by Rex Stout
“I think they will,” Wolfe persisted. “One will, I know. And open publication might be better than the sort of talk that would get around when once it’s started. You know how rumours get distorted; fools would even say that it wasn’t necessary to add anything to Starlite to poison Mr Orchard. Really, the blackmail potential of this is very high. And what do you have to do to stop it?
Something hideous and insupportable? Not at all. Merely tell me why you suddenly decided to scoot.” Anderson looked at Owen, but Owen was gazing fixedly at Wolfe as at the embodiment of evil.
“It will be useless,” Wolfe said, “to try any dodge. I’m ready for you. I spent all day yesterday on this, and I doubt very much if I’ll accept anything except what I have already specified: that someone or something had persuaded you that Miss Fraser herself was in.danger of being exposed as a murderer or a blackmailer. However, you can try.” “I don’t have to try.” He was a stubborn devil. “I told you yesterday. That was my reason then, and it’s my reason now.” “Oh, for God’s sake!” Fred Owen wailed. “Oh, my God!” “Goddam it,” Anderson blurted at him, CI gave my word! I’m sewed up! I promised!” “To whom?” Wolfe snapped.
“All right,” Owen said bitterly, “keep your word and lose your shirt. This is ruin! This is dynamite!” “To whom?” Wolfe persisted.
“I can’t tell you, and I won’t. That was part of the promise.” “Indeed. Then that makes it simple.” Wolfe’s eyes darted left. “Mr Meadows, a hypothetical question. If it was you to whom Mr Anderson gave the pledge that keeps him from speaking, do you now release him from it?” “It wasn’t me,” Bill said.
“I didn’t ask you that. You know what a hypothetical question is. Please answer to the if. If it was you, do you release him?” “Yes. I do.” “Mr Traub, the same question. With that if, do you release him?” “Yes.” “Miss Vance? Do you?” “Yes.” “Mr Strong. Do you?” Of course Tully Strong had had time, a full minute, to make up his mind what to say. He said it: “No!”
CHAPTER Twenty-Five
Eleven pairs of eyes fastened on Tully Strong.
“Aha,” Wolfe muttered. He leaned back, sighed deep, and looked pleased.
“Remarkable!” a voice boomed. It was Professor Savarese. “So simple!” If he expected to pull some of the eyes his way, he got cheated. They stayed on Strong.
“That was a piece of luck,” Wolfe said, “and I’m grateful for it. If I had started with you, Mr Strong, and got your no, the others might have made it not so simple.” “I answered a hypothetical question,” Tully asserted, “and that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.” “Correct,” Wolfe agreed. “In logic, it doesn’t. But I saw your face when you realized what was coming, the dilemma you would be confronted with in a matter of seconds, and that was enough. Do you now hope to retreat into logic?” Tully just wasn’t up to it. Not only had his face been enough when he saw it coming; it was still enough. The muscles around his thin tight lips quivered as he issued the command to let words through.
“I merely answered a hypothetical question,” was the best he could do. It was pathetic.
Wolfe sighed again. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to light it for you. I don’t blame you, sir, for being obstinate about it, since it may be assumed that you have behaved badly. I don’t mean your withholding information from the police; most people do that, and often for reasons much shoddier than yours. I mean your behaviour to your employers. Since you are paid by the eight sponsors jointly your loyalty to them is indivisible; but you did not warn all of them that Miss Fraser was, or might be, headed for disgrace and disaster, and that therefore they had better clear out; apparently you confined it to Mr Anderson. For value received or to be received, I presume-a good job?” Wolfe shrugged. “But now it’s all up.” His eyes moved. “By the way, Archie, since Mr Strong will soon be telling us how he knew it was Miss Fraser, you’d better take a look. She’s capable of anything, and she’s as deft as a bear’s tongue. Look in her bag.” Cramer was on his feet. “I’m not going-” “I didn’t ask you,” Wolfe snapped. “Confound it, don’t you see how ticklish this is? I’m quite aware I’ve got no evidence yet, but I’m not going to have that woman displaying her extraordinary dexterity in my office. Archie?” I had left my chair and stepped to the other end of Wolfe’s desk, but I was in a rather embarrassing position. I am not incapable of using force on a woman, since after all men have never found anything else to use on them with any great success when it comes right down to it, but Wolfe had by no means worked up to a point where the audience was with me. And when I extended a hand toward the handsome leather bag in Madeline Fraser’s lap, she gave me the full force of her grey-green eyes and told me distinctly: “Don’t touch me.” I brought the hand back. Her eyes went to Wolfe: “Don’t you think it’s about time I said something? Wouldn’t it look better?” “No.” Wolfe met her gaze. “I’d advise you to wait, madam. All you can give us now is a denial, and of course we’ll stipulate that. What else can you say?” “I wouldn’t bother with a denial,” she said scornfully. “But it seems stupid for me to sit here and let this go on indefinitely.” “Not at all.” Wolfe leaned toward her. “Let me assure you of one thing, Miss Fraser, most earnestly. It is highly unlikely, whatever you say or do from now on, that I shall ever think you stupid. I am too well convinced of the contrary.
