wouldn't cost him even a finger if he was lucky.
Wolfe made a tent with his fingers, the tips together,
his elbows on the chair arms. "Indeed," he said. "I have
no use for your arm, but some information might be
helpful. When did you last see Mr. Hazen?"
"I want to know where that gun is. I know she left it
here, she told me so."
"When did she tell you?"
"This afternoon. I was there when she came home."
"What else did she tell you?"
"Not much—there wasn't time. We were inter-
rupted. I knew Hazen had a gun in a drawer in his room,
and I had looked to see if it was there and it wasn't, and
I asked her if she knew where it was. Have the police
got it?"
"No. I'll indulge you further, Mr. Weed. The bullet
The Homicide Trinity 95
that killed Mr. Hazen wasn't fired by that gun. If you
already knew that it's no news for you; if you didn't, it
should relieve—"
"How do you know it wasn't?"
"Enough for you that I do. Now you indulge me.
When did you last see Mr. Hazen?"
"This morning. At the morgue. I went there to iden-
tify him, by request. Alive, I saw him last at his house,
last night."
"At what hour?"
"Around half past nine. Five or ten minutes either
way. The police wanted it more exact, but that's as close
as I can come."
"The circumstances?"
"There were people there for dinner. Do you want
their names?"
"Yes."
"They were clients of Hazen's. Mrs. Victor Oliver, a
widow. Mrs. Henry Lewis Talbot, the wife of the
banker. Ambrose Perdis, the shipping tycoon. Jules
Khoury, the inventor. And Mr. and Mrs. Hazen and me.
Seven. After dinner Hazen told Lucy—his wife—that
we were going to discuss a business matter and she left.
I left soon after that, and that was the last I saw him
alive, there with them."
"How did you spend the next six hours?"
"I walked to the Overseas Press Club—it's a short
walk—and was there until around midnight, and then I
went home and went to bed. And stayed in bed."
"You were associated with Mr. Hazen in his busi-
ness?"
"I was in his employ."
"In what capacity?"
"Mostly I write stuff. Handouts, plugs, the usual
junk. Also I was supposed to use my contacts. I was a
newspaperman when Hazen hired me a little more than
a year ago."
"If they were going to discuss a business matter why
did you leave?"
"I wasn't needed. Or wanted."
"Then why were you there at all?"
96 Rex Stout
Weed put his hands on the chair arms, levered his
fanny up, settled farther back, and took a breath. He
rubbed his chair arms with his palms. "You don't think
Lucy killed him," he said. "Or you wouldn't be working
for her. But even if she didn't she's in one hell of a jam.
If you're half as good as you're supposed to be ... I
don't know. Maybe I ought to give you a different
answer than the one I gave the District Attorney when
he asked why I was there. The right answer. Even if it
makes you think I killed him. I didn't."
"If you did, Mr. Weed, you're doomed in any case, no
matter what answers you give."
"Okay, then here's why I was there. Exclusive for
you. Hazen liked to have me in the same room with his
wife because he knew how I felt about her. God only
knows how he knew, I certainly tried not to show it and
I thought I did pretty well, and I'm sure she doesn't
know, but he did. He was a remarkable man. He had a
sixth sense about people, and maybe a seventh and an
eighth, but he also had blind spots. He actually didn't
know how his wife felt about him, or if he did he was
even more remarkable than I thought."
"Did you know?"
"Of course."
"She told you?"
"My God, no. I doubt if she even told her best friend.
Don't think that the way I feel about her made me
imagine it. I saw her when he touched her, how she
tried to cover up. So that's why I was invited to dinner
last night. I don't think he expected or hoped to see me
squirm, he didn't have to, he knew how I felt. Of course
he was a sadist, but he was a damned subtle one. I was
onto him, in a way, after I had been with him a couple of
months, but I didn't leave because I ... I had met
her."
"And your feeling for her was returned?"
"Certainly not. I was just a guy that worked for her
husband."
"Rather a forlorn situation for you."
"Yeah. That's the right word, forlorn. I told you
The Homicide Trinity 97
because you asked why I was there, and I've got a little
idea how you work, and you're working for her. An-
other thing you might want to know, I think there was
something screwy about his business. I know the
public-relations game is mostly just a high-grade
racket, but even so. Take the four people who
were there last night. Why did Mrs. Victor Oliver, the
sixty-year-old widow of a millionaire broker, pay him
two thousand dollars a month? She needs public rela-
tions like I need a hole in the head. The same for Mrs.
