Рекс Стаут - Please Pass the Guilt

Abbott did not get up and go. He had to take it that he wasn’t going to get what he had come for, but he stuck for another half an hour, trying to find out what we had done or hadn’t done and what we expected to do. He found out exactly nothing, and so did Wolfe.

When I went back to the office after letting Abbott out, Wolfe glared at me and muttered, “Part of his proposal is worth considering. Returning the retainer.”

He considered it for two days and three nights. In the office at noon Sunday, after another two-hour session with us — as I reported six pages back — he told me to call Mrs. Odell and tell her he was quitting and to draw a check to her for the full amount of the retainer; and Saul and Fred and Orrie looked at me and I looked at Wolfe, especially the left corner of his mouth, to see how bad it was.

It was bad all right, it was final, but I did not reach for the phone. “Okay,” I said. “Since I started it, I admit I should be the one to finish it, but not with a phone call. I’d rather finish it the way I started it, face to face with her, and to do it right I should take the check and hand it to her instead of mailing it. No deduction for expenses?”

“No. The full amount. Very well, take it.”

If we had been alone I might have tried discussing it, but with them there it was hopeless. Discussion would have to be with her, and then with him maybe. I went and got the checkbook from the safe, filled out the stub, tore the check out, and swung the typewriter around. I type all checks. That was the first one I had ever drawn for an even hundred grand, and with all the 0’s it was a nice round figure. I took it to Wolfe and he signed it and handed it back. As I took it, Saul said, “I’ve asked so many people so many questions the last ten days, it’s a habit, and I’d like to ask one more. How much is it?”

Even from Saul that was a mouthful, and my eyes opened at him. But Wolfe merely said, “Show it to him. Them.”

I did so, and their eyes opened, and Saul said, “For her that’s petty cash, she’s really loaded. Sometimes you ask us for suggestions, and I’d like to make one. Or just another question. Instead of returning it to her, why not offer it to someone who needs it? A two-column ad in the Times and the Gazette with a heading like COULD YOU USE A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS? Then, ‘I’ll pay that amount in cash to the person who gives me information that will satisfactorily identify the person responsible for the death of Peter Odell by the explosion of a bomb on May twentieth.’ Your name at the bottom. Of course the wording would—”

Wolfe’s “No” stopped him. He repeated it. “No. I will not make a public appeal for someone to do my job for me.”

“You have,” Saul said. “You have advertised for help twice that I know of.”

“For an answer to a particular question. Specific knowledge on a specified point. Not a frantic squawk to be pulled out of a mudhole. No.”

So when they left a few minutes later, they weren’t expected back. By noon Monday Fred and Orrie would be on chores for Bascom or some other outfit, and Saul too if he felt like it.

As for me, my chore wouldn’t wait — or I didn’t want it to. As someone said, probably Shakespeare, “’twere better done,” and so forth. Of course a person such as a Mrs. Peter Odell would ordinarily not be in town on a June Sunday, but she would be. She was ignoring weekends, and from a phone call by her Saturday morning she knew there would be a Sunday conference. So I rang her and asked if I could come at five o’clock, because earlier she would probably have the television on and I didn’t want to share her attention with Cleon Jones at bat or Tom Seaver on the mound.

Wolfe had gone to the kitchen. For Sunday lunch with Fritz away he usually does something simple like eggs au beurre noir and a beet and watercress salad, but that time it was going to be larded shad roe casserole with anchovy butter and parsley and chervil and shallots and marjoram and black pepper and cream and bay leaf and onion and butter. It would take a lot of tasting, and he can taste. I went to the kitchen to tell him Mrs. Odell would see me at five o’clock, and he nodded, and I mounted the two flights to my room.

That was a busy four hours; shaving and changing from the skin out, going down for my third of the shad roe, which we ate in the kitchen, looking at the telecast from Montreal — where the Mets were playing the Expos — on the color set, which, like everything else in my room, was bought and paid for by me, and writing. Not on the typewriter, because when I’m being particular, I do better longhand, and that had to be done right. When I went downstairs a little before four-thirty, the third draft was in my pocket, with the check. Wolfe was up in the plant rooms and I buzzed him on the house phone to tell him I was leaving.

Since parking shouldn’t be a problem Sunday afternoon, I went to the garage for the Heron, crossed town on Thirty-fourth, and turned uptown on Park. Driving in midtown Manhattan can still be a pleasure — from two to eight A.M. and a couple of hours on Sunday. There was actually a gap at the curb on Sixty-third Street between Fifth and Madison. The LPS man at the entrance to the stone mansion was not the same one, and this one had better manners; he said thank you when he returned my card case. Inside I was ushered to the elevator by the same woman in a neat gray uniform and was told to push the button with a 4. In the upper hall, the client’s voice came through the open door to the big room, “In here!”

She was on the oversized couch, one leg on it straight and the other one dangling over the edge, with sections of the Sunday Times scattered around. The television was not on — but of course the game was over. As I crossed to her she said, “You’d better have something. You certainly don’t on the telephone.”

“We got careless once when our phone was tapped and we’re leery. I don’t suppose it’s tapped now, but once was enough. Yes, I have something.” I got the check from my pocket. “I thought I should bring it instead of mailing it.”

She took it, frowned at it, frowned at me, again at the check, and back at me. “What’s the idea?”

“Mr. Wolfe is bowing out. Quite a bow, since he has spent more than three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars in twelve days and we haven’t got a smell. One reason I’m bringing it instead of mailing it, I wanted to tell you that that’s all there is to it, he’s simply pulling out. He thinks it shows strength of character to admit he’s licked. I can’t see it and don’t intend to, but I’m not a genius.”

She surprised me. Up to that moment she had given me no reason to suppose that the arrangements inside her skull were any better than average, but she had reached a conclusion before I finished. Her eyes showed it, and she said it, with a question: “How much did Browning pay him?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, and turned a chair to face her, and sat. “You would, naturally. If I talked for five hours, giving cases, I might be able to convince you that he couldn’t possibly double-cross a client, on account of his opinion of himself, but I think there’s a shorter way. I’ve told you on the phone about the three men we have called in to help. They were there this morning when he said it was hopeless and he was quitting. When he told me to draw a check to return the retainer, Saul Panzer suggested that instead of returning it, he might put an ad in the Times saying that he would pay it to anyone who would give him information that would identify the murderer, and Mr. Wolfe said no, he would not make a frantic squawk to be pulled out of a mudhole. That was—”