Not even if Mr Goodwin opens your bag and finds in it the gun with which Miss Poole was shot.” “He isn’t going to open it.” She seemed to know what she was talking about. I glanced at Inspector Cramer, but the big stiff wasn’t ready to move a finger. I picked up the little table that was always there by the arm of the red leather chair, and moved it over to the wall, went and brought one of the small yellow chairs, and sat, so close to Madeline Fraser that if we had spread elbows they would have touched. That meant no more notes, but Wolfe couldn’t have everything. As I sat down by her, putting in motion the air that had been there undisturbed, I got a faint whiff of a spicy perfume, and my imagination must have been pretty active because I was reminded of the odour that had reached me that day in her apartment, from the breath of Deborah Koppel as I tried to get her on to the divan before she collapsed. It wasn’t the same at all except in my fancy. I asked Wolfe: “This will do. Won’t it?” He nodded and went back to Tully Strong. “So you have not one reason for reluctance, but several. Even so, you can’t possibly stick it. It has been clearly demonstrated to Mr Cramer that you are withholding important information directly pertinent to the crimes he is investigating, and you and others have already pushed his patience pretty far. He’ll get his teeth in you now and he won’t let go. Then there’s Mr Anderson. The promise he gave you is half-gone, now that we know it was you he gave it to, and with the threat I’m holding over him he can’t reasonably be expected to keep the other half.” Wolfe gestured. “And all I really need is a detail. I am satisfied that I know pretty well what you told Mr Anderson. What happened yesterday, just before he took alarm and leaped to action? The morning papers had the story of the anonymous letters-the blackmailing device by which people were constrained to make payments to Mr Orchard and Miss Poole. Then that story had supplied a missing link for someone. Who and how? Say it was Mr Anderson. Say that he received, some weeks ago, an anonymous letter Or letters blackguarding Miss Fraser. He showed them to her. He received no more letters. That’s all he knew about it. A little later Mr Orchard was a guest on the Fraser programme and got poisoned, but there was no reason for Mr Anderson to connect that event with the anonymous letters he had received. That was what the story in yesterday’s papers did for him; they made that connection. It was now perfectly plain: anonymous letters about Miss Fraser; Miss Fraser’s subscription to Track Almanac; the method by which those subscriptions were obtained; and Mr Orchard’s death by drinking poisoned coffee ostensibly intended for Miss Fraser. That did not convict Miss Fraser of murder, but at a minimum it made it extremely inadvisable to continue in the role of her sponsor. So Mr Anderson skedaddled.” “I got no
anonymous letters,” Anderson declared.
“I believe you.” Wolfe didn’t look away from Tully Strong. “I rejected, tentatively, the assumption that Mr Anderson had himself received the anonymous letters, on various grounds, but chiefly because it would be out of character for him to show an anonymous letter to the subject of it. He would be much more likely to have the letter’s allegations investigated, and there was good reason to assume that that had not been done. So I postulated that it was not Mr Anderson, but some other person, who had once received an anonymous letter or letters about Miss Fraser and who was yesterday provided with a missing link. It was a permissible guess that that person was one of those now present, and so I tried the experiment of having the police insinuate an imminent threat to Miss Vance, in the hope that it would loosen a tongue. I was too cautious. It failed lamentably; and Miss Koppel died.” Wolfe was talking only to Strong. “Of course, having no evidence, I have no certainty that the information you gave Mr Anderson concerned anonymous letters.
