Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 19 (13 page)

“Goddam it, Con,” Phelps blurted, “where does that get you? What do you want? What do you expect?”

A gleam had come and gone in Kustin’s sleepy eyes as O’Malley spoke. He said dryly, “We’re here to answer Wolfe’s questions. Let’s keep the answers responsive.”

“No,” Wolfe said, “this isn’t a courtroom. Sometimes an unresponsive answer is the most revealing, almost as good as a lie. But I hope you will resort to lies as little as possible, since they will be of use to me only when exposed and that’s a lot of work. For instance, I am going to ask each of you if you have ever tried your hand at writing fiction or had a marked and sustained
desire to write fiction. If you all say no, and if later, through interviews with friends and acquaintances, I find that one of you lied, that will be of some value to me, but it will save trouble if you’ll tell the truth short of serious embarrassment. Have you ever tried writing fiction, Mr. O’Malley? Or wanted to, beyond a mere whim?”

“No.”

“Mr. Briggs?”

“No.”

He got five noes.

Wolfe leaned back and surveyed them. “Of course,” he said, “it is clearly essential to my assumption that either Leonard Dykes or someone he knew wrote a piece of fiction long enough to be called a novel—Dykes himself by preference, since he was killed. Doubtless the police have touched on this in questioning you, and you have disclaimed any knowledge of such an activity by Dykes, but I like things firsthand. Mr. Corrigan, have you ever had any information or hint, from any source, that Dykes had written, was writing, or wanted or intended to write, a work of fiction?”

“No.”

“Mr. Phelps?”

Five noes again.

Wolfe nodded. “That shows why, even if you put up with this for a solid week, I can’t engage not to harass your staff. For that kind of operation Mr. Goodwin is highly qualified. If you admonish those young women not to see him, I doubt if it will work. If they disobey and you fire them, you will merely make them riper for him. If you warn them specifically that any knowledge they may have, however slight, of Dykes’s literary performances or ambitions is not to be disclosed, sooner or later Mr. Goodwin will know it, and I shall ask why
you don’t want me to get facts. And if any of them does innocently have such knowledge, perhaps from some remark once heard, we’ll get it.”

They didn’t care for that. Louis Kustin was displaying a bored smile. “We’re not schoolboys, Wolfe. We graduated long ago. Speaking for myself, you’re welcome to any fact you can get, no matter what, that’s conceivably connected with your case. I don’t know any. I’m here—all of us are—to satisfy you on that point.”

“Then tell me this, Mr. Kustin.” Wolfe was placid. “I gather that although the disbarment of Mr. O’Malley was a blow to the firm’s reputation, you personally benefited from it by being made a partner and by replacing Mr. O’Malley as chief trial counsel. Is that correct?”

Kustin’s eyes woke up. They gleamed. “I deny that that has any connection with your case.”

“We’re proceeding on my assumption. Of course you may decline to answer, but if you do, what are you here for?”

“Answer him, Louis,” O’Malley said jeeringly. “Just say yes.”

They looked at each other. I doubt if either of them had ever regarded opposing counsel with just that kind of hostility. Then Kustin’s eyes, anything but sleepy now, returned to Wolfe and he said, “Yes.”

“And naturally your share of the firm’s profits was increased?”

“Yes.”

“Substantially?”

“Yes.”

Wolfe’s glance went left. “You too benefited, Mr. Corrigan? You became the senior partner with an increased share?”

Corrigan’s prizefighter’s jaw was jutting. “I became the senior in a firm that was damn near on the rocks. My percentage of the profits went up, but the profits went down. I would have done better to cut loose.”

“Was there anything to stop you?” O’Malley inquired. From his tone I would have guessed that he hated Corrigan about one-fifth as much as he did Kustin.

“Yes, Con, there was. I had my associates to think of. My name was on the door with theirs. There was loyalty to stop me.”

