Rex Stout - Homicide Trinity (Crime Line)

"Last Monday, a week ago today. In the evening. They were together in a booth in a cheap restaurant- more of a lunchroom. The kind of place she would never go to, never. She would never go to that part of town. Neither would I, ordinarily, but I was on a personal errand and I went in there to use the phone. They didn't see me."

"Then one of the members of the firm is a woman?"

Her eyes widened. "Oh. I said 'she.' I meant the opposing client. We have a woman lawyer as one of the associates, just an employee really, but no woman firm member." She laced her fingers. "It couldn't possibly have been accidental. But of course it was conceivable, just barely conceivable, that he wasn't a traitor, that there was some explanation, and that made it even harder for me to decide what to do. But now I know. After worrying about it for a whole week I couldn't stand it any longer, and this afternoon I decided the only thing I could do was tell him and see what he said. If he had a good explanation, all right. But he didn't. The way he took it, the way it hit him, there isn't any question about it. He's a traitor."

"What did he say?"

"It wasn't so much what he said as how he looked. He said he had a satisfactory explanation, that he was acting in the interest of our client, but that he couldn't tell me more than that until the matter had developed further. Certainly within a week, he said, and possibly tomorrow. So I knew I had to do something, and I was afraid to go to Mr. Otis because his heart has been worse lately, and I wouldn't go to another firm member. I even thought of going to the opposing counsel, but of course that wouldn't do. Then I thought of Nero Wolfe, and I put on my hat and coat and came. Now it's urgent. You can see it's urgent?"

I nodded. "It could be. Depending on the kind of case involved. Mr. Wolfe might agree to take the job before you name the alleged traitor, but he would have to know first what the case is about-your firm's case. There are some lands he won't touch, even indirectly. What is it?"

"I don't want…" She let it hang. "Does he have to know that?"

"Certainly. Anyhow, you've told me the name of your firm and it's a big important case and the opposing client is a woman, and with that I could-but I don't have to. I read the papers. Is your client Morton Sorell?"

"Yes."

"And the opposing client is Rita Sorell, his wife?"

"Yes."

I glanced at my wrist watch and saw 5:39, left my chair, told her, "Cross your fingers and sit tight," and headed for the hall and the stairs. Two new factors had entered and now dominated the situation: that if our first bank deposit of the new year came from the Sorell pile it would not be hay; and that one of the kind of jobs Wolfe wouldn't touch, even indirectly, was divorce stuff. It would take some doing, and as I mounted the three flights to the roof of the old brownstone my brain was going faster than my feet. In the vestibule of the plant rooms I paused, not for breath but to plan the approach, decided that was no good because it would depend on his mood, and entered. You might think it impossible to go down the aisles between the benches of those three rooms-cool, tropical, and intermediate- without noticing the flashes and banks of color, but that day I did, and then was in the potting room.

Wolfe was over at the side bench peering at a pseudo- bulb through a magnifying glass. Theodore Horstmann, the fourth member of the household, who was exactly half Wolfe's weight, 137 to 270, was opening a bag of osmundine. I crossed over and told Wolfe's back, "Ex- cuse me for interrupting, but I have a problem."

He took ten seconds to decide he had heard me, then

removed the glass from his eye and demanded, "What time is it?"

"Nineteen minutes to six."

"It can wait nineteen minutes."

"I know, but there's a snag. If you came down and found her there in the office with no warning it would be hopeless."

"Find whom?"

"A woman named Bertha Aaron. She came unin- vited. She's in a hole, and it's a new kind of hole. I came up to describe it to you so you can decide whether I go down and shoo her out or you come down and give it a look."

"You have interrupted me. You have violated our understanding."

"I know it, but I said excuse me, and since you're already interrupted I might as well tell you. She is the private secretary of LamontOtis, senior partner…"

I told him, and at least he didn't go back to the pseudo-bulb with the glass. At one point there was even a gleam in his eye. He has made the claim, to me, that the one and only thing that impels him to work is his desire to live in what he calls acceptable circum- stances in the old brownstone on West 35th Street, Manhattan, which he owns, with Fritz as chef and Theodore as orchid tender and me as goat (not his word), but the gleam in his eye was not at the prospect of a big fee, because I hadn't yet mentioned the name Sorell. The gleam was when he saw that, as I had said, it was a new kind of hole. We had never looked into one just like it.

Then came the ticklish part. "By the way," I said, "there's one little detail you may not like, but it's only a side issue. In the case in question her firm's client is Morton Sorell. You know."

"Of course."

"And the opposing client she saw a member of the firm with is Mrs. Morton Sorell. You may remember that you made a comment about her a few weeks ago after you had read the morning paper. What the paper said was that she was suing him for thirty thousand a month for a separation allowance, but the talk around town is that he wants a divorce and her asking price is a flat thirty million bucks, and that's probably what Miss Aaron calls the case. However, that's only a detail. What Miss Aaron wants is merely-"

"No." He was scowling at me. "So that's why you pranced in here."

"I didn't prance. I walked."

"You knew quite well I would have nothing to do with it."

"I knew you wouldn't get divorce evidence, and nei- ther would I. I knew you wouldn't work for a wife against a husband or vice versa, but what has that got to do with this? You wouldn't have to touch-"

"No! I will not. That marital squabble might be the central point of the matter. I will not! Send her away."

I had flubbed it. Or maybe I hadn't; maybe it had been hopeless no matter how I handled it; but then it had been a flub to try, so in any case I had flubbed it. I don't like to flub, and it wouldn't make it any worse to try to talk him out of it, or rather into it, so I did, for a good ten minutes, but it neither changed the situation nor improved the atmosphere. He ended it by saying that he would go to his room to put on a necktie, and I would please ring him there on the house phone to tell him that she had gone.

Going down the three flights I was tempted. I could ring him not to say that she was gone but that we were going; that I was taking a leave of absence to haul her out of the hole. It wasn't a new temptation; I had had it before; and I had to admit that on other occasions it had been more attractive. To begin with, if I made the offer she might decline it, and I had done enough flubbing for one day. So as I crossed the hall to the office I was arranging my face so she would know the answer as soon as she looked at me. Then as I entered I rear- ranged it, or it rearranged itself, and I stopped and stood. Two objects were there on the rug which had been elsewhere when I left: a big hunk of jade which