“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