Suddenly, totally without warning, O’Malley bounded to his feet. I suppose he had done it a thousand times in a courtroom, to object to a question or dramatize a motion to dismiss, but it startled the others as much as it did me. He flung up an arm and called out in a ringing voice, “Loyalty!” Then he dropped back into his chair, picked up his glass and raised it, said, “To loyalty,” and drank.

The four firm members glanced at one another. I changed my mind about O’Malley’s ability to dominate a phone booth.

Wolfe spoke. “And you, Mr. Briggs? You also moved up when Mr. O’Malley was out?”

Briggs blinked violently. “I resent this,” he said stiffly. “I am opposed to this whole procedure. I know something of you, Mr. Wolfe, and I regard your methods as unethical and reprehensible. I am here under protest.”

“Frederick,” O’Malley said gravely, “should be on the bench. He should have been appointed to the bench as soon as he was out of law school. He would be an ideal judge. He has the kind of daring mind that glories in deciding an issue without understanding it.”

Phelps, the encyclopedia, protested, “Everybody
can’t be brilliant like you, Con. Maybe it’s just as well they can’t.”

O’Malley nodded at him. “You’re dead right, Emmett. But you’re always right. I’ve never resented it, you know, your always being right, I don’t know why. Not because you’re the only one who didn’t profit by my downfall; I never resented it.”

“I did profit. I moved up one and I get a bigger cut.” Phelps went to Wolfe. “We all profited by our partner’s misfortune, or we will, if this doesn’t ruin us altogether. Even I. Strictly speaking, I am not an attorney-at-law; I am a scholar. To a lawyer the most interesting case is the one he is currently engaged in. To me the most interesting case is one that was tried in Vienna in 1568. I inject this only to explain why this case of yours is to me unutterably dull. It might not be if I had myself killed Dykes and those two young women, but I doubt it. I would be attentive, naturally, but not interested. You will forgive me, I hope.”

That, I thought, might be useful in future conversations with Sue Dondero, Phelps’s secretary. From her scanty remarks about her boss I hadn’t got that slant on him, and surely she would like to know more about him if she didn’t already. Girls feel that it’s their duty to know all about their bosses.

Wolfe was cocking his head at the encyclopedia. “Murders bore you, Mr. Phelps?”

“I didn’t say that. ‘Bore’ is an active verb. I am merely indifferent.”

“But isn’t your livelihood involved?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m here. I came and I’ll talk, but don’t expect to arouse me.”

“Then I won’t try.” Wolfe’s eyes moved. “By the way, Mr. O’Malley, why are you here?”

“Loyalty.” I had refilled O’Malley’s glass, and he lifted it. “To loyalty!”

“To whom? Your former associates? I was getting the impression that you are not too well disposed toward them.”

“That just shows”—O’Malley put his glass down—“how wrong appearances can be. My old friends Jim and Emmett and Louis and Fred? I’d go through hell for them—in fact I have. Isn’t that acceptable as my motive for coming?”

“I’d prefer something a little less moot.”

“Then try this. I was a man of extraordinary talent and not without ambition. My talent had been developed and my faculties trained to one end: to enter a courtroom with a briefcase, confront a judge and jury, and so manipulate their thoughts and emotions that I got the verdict I wanted. I hadn’t lost a case for four years when one day I found myself faced by certain defeat; there was no question about it. Under that pressure I did something foolish: I bribed a juror, the first and only time. I got a hung jury, and a few weeks later got a settlement out of court, and I thought I was safely out of it, when suddenly it hit me. Someone informed the court, they got the juror in and worked on him and broke him, and there I was. Insufficient evidence saved me from a felony conviction, the jury was divided six to six, but I was disbarred.”

“Who informed the court?”

“I didn’t know at the time. Now I have reason to believe it was the juror’s wife.”

“Were any of your associates privy to your act?”

