Rex Stout - Homicide Trinity (Crime Line)

There was a combination of sounds from the speaker:

a kind of cry or squeal, presumably from Mrs. Sorell, a sort of scrape or flutter, and what might have been a grunt from Wolfe. I dived for the connecting door and went with it as I swung it open, and kept going, but two paces short ofWolfe's desk I halted to take in a sight I had never seen before and never expect to see again:

Nero Wolfe with his arms tight around a beautiful young woman in his lap, pinning her arms, hugging her close to him. I stood paralyzed.

"Archie!" he roared. "Confound it, get her!"

I obeyed.

Chapter 9

I would like to be able to report that Wolfe got somewhere with his effort to minimize the damage to the firm, but I have to be candid and accurate. He tried but there wasn't much he could do, since Heydecker was the chief witness for the prosecution at the trial and was cross-examined for six hours. Of course that finished him professionally. Wolfe had bet- ter luck with another effort; the DA finally conceded that I was competent to identify Exhibit C, a brown silk necktie with little yellow curlicues, and Wolfe wasn't

68 Rex Stout

called. Evidently the jury agreed with him, since it only took them five hours to bring in a verdict of guilty.

At that, the firm is still doing business at the old stand, and Lament Otis still comes to the office five days a week, and I hear that since Gregory Jett's mar- riage to Ann Paige he has quit being careless about the balance between income and outgo. I don't know if his eleven-percent cut has been boosted. That's a confiden- tial matter.

DEATH OF A DEMON

Chapter 1

The red leather chair was four feet away from the end of Nero Wolfe's desk, so when she got the gun from her handbag she had to get up and take a step to put it on the desk. Then she returned to the chair, closed the bag, and told Wolfe, "That's the gun I'm not going to shoot my husband with."

Sitting facing her with my back to my desk, which was at right angles to Wolfe's, I raised my brows. I hadn't expected her to put on an act. When she had phoned the previous afternoon to ask for an appoint- ment she had of course sounded a little jumpy, as most people do when they call the office of a private detec- tive, but she had been quite matter-of-fact in giving the details. Her name was Lucy Hazen, Mrs. Barry Hazen. She gave her address, on East 37th Street between Park and Lexington. All she wanted was thirty minutes with Nero Wolfe, to tell him something confidential. She didn't want him to do anything, not even give her advice; she merely wanted to tell him something; and she would pay one hundred dollars for the half-hour. She could and would pay more if she had to, but she hoped the hundred would be enough. In November or December, when Wolfe's income has reached a point where out of a hundred received he can keep only twenty bucks, he will make an appointment only for someone or something very special, but this was January, no big fee was in prospect, and even a measly C would help in the upkeep of his old brown- stone on West 35th Street, including staff, particularly since he wouldn't have to work for it. So it was set for 11:30 the following morning, Tuesday.

When the doorbell rang at 11:30 on the dot and I went to let her in, she gave me a smile and said, "Thank you for getting him to see me." Handshakes can be faked and usually are, but smiles can't. It isn't often that a man gets a natural, friendly, straightforward smile from a young woman who has never seen him before, with no come-on, no catch, and no dare, and the least he can do is return it if he has that kind in stock. As I took her to the office and helped her off with her coat, which was mink, I was thinking that you never know, even the good-looking wife of a well-known public relations op- erator like Barry Hazen could have her feelings on straight. I was pleased to meet her.

So I was disappointed when she put on an act. It is not natural for a woman to open a conversation with a stranger by taking a revolver from her bag and saying that's the gun she isn't going to shoot her husband with. I must have been wrong about the smile, and since I don't like to be wrong I was no longer pleased to meet her. I raised my brows and tightened my lips.

Wolfe, in his oversized chair behind his desk, darted a glance at the gun, returned his eyes to her, and grunted. "I am not impressed," he said, "by histrion- ics."

"Oh," she said, "I'm not trying to impress you, I'm only telling you. That's what I came for, just to tell you. I thought it would be more-more definite, I guess-if I brought the gun and showed it to you."

"Very well, you have done so." Wolfe was frowning. "I understand that you intend to ask me for no service or advice; you wish only to tell me something in confi-

dence. I should remind you that I am not a lawyer or a priest; a communication from you to me will not be privileged. If you tell me about a crime I can't engage not to disclose it. I mean a serious crime, not some petty offense such as carrying a deadly weapon for which you have no permit."

"I hadn't thought of that, carrying a weapon." She dismissed it with a little gesture. "That's all right. There hasn't been any crime and there isn't going to be, that's just the point. That's what I came to tell you, that I'm not going to shoot my husband."

Wolfe's eyes were narrowed at her. He is convinced that all women are dotty or devious, or both, and here was more evidence to support it. "Just that?" he de- manded. "You wanted half an hour."

She nodded. She set her teeth on her lip, nice white teeth, and in a moment released it. "Because I thought it would be better if I told you something about… why. If you will regard it as confidential."

"With the reservation I have made."

"Of course. You know who my husband is? Barry Hazen, Public Relations?"

"Mr. Goodwin has informed me."

"We were married two years ago. I was the secretary of a client of his, Jules Khoury, the inventor. My father, Titus Postel, was also an inventor, and he was associ- ated with Mr. Khoury until his death five years ago. That's where I met Barry, at Mr. Khoury's office. I thought I really was in love with him. I have tried and tried to decide what was the real reason why I married him, I mean the real one, whether it was only because I wanted to have-"

She stopped and put her teeth on her lip. She shook her head, with energy, as if to chase a fly. "There you are," she said. "I mean there I am. You don't need to know all that. I'm blubbering, fishing for pity. You don't even need to know why I want to kill him."

Wolfe muttered, "It's your half-hour, madam."

"I don't hate him." She shook her head again. "I think I despise him-I know I do-and he won't let me get a divorce. I tried to leave him, I did leave him, but he made such a- There I go again! I don't need to tell you all that!"

"As you please."

"It's not as I please, Mr. Wolfe, it's as I must!"

"As you must, then."

"This is what I must tell you. He has a gun in a drawer in his bedroom. That's it there on your desk. We have separate bedrooms. You know how there can be something in your mind but you don't know it's there until all of a sudden there it is?"

"Certainly. The subconscious is not a grave; it's a cistern."