Rex Stout - The Gun with Wings

“It’s a pack of lies,” she said indignantly.

“It sure is,” I agreed. “I have good ears, so keep your voice down. Mr. Wolfe is perfectly willing to give you a break, and anyhow it would be a job to get you to sign it if it told the truth. We are quite aware that the studio door was locked and you opened it with your key. Also that — no, listen to me a minute — also that you purposely picked up the gun and put it on the bust because you thought Mrs. Mion had killed him and left the gun there so it would look like suicide, and you wanted to mess it up for her. You couldn’t—”

“Where were you?” she demanded scornfully. “Hiding behind the couch?”

“Nuts. If you didn’t have a key why did you break a date to see me because of what I said on the phone? As for the gun, you couldn’t have been dumber if you’d worked at it for a year. Who would believe anyone had shot him so it would look like suicide and then been fool enough to put the gun on the bust? Too dumb to believe, honest, but you did it.”

She was too busy with her brain to resent being called dumb. Her frown creased her smooth pale forehead and took the glisten from her eyes. “Anyway,” she protested, “what this says not only isn’t true, it’s impossible! They found the gun on the floor by his body, so this couldn’t possibly be true!”

“Yeah.” I grinned at her. “It must have been a shock when you read that in the paper. Since you had personally moved the gun to the bust, how come they found it on the floor? Obviously someone had moved it back. I suppose you decided that Mrs. Mion had done that too, and it must have been hard to keep your mouth shut, but you had to. Now it’s different. Mr. Wolfe knows who put the gun back on the floor and he can prove it. What’s more, he knows Mion was murdered and he can prove that too. All that stops him is the detail of explaining how the gun got from the floor to the bust.” I got out my fountain pen. “Put your name to that, and I’ll witness it, and we’re all set.”

“You mean sign this thing?” She was contemptuous. “I’m not that dumb.”

I caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for refills, and then, to keep her company, emptied my glass.

I met her gaze, matching her frown. “Lookit, Blue Eyes,” I told her reasonably. “I’m not sticking needles under your nails. I’m not saying we can prove you entered the studio — whether with your key or because the door wasn’t locked doesn’t matter — and moved the gun. We know you did, since no one else could have and you were there at the right time, but I admit we can’t prove it. However, I’m offering you a wonderful bargain.”

I pointed the pen at her. “Just listen. All we want this statement for is to keep it in reserve, in case the person who put the gun back on the floor is fool enough to blab it, which is very unlikely. He would only be—”

“You say he?” she demanded.

“Make it he or she. As Mr. Wolfe says, the language could use another pronoun. He would only be making trouble for himself. If he doesn’t spill it, and he won’t, your statement won’t be used at all, but we’ve got to have it in the safe in case he does. Another thing, if we have this statement we won’t feel obliged to pass it along to the cops about your having had a key to the studio door. We wouldn’t be interested in keys. Still another, you’ll be saving your father a big chunk of dough. If you sign this statement we can clear up the matter of Mion’s death, and if we do that I guarantee Mrs. Mion will be in no frame of mind to push any claim against your father. She will be too busy with a certain matter.”

I proffered the pen. “Go ahead and sign it.”

She shook her head, but not with much energy because her brain was working again. Fully appreciating the fact that her thinking was not on the tournament level, I was patient. Then the refills came and there was a recess, since she couldn’t be expected to think and drink all at once. But finally she fought her way through to the point I had aimed at.

“So you know,” she declared with satisfaction.

“We know enough,” I said darkly.

“You know she killed him. You know she put the gun back on the floor. I knew that too, I knew she must have. And now you can prove it? If I sign this you can prove it?”

Of course I could have covered it with doubletalk, but I thought, What the hell. “We certainly can,” I assured her. “With this statement we’re ready to go. It’s the missing link. Here’s the pen.”

She lifted her glass, drained it, put it down, and damned if she didn’t shake her head again, this time with energy. “No,” she said flatly, “I won’t.” She extended a hand with the document in it. “I admit it’s all true, and when you get her on trial if she says she put the gun back on the floor I’ll come and swear to it that I put it on the bust, but I won’t sign anything because once I signed something about an accident and my father made me promise that I would never sign anything again without showing it to him first. I could take it and show it to him and then sign it, and you could come for it tonight or tomorrow.” She frowned. “Except that he knows I had a key, but I could explain that.”

But she no longer had the document. I had reached and taken it. You are welcome to think I should have changed holds on her and gone on fighting, but you weren’t there seeing and hearing her, and I was. I gave up. I got out my pocket notebook, tore out a page, and began writing on it.

“I could use another drink,” she stated.

“In a minute,” I mumbled, and went on writing, as follows:

To Nero Wolfe:

I hereby declare that Archie Goodwin has tried his best to persuade me to sign the statement you wrote, and explained its purpose to me, and I have told him why I must refuse to sign it.

“There,” I said, handing it to her. “That won’t be signing something; it’s just stating that you refuse to sign something. The reason I’ve got to have it, Mr. Wolfe knows how beautiful girls appeal to me, especially sophisticated girls like you, and if I take that thing back to him unsigned he’ll think I didn’t even try. He might even fire me. Just write your name there at the bottom.”

She read it over again and took the pen. She smiled at me, glistening. “You’re not kidding me any,” she said, not unfriendly. “I know when I appeal to a man. You think I’m cold and calculating.”

“Yeah?” I made it a little bitter, but not too bitter. “Anyhow it’s not the point whether you appeal to me, but what Mr. Wolfe will think. It’ll help a lot to have that. Much obliged.” I took the paper from her and blew on her signature to dry it.

“I know when I appeal to a man,” she stated.

There wasn’t another thing there I wanted, but I had practically promised to buy her another drink, so I did so.

It was after six when I got back to West Thirty-fifth Street, so Wolfe had finished in the plant rooms and was down in the office. I marched in and put the unsigned statement on his desk in front of him.

He grunted. “Well?”

I sat down and told him exactly how it had gone, up to the point where she had offered to take the document home and show it to her father.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but some of her outstanding qualities didn’t show much in that crowd the other evening. I give this not as an excuse but merely a fact. Her mental operations could easily be carried on inside a hollowed-out pea. Knowing what you think of unsupported statements, and wanting to convince you of the truth of that one. I got evidence to back it up. Here’s a paper she did sign.”

I handed him the page I had torn from my notebook. He took a look at it and then cocked an eye at me.