Rex Stout - The Second Confession

That got a reaction from practically everybody. The loudest, from Purley Stebbins, reached me through the others from twenty feet off. “Jesus! Can you beat him?”

Wolfe sat and let them react. In a moment he put up a hand.

“That’s a felony, I know, Mr. Archer. You can decide what to do about it at your leisure, when it’s all over. Your decision may be influenced by the fact that if it hadn’t been committed the killer of Mr. Rony wouldn’t have been caught.”

He took in the audience, now quiet again. “All they took from him was the money in his wallet. That was necessary in order to validate it as a holdup — and by the way, the money has been spent in my investigation of his death, which I think he would regard as fitting. But Mr. Goodwin did something else. He found on Mr. Rony the object he had been guarding, and took some photographs of it, not taking the object itself. It was a membership card, in the name of William Reynolds, in the American Communist party.”

“Then I was right!” Sperling was so excited and triumphant that he yelled it. “I was right all the time!” He glared indignantly, sputtering. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t—”

“You were as wrong,” Wolfe said rudely, “as a man can get. You may be a good businessman, Mr. Sperling, but you had better leave the exposure of disguised Communists to competent persons. It’s a task for which you are disqualified by mental astigmatism.”

“But,” Sperling insisted, “you admit he had a membership card—”

“I don’t admit it, I announce it. But it would have been witless to assume that William Reynolds was necessarily Louis Rony. In fact, I had knowledge of Rony that made it unlikely. Anyway, we have the testimony of three persons that the card was in his possession — you’ll find that a help in the courtroom, Mr. Archer. So at the time the identity of William Reynolds — whether it was Mr. Rony or another person — was an open question.”

Wolfe turned a hand up. “But twenty-four hours later it was no longer open. Whoever William Reynolds was, almost certainly he wasn’t Louis Rony. Not only that, it was a workable assumption that he had murdered Rony, since it was better than a conjecture that he had dragged the body behind a bush in order to search it, had found the membership card, and had taken it. I made that assumption, tentatively. Then the next day, Tuesday, I was carried a step further by the news that it was my car that had killed Rony. So if William Reynolds had murdered Rony and taken the card, he was one of the people there present. One of those now in this room.”

A murmur went around, but only a murmur.

“You’ve skipped something,” Ben Dykes protested. “Why did it have to be Reynolds who murdered and took the card?”

“It didn’t,” Wolfe admitted. “These were assumptions, not conclusions. But they were a whole; if one was good, all were: if one was not, none. If the murderer had killed and searched the body to get that card, surely it was to prevent the disclosure that he had joined the Communist party under the name of William Reynolds, a disclosure threatened by Rony — who was by no means above such threats. That’s where I stood Tuesday noon. But I was under an obligation to my client, Mr. Sperling, which would be ill met if I gave all this to the police — at least without trying my own hand at it first. That was what I had decided to do” — Wolfe’s eyes went straight at Sperling — “when you jumped in with that confounded statement you had coerced Mr. Kane to sign. And satisfied Mr. Archer, and fired me.”

His eyes darted at Kane. “I wanted you here for this, to repudiate that statement. Will you? Now?”

“Don’t be a fool, Web,” Sperling snapped. And to Wolfe, “I didn’t coerce him!”

Poor Kane, not knowing what to say, said nothing. In spite of all the trouble he had caused us, I nearly felt sorry for him.

Wolfe shrugged. “So I came home. I had to get my assumptions either established or discredited. It was possible that Mr. Rony had not had the membership card on his person when he was killed. On Wednesday Mr. Goodwin went to his apartment and made a thorough search — not breaking and entering, Mr. Stebbins.”

“You say,” Purley muttered.

“He had a key,” Wolfe asserted, which was quite true. “The card wasn’t there; if it had been, Mr. Goodwin would have found it. But he did find evidence, no matter how or what, that Mr. Rony had had in his possession one or more objects, probably a paper or papers, which he had used as a tool of coercion on one or more persons here present. It doesn’t matter what his demands were, but in passing let me say that I doubt that they were for money; I think what he required, and was getting, was support for his courtship of the younger Miss Sperling — or at least neutrality. Another—”

“What was the evidence?” Archer demanded.

Wolfe shook his head. “You may not need it; if you do, you may have it when the time comes. Another assumption, that Mr. Rony was not upright when the car hit him, also got confirmed. Although the car had not struck his head, there was a severe bruise above his right ear; a doctor hired by me saw it, and it is recorded on the official report. That helped to acquit the murderer of so slapdash a method as trying to kill a lively and vigorous young man by hitting him with a car. Obviously it would have been more workmanlike to ambush him as he walked up the drive, knock him out, and then run the car over him. If that—”

“You can’t ambush a man,” Ben Dykes objected, “unless you know he’ll be there to ambush.”

“No,” agreed Wolfe, “nor can you expect me ever to finish if you take no probabilities along with facts. Besides the private telephone lines in Mr. Sperling’s library there are twelve extensions in that house, and Miss Sperling’s talk with Mr. Rony, arranging for his arrival at a certain hour for a rendezvous on the grounds, could have been listened to by anyone. William Reynolds could certainly have heard it; let him prove he didn’t. Anyhow, the ambush itself is no longer a mere probability. By a brilliant stroke of Mr. Goodwin’s, it was established as a fact. On Thursday he searched the grounds for the instrument used for laying Mr. Rony out, and he found it, in the presence of a witness.”

“He didn’t!” It was Madeline’s voice from behind me. “I was with him every minute and he didn’t find anything!”

“But he did,” Wolfe said dryly. “On his way out he stopped at the brook and found a stone. The question of the witness, and of the evidence that the stone had been in contact with a man’s head, can wait, but I assure you there’s no doubt about it. Even if the witness prefers to risk perjury we’ll manage quite well without her.”

His eyes made an arc to take them in. “For while such details as the head bruise and the stone will be most helpful and Mr. Archer will be glad to have them, what clinches the matter is a detail of a different sort. I have hinted at it before and I now declare it: William Reynolds, the owner of that card, the Communist, is in this room. You won’t mind, I hope, if I don’t tell you how I learned it, so long as I tell you how I can prove it, but before I do so I would like if possible to get rid of a serious embarrassment. Mr. Kane. You’re an intelligent man and you see my predicament. If the man who murdered Mr. Rony is charged and put on trial, and if that statement you signed is put in evidence by the defense, and you refuse to repudiate it, there can be no conviction. I appeal to you: do you want to furnish that shield to a Communist and a murderer? No matter who he is. If you are reluctant to credit my assertion that he is a Communist, consider that unless that can be proven to the satisfaction of a judge and jury he will not be in jeopardy, for that is essential to the case against him. But as long as your statement stands it would be foolhardy even to arrest him; Mr. Archer wouldn’t dare to move for an indictment.”