Рекс Стаут - A Family Affair

The most interesting incident Tuesday morning was my walking to a building on Thirty-fourth Street to enter a booth and push levers on a voting machine. I have never understood why anybody passes up that bargain. It doesn’t cost a cent, and for that couple of minutes you’re the star of the show, with top billing. It’s the only way that really counts for you to say I’m it, I’m the one that decides what’s going to happen and who’s going to make it happen. It’s the only time I really feel important and know I have a right to. Wonderful. Sometimes the feeling lasts all the way home if somebody doesn’t bump me.

There was no sight or sound of Wolfe until he came down for lunch. No sound of the elevator, so he didn’t go up to the plant rooms. I knew he was alive and breathing, because Fritz told me he cleaned up a normal breakfast, and also, when I returned from voting and a walk around a few blocks, Fritz reported that Parker had phoned and Wolfe had taken it up in his room. And the program for lunch was normal — baked bluefish stuffed with ground shrimp, and endive salad with watercress. When Wolfe came down at a quarter past one he looked in at the office door to tell me good morning, though it wasn’t morning, and then crossed to the dining room. I had considered eating in the kitchen but had decided that we would have to be on speaking terms, since we had the same counsel. Also it would have given Fritz one more reason to worry, and he didn’t need it.

As I got seated at the table, Wolfe asked if there had been any word from Fred or Orrie, and I said yes, they had called and I had told them to stand by, I would call them as soon as I knew what to say. He didn’t mention Saul, so I assumed he had called while I was out, though Fritz hadn’t said so. And he didn’t mention the call from Parker. So evidently, although we were on speaking terms, the speaking wasn’t going to include the matter of our right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When he had carved the bluefish and Fritz had brought me mine and taken his, he asked me where he should go to vote and I told him. Then he asked how many seats I thought the Democrats would gain in the House and the Senate, and we discussed it in detail. Then he asked if I had split the ticket, and I said yes, I had voted for Carey but not for Clark, and we discussed that.

It was quite a performance. Over the years he had had relapses and grouches, and once or twice he had come close to a tantrum, but this was a new one. Our licenses had been suspended, if we crossed the river to Jersey or drove up to Westport or Danbury we would be locked up without bail, and we had three men out on the same limb with us, but pfui. Skip it. It will all come out in the wash. And Fritz was right, he wasn’t fou , he had merely decided that, since the situation was absolutely hopeless, he would ignore it. When we left the table at ten minutes past two, I decided to give him twenty-four hours and then issue an ultimatum, if necessary.

Four hours later I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t sure of anything. When we left the dining room he had neither crossed the hall to the office nor taken the elevator back to his room; he had announced that he was going to go and vote and reached to the rack for the coat he had brought down. Certainly; voting was one of the few personal errands that got him out in any weather. But at a quarter past six he hadn’t come back, and that was ridiculous. Four hours. All bets were off. He was in a hospital or the morgue, or in an airplane headed for Montenegro. I was regretting that I hadn’t turned on the six-o’clock news and considering whether to start phoning now or wait until after dinner when the doorbell rang and I went to the hall, and there he was. He never carried keys. I went and opened the door and he entered, said, “I decided to do an errand,” and unbuttoned his coat.

I said, “Much traffic?”

He said, “Of course. There always is.”

As I hung up his coat I decided not to wait until tomorrow for the ultimatum. After dinner in the office, when Fritz had gone with the coffee tray. Wolfe went to the kitchen, and I went up to my room to stand at the window and consider how to word it.

That meal stands out as the one I enjoyed least of all the ones I have had at that table. I really thought it might be the last one, but I used my knife and fork as usual, and chewed and swallowed, and heard what he said about things like the expressions on people’s faces as they stood in line in front of the voting booths. When we went to the office and sat and Fritz came with the coffee, I still hadn’t decided how to start the ultimatum, but that didn’t bother me. I knew from long experience that it would go better if I let it start itself.

There were a couple of swallows left of my second cup when the doorbell rang and I went for a look. It was a gang, and I went part way down the hall to make sure before I returned to the office and said, “It’s four of the six. Vilar, Judd, Hahn, and Igoe. No Ackerman or Urquhart.”

“None of them telephoned?”

“Yes. None.”

“Bring them.”

I went. I couldn’t tell, as I swung the door open and they entered and got their coats off, what to expect. Evidently they hadn’t come merely to deliver an ultimatum, for in the office Judd went to the red leather chair and the others moved up yellow ones. And Judd told Wolfe, “You don’t look like you’ve just spent time in jail.”

“I have spent more time in a dirtier jail,” Wolfe said. “In Algiers.”

“Yes? I have never been in jail. Yet. Two of us wanted to come this morning, but I wanted to get more facts. I haven’t got them — not enough. Perhaps you can supply them. I understand that you and Goodwin aren’t talking, not at all, and neither are the men you hired, but we are being asked about a slip of paper one of us handed Bassett at that dinner, and there has been another murder, and we are even being asked where we were Saturday morning, when that woman was killed. You said you wouldn’t go to the District Attorney, and apparently you haven’t. You didn’t go, you were taken. We want to know what the hell is going on.”

“So do I.”

“Goddam it,” Igoe blurted, “you’ll talk to us!”

“I will indeed.” Wolfe sent his eyes around. “I’m glad you came, gentlemen. I suppose Mr. Ackerman and Mr. Urquhart didn’t want to enter this jurisdiction, and I don’t blame them. As for the slip of paper, Lucile Ducos knew about it, but she was killed. Evidently Marie Garrou, the maid, also knew about it, possibly by eavesdropping, and she has talked. So you are being harassed, and that’s regrettable. But I don’t regret hunting you up and entangling you, because one of you supplied information that I may find useful. Two of you. Mr. Igoe told Mr. Goodwin that Mr. Bassett had obsessions — his word — and Mr. Hahn told me that one of his obsessions, a powerful one, centered on his wife.”

When I heard him say that, I knew. It came in a flash, like lightning. It wasn’t a guess or a hunch, I knew . I’m aware that you probably knew a while back and you’re surprised that I didn’t, but that doesn’t prove that you’re smarter than I am. You are just reading about it, and I was in it, right in the middle of it. Also, I may have pointed once or twice, but I’m not going back and make changes. I try to make these reports straight, straight accounts of what happened, and I’m not going to try to get tricky.

I’ll try to report the rest of that conversation, but I can’t swear to it. I was there and I heard it, but I had a decision to make that couldn’t wait until they had gone. Obviously Wolfe was standing mute to me. Why? Damn it, why ? But that could wait, and the decision couldn’t. The question was, should I let him know that I now knew the score? And something happened that had happened a thousand times before: I discovered that I was only pretending to try to decide. The decision had already been made by my subconscious — I call it that because I don’t know any other name for it. I was not going to let him know that I knew. If that was the way he wanted to play it, all right, it took two to play and we would see who fumbled first.