Talbot—twenty-five hundred a month. Maybe her hus-
band, the banker, could use a P.R. expert, granted that
there is one, but why her? Jules Khoury's amounts
vary, sometimes a couple of thousand, sometimes more.
Possibly an inventor likes to stand in well with
the public, though I don't see why, and during the time
I've been there Khoury has got damn little for his
money. Ambrose Perdis is the screwiest of all. For his
business, his shipping corporations, he uses one of the
big P.R. operators, the Codray Associates, but person-
ally he has paid Hazen more than forty thousand dollars
this past year. I'm not supposed to know all this. I got
curious and I got at the records one day."
Wolfe grunted. "A man who hires another man to
forge distinction for him deserves as little as he gets.
Are you suggesting that Mr. Hazen extorted those
sums?"
"I don't know, but he didn't earn them. I admit that
very few P.R. operators do earn what they get. If any."
"Did he have any clients other than those four?"
"Sure, about a dozen. Fifteen altogether, as of yes-
terday. His total take was over a quarter of a million a
year."
Wolfe looked up at the clock. "It will be my dinner
time in five minutes. If my assumption that Mrs. Hazen
didn't kill her husband is correct, and if you didn't, who
did?"
That question gets a helpful answer about once in a
hundred times. It was obvious that Weed had given it
no brain room at all before he rang our doorbell, be-
98 Rex Stout
cause he had either thought that Lucy had done it or
known t
hat he had, so he had no guesses ready. He was
more than willing; the idea appealed to him; but he had
to start from scratch, and five minutes wasn't enough.
He thought that Wolfe should forget about dinner,
though he didn't say so, which was just as well. He said
he would return after dinner, but Wolfe said no, if he
would leave his phone number he would hear from us.
He would have left the bills there on Wolfe's desk if I
hadn't handed them to him.
By the time we had finished dinner and were back in
the office, with coffee, I had no personal worry. If the
bullets had matched we would have heard from Cramer
by then. Wolfe got at the letters to sign, still on his desk,
and as he finished the last one and I took it he spoke.
"Did Mr. Weed shoot him?"
I shook my head. "No comment. I'd have to flip a coin.
He cleared up one point, anyway, about her. You said
that no one wants to kill a man merely because she
despises him. Sure. So what was eating her? Weed.
He says she doesn't know how he feels about her and
the feeling is not returned. Nuts. Either he lies or he's
simple. Of the ten thousand women I have fallen in love
with, every single one of them knew it before I did. As
for Weed shooting him, I am split. It would be tough to
send her a bill for nailing him, but if he didn't you've got
a job. Where do you start? Apparently Hazen was the
kind of specimen—"
The doorbell rang. Could Cramer possibly have held
off so long? No. It would be Weed, to help some more.
No. It was a more familiar figure, a tall thin middle-
aged man in a dark gray overcoat that had been cut to
give him more shoulder, but not overdoing it. Nathaniel
Parker had his clothes made by Stover. When I opened
the door and greeted and admitted him he headed for
the office, keeping his coat on and his homburg in his
hand, and I followed.
He was one of the eight men, not counting me, that
Wolfe shook hands with. He declined Wolfe's invitation
The Homicide Trinity 99
to be seated, saying that he was an hour and a half late
for a dinner appointment. "I stopped in instead of phon-
ing," he said, "because I had to deliver this." He took a
key from his pocket and handed it to me. "That's the
key to Mrs. Hazen's house. Also this." From his inside
pocket he took a folded paper. "That's authority from
her to enter and get something. What you're to get, if
you want to, is an iron box—she said iron but I suppose
it's tin or steel—that is under the bottom drawer of the
chest in Hazen's bedroom. You remove the drawer and
pry up the board that it slides in on, and the box is
underneath. She doesn't know what's in it. One day
about a year ago Hazen lifted the board and showed her
the box, and told her that if he died she was to get the
box, have it opened by a locksmith, and bum the con-
tents without looking at them. I thought you might
want to have a look, and she is willing. You'll be acting
for her, through her attorney."
Wolfe grunted. "I'll use my discretion."