It is possible that your conviction, or suspicion, about Miss Fraser, had some other basis. But I like my assumption because it is neat and comprehensive, and I shall abandon it only under compulsion. It explains everything, and nothing contradicts it. It will even explain, I confidently expect, why Mr Orchard and Miss Poole were killed. Two of the finer points of their operation were these, that they demanded only a small fraction of the victim’s income, limited to one year, and that the letters did not expose, or threaten to expose, an actual secret in the victim’s past. Even if they had known such secrets they would not have used them. But sooner or later-this is a point on which Mr Savarese could speak with the authority of an expert, but not now, some other time-sooner or later, by the law of averages, they would use such a secret by inadvertence.
Sooner or later the bugaboo they invented would be, for the victim, not a mischievous libel, but a real and most dreadful terror.” Wolfe nodded. “Yes. So it happened. The victim was shown the letter or letters by some friend-by you, Mr Strong-and found herself confronted not merely by the necessity of paying an inconsequential tribute, but by the awful danger of some disclosure that was not to be borne; for she could not know, of course, that the content of the letter had been fabricated and that its agreement with reality was sheer accident. So she acted. Indeed, she acted! She killed Mr Orchard. Then she learned, from a strange female voice on the phone, that Mr Orchard had not been the sole possessor of the knowledge she thought he had, and again she acted. She killed Miss Poole.” “My God,” Anderson cut in, “you’re certainly playing it strong, with no cards.” “I am, sir,” Wolfe agreed. “It’s time I got dealt to, don’t you think? Surely I’ve earned at least one card. You can give it to me, or Mr Strong can. What more do you want, for heaven’s sake? Rabbits from a hat?” Anderson got up, moved, and was confronting the secretary of the Sponsors’ Council. “Don’t be a damn’ fool, Tully,” he said with harsh authority. “He knows it all, you heard him. Go ahead and get rid of it!” “This is swell for me,” Tully said bitterly.
“It would have been swell for Miss Koppel,” Wolfe said curtly, ‘if you had spoken twenty hours ago. How many letters did you get?” “Two.” “When?” “February. Around the middle of February.” “Did you show them to anyone besides Miss Fraser?” “No, just her, but Miss Koppel was there so she saw mem too.” “Where are they now?” “I don’t know. I gave them to Miss Fraser.” What did they say?” Tully’s lips parted, stayed open a moment, and closed again.
“Don’t be an ass,” Wolfe snapped. “Mr Anderson is here. What did they say?” “They said that it was lucky for Miss Fraser that when her husband died no one had been suspicious enough to have the farewell letters he wrote examined by a handwriting expert.” “What else?” That was all. The second one said the same thing, only in a different way.” Wolfe’s eyes darted to Anderson. “Is that what he told you, sir?” The president, who had returned to the couch, nodded. “Yes, that’s it. Isn’t it enough?” “Plenty, in the context.” Wolfe’s head jerked around to face the lady at my elbow. “Miss Fraser, I’ve heard of only one farewell letter your husband wrote, to a friend, a local attorney. Was there another? To you, perhaps?” “I don’t think,” she said, “that it would be very sensible for me to try to help you.” I couldn’t detect the slightest difference in her voice. Wolfe had understated it when he said she was an extremely dangerous woman. “Especially,” she went on, “since you are apparently accepting those lies. If Mr Strong ever got any anonymous letters he never showed them to me-nor to Miss Koppel, I’m sure of that.” “I’ll be damned!” Tully Strong cried, and his specs fell off as he gawked at her.
It was marvellous, and it certainly showed how Madeline Fraser got people. Tully had been capable of assuming that she had killed a couple of guys, but when he heard her come out with what he knew to be a downright lie he was flabbergasted.
