Рекс Стаут - Please Pass the Guilt

“It will be a deduction on my tax return. Call Mrs. Odell and tell her I am quitting. Draw a check to her for the full amount of the retainer.”

Fred and Orrie had to turn their heads to look at me. Saul, in the red leather chair, didn’t have to turn his head. I looked at Wolfe, especially the left corner of his mouth, to see how bad it was.

Plenty of things had happened. There had been three thunderstorms in a row Wednesday afternoon. Jill Cather, Orrie’s wife, had threatened to walk out on him because he didn’t get home until five in the morning Tuesday after taking a CAN female researcher to dinner and a show, though he explained that the meal and the tickets had been paid for by the client. The West Side Highway, northbound, had been closed for repairs all day Friday. Fred Durkin, tailing a CAN male employee Thursday evening, had lost him, and he hates to lose a tail; and on Friday, Elaine, his oldest daughter, had admitted she was smoking grass. Saul Panzer had spent two days and a night at Montauk Point trying to find a bomb maker, and drawn a blank. On Friday the Labor Department announced that the Consumer Price Index had gone up.3 of one percent in May. A busy week.

Personally I had done wonders. I had answered at least a hundred phone calls, including dozens from the three helpers. They were trying to help. Also including three from Mrs. Odell. I had discussed the situation for about an hour with a member of the CAN news staff, brought by Orrie. His real reason for coming had been to have a chat with Nero Wolfe. I had spent an evening with Sylvia Venner and a male chauvinist friend of hers, also a CAN employee, at her apartment. I had washed my hands and face every day. I could go on, but that’s enough to show you that I was fully occupied.

Wolfe hadn’t been idle either. When Inspector Cramer had rung the doorbell at eleven-thirty Friday morning, he had told me to admit him, and he had held up his end of a twenty-minute conversation. Cramer had no chips on his shoulder. What brought him was the fact that Cass R. Abbott, the president of CAN, had come to see Wolfe the day before, a little after six o’clock, and stayed a full hour. Evidently Cramer had the old brownstone under surveillance, and if so, he positively was desperate in spite of his healthy ego. He probably thought that Abbott’s coming indicated that Wolfe had a fire lit, and if so, he wanted to warm his hands. I think when he left, he was satisfied that we were as empty as he was, but with those two you never know.

What Abbott’s coming actually indicated was that the strain was getting on his nerves, and for a man so high up that would not do. When he got parked in the red leather chair, he told Wolfe he would like to speak with him confidentially, and when Wolfe said he could, there would be no recording, Abbott looked at me, then back to Wolfe, and said, “Privately.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Professionally nothing is reserved between Mr. Goodwin and me. If he leaves the room and you tell me anything relevant to the job we are doing — trying to do — I would tell him, withholding nothing.”

“Well.” Abbott ran his fingers through his mop of fine, white hair. “I have had a check on you but not on Goodwin. You hold up, but does he?”

“If he doesn’t, I don’t. What good is a chain with a bad link?”

Abbott nodded. “A good line. Who said it?”

“I did. The thought is not new, no thought is, but said better.”

“You use words, don’t you?”

“Yes. On occasion, in six languages, which is a mere smattering. I would like to be able to communicate with any man alive. As it is, even you and I find it difficult. Are you sure you can prevent my getting more or less than you want me to from what you tell me or ask me?”

Abbott’s raised eyebrows made his long, pale face look even longer. “By god, I can try.”

“Go ahead.”

“When I say ‘confidential,’ I mean you will not repeat to Mrs. Odell anything I say about her.”

Wolfe nodded. “See? You don’t mean that. Of course I would repeat it if it would serve my purpose or her interest to do so. She has hired me. If you mean I am not to tell her your name, I am to give her no hint of who said it, yes. — Archie?”

“Right,” I said. “Noted and filed.”

“Then that’s understood,” Abbott said. He slid further back in the chair, which is deep. “I have known Mrs. Odell twenty years. I suppose you know she is a large stockholder in the Continental Air Network. I know her very well, and I knew him well — her husband. That’s one point. Another point is that I have been president of CAN for nine years, and I’m retiring in a few weeks, and I don’t want to leave in an atmosphere of distrust and doubt and suspicion. Not distrust or suspicion of me, not of anyone in particular, it’s just in the air. It pervades the whole damn place, the whole organization. To leave when it’s like that — it would look like I’m getting out from under.”

He hit the chair arm with a fist. “ This goddam murder has got to be cleared up! You probably wondered why I let you turn those three men loose in my building to go anywhere and see anyone. I did it because the police and the District Attorney were completely stumped, they were getting absolutely nowhere, and I thought you might. One reason I thought you might was that there was a good chance that Mrs. Odell had told you things that she hadn’t told them. But that was a week ago, a week yesterday, and where have you got to?”

“Here.” Wolfe patted his desk blotter. “I’m always here.”

“Hell, I know you are. Do you know who put that bomb in that drawer? Have you even got a good guess?”

“Yes. You did. You thought they were going to choose Mr. Browning, and you favored Mr. Odell.”

“Sure. All you need is proof. As I thought, you have done no better than the police, and you have had ten days. Last evening I discussed the situation with three of my directors, and as a result I phoned this morning to make the appointment. I am prepared to make a proposal with the backing of my Board. I suppose Mrs. Odell has paid you a retainer. If you will withdraw and return her retainer, we will reimburse you for all expenses you have incurred, and we will engage you to investigate the death of Peter Odell on behalf of the corporation, with a retainer in the same amount as Mrs. Odell’s. Or possibly more.”

I had of course been looking at him. Now I looked at Wolfe. Since he was facing Abbott, he was in profile to me, but I had enough of his right eye to see what I call his slow-motion take. The eye closed, but so slow I couldn’t see the motion of the lid. At least twenty seconds. He certainly wasn’t giving Abbott a long wink, so the other eye was collaborating. They stayed shut about another twenty seconds, then opened in one, and he spoke. “It’s obvious, of course. It’s transparent.”

“Transparent? It’s direct.”

“It is indeed. You have concluded that Mr. Odell himself supplied the bomb, intending it for Mr. Browning, and mishandled it. And that Mrs. Odell hired me, not to discover and disclose the truth, but to impede its disclosure and prevent it if possible. You assume that either she is hoodwinking me or she has been candid with me. If the former, you decry my sagacity; if the latter, your proposal invites me to betray a trust. A waste of time, both yours and mine. I would have thought—”

“You’re taking it wrong. It’s not — you’re twisting it. We merely think that if you were acting for the corpor—”

“Nonsense. Don’t persist. I am neither a ninny nor a blackguard. Under a strain you and your colleagues have lost your wits. There is the possibility that you want to pay me to contrive some kind of skulduggery for you, but I doubt if you have misjudged me to that extreme. If you have, don’t bother. Don’t try floundering. Just go.”