“No. They wouldn’t have stood for it. They were shocked—the shock of righteous men—meaning by ‘righteous men’ those who have not been caught. They were also loyal, they helped me fight it, but it was
hopeless. So here I am, a man with an extraordinary talent that can’t be used. I can use it only in one place and I am not allowed to go there. Moreover, I am stigmatized. People who could use my talents outside of courtrooms don’t want them. And I’m broke. I’m in no position to postulate that I should go on living; there seems no point in it, but through perversity I’m going to. My only source of income is this firm, payments on account of business that was unfinished when I let, and they give me errands to do. So it is to my interest for the firm to prosper. I offer that as my reason for coming here with them. If you don’t like it either, I have still another alternative. Would you like to hear it?”

“If it isn’t too fanciful.”

“It’s not fanciful at all. I am embittered against my former associates because they let me down. I think it quite possible that one of them killed Dykes and the two women, though I have no idea why, and that you’re going to hang on until you get it, and I want to see it happen. Do you like that better?”

“It has attractions.”

“Or here’s another. I myself killed Dykes and the women, though again I have no idea why, and I think you’re more dangerous than the police and want to keep an eye on you.” O’Malley picked up his glass. “That’s four, that should be enough.”

“It’ll do for the time being,” Wolfe concurred. “Of course they’re mutually exclusive. In one your associates helped you fight and in another they let you down. Which was it actually?”

“They fought like tigers to save me.”

“Goddam it, Con,” Phelps exploded, “we did! We let everything else go! We did our damnedest!”

O’Malley was unmoved. “Then you’d better take
that one,” he told Wolfe. “Number Two. It has corroboration, which is always a help.”

“I prefer it anyway,” Wolfe glanced up at the clock on the wall. “I want all you can tell me about Dykes, gentlemen, but it’s my dinnertime. As I said, I’m sorry we’re not prepared for guests.”

They left their chairs. Corrigan asked, “What time do you want us back?”

Wolfe made a face. He hated the prospect of work during digestion. “Nine o’clock?” he suggested. “Will that suit?”

They said it would.

W
hen, an hour after midnight, Wolfe finally called it a day and let them go, it looked as if I would be seeing a lot of the girls. Not that they had balked at answering questions. We had at least four thousand facts, an average of a thousand an hour, but if anyone had offered me a dime for the lot it would have been a deal. We were full of information to the gills, but not a glimmer of Baird Archer or fiction writing or anything pertaining thereto. Wolfe had even sunk so low as to ask where and how they had spent the evening of February second and the afternoon of February twenty-sixth, though the cops had of course covered that and double-checked it.

Especially we knew enough about Leonard Dykes to write his biography, either straight or in novel form. Having started in as office boy, by industry, application, loyalty, and a satisfactory amount of intelligence, he had worked up to office manager and confidential clerk. He was not married. He had smoked a pipe, and had once got pickled on two glasses of punch at an office party, proving that he was not a drinker. He had had no known interest in anything outside his work except baseball in summer and professional hockey games in
winter. And so forth and so on. None of the five had any notion about who had killed him or why.

They kept getting into squabbles about anything and everything. For instance, when Wolfe was asking about Dykes’s reaction to the disbarment of O’Malley, and was told by Corrigan that Dykes had written him a letter of resignation, Wolfe wanted to know when. Sometime in the summer, Corrigan said, he didn’t remember exactly, probably in July. Wolfe asked what the letter had said.

“I forget how he put it,” Corrigan replied, “but he was just being scrupulous. He said he had heard that there was talk among the staff that he was responsible for O’Malley’s trouble, that it was baseless, but that we might feel it would be harmful to the firm for him to continue. He also said that it was under O’Malley as senior that he had been made office manager, and that the new regime might want to make a change, and that therefore he was offering his resignation.”

Wolfe grunted. “Was it accepted?”

“Certainly not. I called him in and told him that we were completely satisfied with him, and that he should ignore the office gossip.”

“I’d like to see his letter. You have it?”

“I suppose it was filed—” Corrigan stopped. “No, it wasn’t. I sent it to Con O’Malley. He may have it.”

“I returned it to you,” O’Malley asserted.