Wolfe nodded at her. “I suppose,” he admitted, “it would be hopeless to expect you to be anything but sensible. You are aware that there is still no evidence, except Mr Strong’s word against yours. Obviously the best chance is the letter your husband wrote to his friend, since the threat that aroused your ferocity concerned it.” His face left us, to the right. “Do you happen to know, Mr Cramer, whether that letter still exists?” Cramer was right up with him. He had gone to the phone on my desk and was dialling. In a moment he spoke: “Dixon there? Put him on. Dixon? I’m at Wolfe’s office. Yeah, he’s got it, but by the end of the tail. Two things quick. Get Darst and have him phone Fleetville, Michigan. He was out there and knows ‘em. Before Lawrence Koppel died he wrote a letter to a friend. We want to know if that letter still exists and where it is, and they’re to get it if they can and keep it, but for God’s sake don’t scare the friend into burning it or eating it. Tell Darst it’s so important it’s the whole case. Then get set with a warrant for an all-day job on the Fraser woman’s apartment. What we’re looking for is cyanide, and it can be anywhere-the heel of a shoe, for instance. You know the men to get-only the best. Wolfe got it by the tail with one of his crazy dives into a two-foot tank, and now we’ve got to hang on to it. What? Yes, damn it, of course it’s her! Step on it!” He hung up, crossed to me, thumbed me away, moved the chair aside, and stood by Miss Fraser’s chair, gazing down at her. Keeping his gaze where it was, he rumbled: “You might talk a little more, Wolfe.” “I could talk all night,” Wolfe declared. “Miss Fraser is worth it. She had good luck, but most of the bad luck goes to the fumblers, and she is no fumbler. Her husband’s death must have been managed with great skill, not so much because she gulled the authorities, which may have been no great feat, but because she completely deceived her husband’s sister, Miss Koppel. The whole operation with Mr Orchard was well conceived and executed, with the finest subtlety in even the lesser details-for instance, having the subscription in Miss Koppel’s name. It was simple to phone Mr Orchard that that money came from her, Miss Fraser. But best of all was the climax-getting the poisoned coffee served to the intended victim. That was one of her pieces of luck, since apparently Mr Traub, who didn’t know about the taped bottle, innocently put it in front of Mr Orchard, but she would have managed without it. At that narrow table, with Mr Orchard just across from her, and with the broadcast going on, she could have manipulated it with no difficulty, and probably without anyone becoming aware of any manipulation. Certainly without arousing any suspicion of intent, before or after.” “Okay,” Cramer conceded. That doesn’t worry me. And the Poole thing doesn’t either, since there’s nothing against it. But the Koppel woman?” Wolfe nodded. “That was the masterpiece. Miss Fraser had in her favour, certainly, years of intimacy during which she had gained Miss Koppel’s unquestioning loyalty, affection, and trust. They held steadfast even when Miss Koppel saw the anonymous letters Mr Strong had received. It is quite possible that she received similar letters herself. We don’t know, and never will, I suppose, what finally gave birth to the worm of suspicion in Miss Koppel. It wasn’t
the newspaper story of the anonymous letters and blackmailing, since that appeared yesterday, Friday, and it was on Wednesday that Miss Koppel tried to take an airplane to Michigan. We may now assume, since we know that she had seen the anonymous letters, that something had made her suspicious enough to want to inspect the farewell letter her brother had sent to his friend, and we may certainly assume that Miss Fraser, when she learned what her dearest and closest friend had tried, to do, knew why.” “That’s plain enough,” Cramer said impatiently. “What I mean-” “I know. You mean what I meant when I said it was a masterpiece. It took resourcefulness, first-rate improvisation, and ingenuity to make use of the opportunity offered by Mr Traub’s delivery of the box of Meltettes; and only a maniacal stoicism could have left those deadly titbits there on the piano where anybody might casually have eaten one. Probably inquiry would show that it was not as haphazard as it seems; that it was generally known that the box was there to be sampled by Miss Fraser and therefore no one would loot it. But the actual performance, as Mr Goodwin described it to me, was faultless. There was then no danger to a bystander, for if anyone but Miss Koppel had started to eat one of the things Miss Fraser could easily have prevented it. If the box had been handed to Miss Fraser, she could either have postponed the sampling or have taken one from the second layer instead of the top. What chance was there that Miss Koppel would eat one of the things? One in five, one in a thousand? Anyway, she played for that chance, and again she had luck; but it was not all luck, and she performed superbly.” “This is incredible,” Madeline Fraser said. “I knew I was strong, but I didn’t know I could do this. Only a few hours ago my dearest friend Debby died in my arms. I should be with her, sitting with her through the night, but here I am, sitting here, listening to this…this nightmare…” “Cut,” Bill Meadows said harshly. “Night and nightmare. Cut one.” The grey-green eyes darted at him. “So you’re raiting, are you, Bill?” “Yes, I’m ratting. I saw Debby die. And I think he’s got it. I think you killed her.” “Bill!” It was Elinor Vance, breaking. “Bill, I can’t stand it!” She was on her feet, shaking all over. “I can’t!” Bill put his arms around her, tight. “All right, kid. I hope to God she gets it.
