within three or four days, his hands were perfectly clean and so were his nails, his custom-made jacket might have been pressed that morning, his shirt was on its first day, and he had a necktie on. He could have gone as was to Peacock Alley for a drink if he could have got past the guard at the door and on out.

It wasn’t easy to persuade him that I was as good as Nero Wolfe. I explained that even if Wolfe had broken the one rule he never broke, and come, it wouldn’t have made any difference, because as soon as he got home he would have told me everything that was worth telling.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Blount said. “He would have been bound to secrecy.”

“Not a chance,” I said. “No one has ever bound him to secrecy or ever will if it means leaving me out. He leaves me out only if and when he wants to. If he had come and you insisted that he keep it strictly to himself he would have walked out on you.”

He shook his head. “I have told this to no one, not even my wife, because I was ashamed of it. I still am. Only Kalmus knew about it, and he’s dead. I don’t — oh. You’re Archie Goodwin? You went there and found him, and my daughter was with you?”

“Right.”

“Did my daughter — how was she?”

“She did fine. Three minutes after we found him she could leave on her own feet, alone, take the elevator down, and get a taxi. Your wife and daughter are both fine, as I told you, Mr. Blount. As soon as—”

“Forget the Mister.”

“Sure. As soon as it had been arranged for me to get the permit to see you they left together, for home.”

“I want a straight answer to a straight question. Did my wife tell Wolfe what it is that I want him to investigate?”

“No. She said she didn’t know. She said no one knew — except Kalmus.”

He nodded. “Then he kept his word. There aren’t many men you can rely on absolutely. Dan Kalmus was one. And he’s dead.” He set his jaw. In a moment he went on. “This thing I’m ashamed of, I have told no one. McKinney wanted me to tell him this morning, he insisted, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t tell Kalmus, he knew all about it. From what he told me about Nero Wolfe, I decided he was the man to tell. Now you say I must tell you.”

“Not you must. I only say that telling me is the same as telling Mr. Wolfe. I add this, that I will tell only him. Also I’ll tell you what he would say if you tried to bind him to secrecy. He would say that the best protection for your secret would be his discretion, and that if a circumstance arose that made him think, it necessary to disclose it he would first tell you. That’s the best you’d get from him. From me, you get my word that I’ll tell him and no one else in any circumstances whatever.”

Our eyes were meeting, and he knew how to meet eyes. “Kalmus was my lawyer,” he said.

“I know he was.”

“Now I’ll have to get another one, and I won’t tell him, and I won’t want you or Wolfe to tell him.”

“Then we won’t. What the hell, Blount, what is it? After all this — did you poison that chocolate yourself?”

“Yes. I did.”

I stared. “ You did?”

“Yes.”

“Then no wonder.” I put the pen in my pocket and closed the notebook, which I hadn’t used. For this I preferred my memory to a notebook, which could be lost or even possibly taken from me on my way out. I demanded, “This is the fact known only to Kalmus and you that he was counting on to clear you?”

“Yes. I bitterly regret it and I’m bitterly ashamed of it. As you know, I made the arrangements for Jerin to come to the club. I arranged all the details. I knew he drank chocolate when he was playing chess, and I told the steward to have some prepared. I don’t know, and I never will know, how in the name of God I conceived the idea of putting something in the chocolate that would befuddle him. I’m not a practical joker, I never have been. It may have been suggested by something somebody said, but if so I don’t remember it, and anyway it was I who did it. It’s even possible that I was prouder of my skill at chess than I thought I was and I had a subconscious resentment of a man who could give me odds of a rook and beat me. I hate to think I’m that petty, but damn it, I did it. I put something in the chocolate while I was taking it upstairs and stirred it with a pencil.”

“Arsenic, to befuddle him?”

“It wasn’t arsenic. It was poison, since anything toxic is a poison, but it wasn’t arsenic. I didn’t know exactly what it was until later, when I had it analyzed. Kalmus got it for me. I told him what I intended to do, as a precaution; there wasn’t much risk of discovery, but I wanted to know if it would be criminally actionable. He said no, and he liked the idea, and that wasn’t surprising because I thought he would, it was the kind of prank that would appeal to him. But he said I must be extremely careful of what I used, of course I knew that, and he offered to find out what would be best for the effect we wanted, and I asked him to get it, and he said he would. Which he did. He gave it to me that evening, that Tuesday evening, at the club. It was a two-ounce bottle, a liquid, and he told me to use about half of it. Which I did.” He pointed a finger at me. “Listen, Goodwin. I don’t want my wife or daughter ever to know what an incredible chump I was, in any circumstances.”