Rex Stout - A Right to Die

"I haven't said so and I'm not going to." He was blinking again. If his eyelashes had been wings he would have been around the world by now. He asked, "What are you going to do?"

I looked at my watch: 10:43. "Nothing, for seventeen minutes. Mr. Wolfe comes down from the plant rooms at eleven. I would advise- Oh, a question. Did you tell her you were going to spill it?"

"No. It would have been… tough. She would have tried to talk me out of it."

"Are you going to tell her you have spilled it?"

"No."

"Good. Don't. I advise you to flop. Now that it's off your chest you can probably do twelve hours. We have an extra room with a good bed. In your condition you might get run over crossing the street."

He shook his head. "I'm going home. God, the sound of that, going home!" He got to his feet and put a hand on the chair back for help. "I don't want Wolfe to see me. I couldn't take him right now. Can't you tell me what you're going to do?"

"I have no idea. Mr. Wolfe is the cook, I only wait on table. As for your lying to the police, forget it. They expect it. If nobody ever lied to them, most of them would have been out of jobs long ago." I rose. "If it has to be that you hear from them, you'll hear from me first." I touched his arm. "Come along. Get home in one piece if possible."

The guy was just about out on his feet. After I got his coat on him, and his hat, and opened the door, I wanted to convoy him down the stoop, but if he couldn't manage that he would never make it home, so I stood out in the raw March wind and watched him to Tenth Avenue, where he would sooner or later get a taxi headed uptown. Of course the trouble was the let up after getting rid of a ten-ton load.

Even after he had reached the corner I stayed on the stoop, for the air, while I asked myself if I should have kept him for more digging. For instance, granting that Dolly had killed her, had it been planned or offhand? I might have asked him if Dolly was good at mimicking, and if he had ever heard her imitate Susan's voice, perhaps to him on the phone. Wolfe would have. I might have asked him what Dolly had said when she came back, tried to get her exact words. If she had just committed a murder, smashed her sister-in-law's skull with a club, almost certainly her tongue had made some little slip, and probably more than one. I had collected four or five might-haves when a bellow came from inside.

"What are you doing out there?"

I bellowed back, "Breathing!" went in, shut the door, and followed him to the office. It was useless to try to start conversation until he had put a spray of Phalaenopsis Aphrodite in the vase and glanced through the mail. It's some kind of compulsion. I suspect that he always hopes to find a letter from a collector in Honduras or somewhere, saying that he has found a clear solid blue orchid and is sending it to Wolfe by air, no charge, to show his appreciation for something or other.

It wasn't there that morning. I open the mail. He put it aside and turned to me. "Mr. Magnus?"

"He'll be here this afternoon. Miss Kallman had it all arranged when she phoned while I was at breakfast, very much on the job, which may mean something and may not. But something more interesting; I know where Dolly Brooke went in her car that evening."

"You do."

"Yes, sir. Peter Vaughn came and we talked nearly an hour. He just left. I don't think you need it verbatim, so I'll just tell it."

I did so. Not word for word, but I covered all the points. After the first few sentences he leaned back with his chin down and closed his eyes, as he always does when all he needs is his ears. When I finished, explaining that I had let him go because I was human, as he had said, he held it for another minute and then opened his eyes.

He grunted. "You are not more human than I am. You are merely more susceptible, more sociable, and more vulnerable."

"Just words. Shall we settle it now?"

"No. We have something more urgent to settle. Is it possible that Mr. Vaughn's account is gammon?"

"Not a chance. He's wide open. I wouldn't even name odds."

"Did that woman kill her?"

"I pass. Again no odds, for a different reason. I may understand women better than Vaughn does, I hope I do, but I pass as it stands now. The only visible motive is a little limp. If she did it to keep scandal from the family name, what about this scandal? Pass."

He straightened up. "Whether she did or not, we could have Mr. Whipple released from custody today. Tomorrow at the latest."

"Sure. If she sticks to the line she gave Vaughn, and she had better. She'll have to. As I told Vaughn, it's obvious that Susan wasn't in there alive when Whipple arrived. Shall I get Cramer? I promised Vaughn nothing."

He made a face. "I don't like it."

"You wouldn't. You're on record that the only way to clear Whipple is to produce the murderer, and she may not be it. We have found an out for him, but we can't be sure he would stay out. She might change the script and say she didn't enter the building, and we can't prove she did. I don't like it either."

"You just said she would have to stick to the line she gave Vaughn."

"I'm more vulnerable than you are. I talk too fast. As soon as I said it I realized it wasn't true."

He growled. "Confound it." He made fists and rested them on the edge of his desk. He looked at the left one, saw nothing helpful, looked at the right one, saw no better, and looked at me. "When can you get her here?"

"Oh, thirty minutes or thirty hours. When do you want her?"

"I don't know."

"Tell me when you do. Of course I'll have to pry her loose, and I only have one pry. On the way she'll have plenty of time to decide what line to take."

He scowled at me. I scowled back, but his face gives him the advantage. Finding that that wasn't getting us anywhere, he leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips started working. They pushed out, then drew in, and kept at it-out and in, out and in… Man at work, or possibly genius at work. I never interrupt the lip act because I can't; he's not there. It may last anywhere from half a minute to half an hour; I always time it, since there's nothing else to do. That time it was four minutes. He opened his eyes and asked, "Can Saul be here at two o'clock?"

"Yes. I rang him before breakfast. He had a chore for this morning, but he'll be free around noon and will call."

"Tell him two o'clock. Get Mr. Whipple."

Everything pertaining to a current operation is kept in a locked drawer, and I had to use a key to get the extension number at the university. Then there was a wait because he was in another room. When I had him, Wolfe got on. Naturally Whipple had questions about last night's meeting, and Wolfe tolerated him as much as he would a client who was going to get a fat bill. Not more. He stopped him by saying he hadn't called to report.

"I report only when there has been progress. I called because I need your help. I need two Negroes, and I assume you have Negro friends. Two men neither too young nor too old, preferably between thirty and fifty. Not too light, the blacker the better. Not elegant in appearance; that's essential. Rather roughly dressed if possible. Average intelligence will do, or even below average; no acumen or skill is necessary. I need them here by two o'clock, or two-thirty at the latest. I don't know how long they'll have to stay, but I think not more than two hours, perhaps less. They will be asked to do nothing reprehensible or hazardous; they will take no risk of any kind. Can you supply them?"