"I know you will. If you don't want to tell me what
was in it you'll say it was empty. I'd like to be present
when it's opened, but I have an appointment. As for
her, what did she tell you this morning?"
"Ask her."
"I did. She wouldn't tell me. She said she would
disclose it only if you told her to. If she is charged with
homicide I'll want to know that or I'll step out. She has
been there more than five hours, and they'll probably
keep her another five. If she is held as a material
witness I can do nothing about bail until morning. I
have an appointment with Hazen's lawyer at nine-
thirty. He has the will. Anything else now?"
Wolfe said no, and he went. I escorted him out, re-
turned to the office, and asked, "Any special instruc-
tions?"
"No. Will the police be there?"
"I shouldn't think so. It's only where he lived, he
wasn't shot there. Do I wear gloves?"
"No. You have her authority."
Ever since a difficulty I got into some years ago I
100 Rex Stout
have made it a practice to have a gun along when I am
on an errand that may interfere with a murderer's
program. I took off my jacket, got a shoulder holster
and a Mariey, which I loaded, from the drawer, put
them where they belonged, put the jacket back on,
checked that Lucy's key was in a pocket and her author-
ity in another one, and went to the hall for my coat and
hat.
Chapter 5
I stood across the street from the Hazen house, on
37th Street between Park and Lexington, for a
look. It was brick, painted gray with green trim,
four stories, narrower than Wolfe's brownstone, with
the entrance three steps down from the sidewalk. I
noted those details just for the record, but they weren't
important. What was important was that there was a
tiny sliver of light at the lower part of the right edge of
one of the three windows on the third floor—a sliver
that you might leave if you weren't quite thorough
enough when you arranged a drape.
I didn't know where Hazen's room was; that could be
it. It could be a Homicide man looking things over, but it
wasn't probable; they had had ten hours. It could be the
maid who slept in, but why, at 9:30 at night? Her room
certainly wasn't third floor front. Whoever it was and
whatever he was doing, I decided not to interrupt him
by ringing. I crossed over, descended the three steps,
used the key, opened the door with care, entered,
closed it with more care, and stood and listened while
my eyes adjusted to the dark. For half a minute there
was no sound from any direction; then there was
something like a bump from up above, followed by a
voice, male, very faint. Unless he was talking to himself
The Homicide Trinity 101
there was more than one. Thinking there might be
occasion for activity, I took off my overcoat and put it
on the floor, and my hat, and then tiptoed along the hall,
feeling my way, found the stairs, and started up.
Halfway up I stopped. Had there been another voice,
a soprano? There had. There was. Then the baritone
again. I went on up, with more care now and slower,
keeping to the end of the steps next the wall. In the hall
on the second floor there was a little light coming from
above, enough to catch outlines. Up the second flight I
went even slower, since each step might bring me
within range. The voices had stopped, but there were
tapping sounds. On the fourth step I could get my eyes
to the level of the floor by stretching. The hall was the
same as the floor below, and the light was coming from
a half-open door at its front end. All I could see inside
was a chair and part of a bed and drapes ove
r a window,
and the back of a woman's head over the back of the
chair, silvery hair under a black pancake hat.
I might have stayed put until the voices came again,
and now I could get words, but a staircase is not a good
tactical position, the light was on them, not me, and at
the top I would be nearly out of range through the
opening. I moved. As I put my weight on the next to last
step the tapping stopped and the baritone came.
"There's no sense in this." I made the landing and
across to the wall. The soprano came. "There certainly
isn't, Mr. Khoury." I started along the wall toward the
door. Another female voice came, pitched lower. "I
don't think it's here. It could be in Lucy's room, that
would be like him." Then another man's voice, a deeper
one. "All right, we'll try it," and the door swung wide
and the man was there, on the move.
I'm not proud of the next two seconds. I was alerted
and he wasn't, and I think I am fairly fast. My excuse is
that I was in the middle of a careful step, putting my toe
down, but anyway he was at me before I was set, and he
damn near toppled me. When you're thrown off balance
by impact you only make it worse if you try to get
purchase on your way down, so I let myself go, brought
102 Rex Stout
my knees up to my chin as I hit the floor, rolled to get
my feet at his middle, and let him have it. He was plenty
heavy, but it tore him loose and sent him bouncing off
Homicide Trinity Page 13
