Gambit

into?' I had pushed my chair back and was getting up. He put a hand out. 'No,' he said. 'Sit down.' 201 I bent over to him. 'No?' 'I mean yes.' 'Did you enter that house at that time Wednesday?' 'Yes. But I didn't kill Clan Kalmus.' I sat down and picked up my glass for a sip of wine. 'I advise you to watch your step,' I told him. 'If I have to keep jumping up to make you talk sense it will attract attention. How much money did you bring?' His hand went into his breast pocket but came out again empty. 'You admit you're a blackmailer,' he said. 'Sure. Birds of a feather, a murderer and a blackmailer.' 'I am not a murderer. But if I refuse to be victimized and you do what you threaten to do I'll be involved in a scandal I can never live down. I'll be under a suspicion that will never be entirely removed. To prevent that I'm willing to--to submit. Under protest.' His hand went to the pocket again and this time got something, a slip of paper. He unfolded it, glanced at it, said, 'Read that,' and handed it to me. It was handwritten in ink: I hereby affirm, and will swear if necessary, that my statement to Dr Victor Avery that I saw him enter the house of Daniel Kalmus on Wednesday, February 14, 1962, was untrue. I have never seen Dr Victor Avery 202 enter that house at any time. I write this and sign it of my own free will, not under duress. I dropped it on the table and grinned at him. 'You could frame it,' I suggested. 'I have ten thousand dollars in cash,' he said. 'When you write that and sign it and give it to me, I'll hand it over.' 'And the other ninety thousand?' 'That's fantastic. I couldn't possibly pay such a sum, and even if I had it... it's absurd. In addition to the ten thousand now, I'll guarantee to give you another twenty thousand within a week.' 'I'll be damned. You actually have the gall to haggle.' 'I'm not haggling. To me thirty thousand dollars is a fortune.' I regarded him. 'You know,' I said, 'I admire your nerve, I really do. You're too much for me.' I looked around, caught the eye of Mrs Piotti, and signed to her, and she came. I asked her how much, and she said a dollar-forty, and I handed her two ones and told her to keep the change. Of course that was just for appearance's sake; I had given John fifty bucks and would give him more. I shook my head at Avery. 'Positively too much for me. We'll have to go and put it up to MrWolfe.' He gawked. 'What?' 'I said, put it up to Mr Wolfe. This isn't my 203 show, it's his, I only work for him. That last night, me being fired, that was just dressing. You'll have to come and do your haggling with him. He certainly won't settle for a measly thirty grand.' He was still gawking. 'Nero Wolfe is behind this?' 'He sure is, and also in front of it.' I shoved my chair back. 'Okay, let's go.' 'I will not' 'For God's sake.' I leaned to him. 'Dr Avery, you are unquestionably the champion beetlebrain. Nero Wolfe has got you wrapped up and addressed straight to hell, and you sit there and babble / mil not. Do you prefer hell or are you coming?' I picked up the slip of paper and pocketed it, rose, got my coat from the hook and put it on, got my hat, and headed for the door. As I passed the next table Fred Durkin, crammed with spaghetti and wine to his chin, got up and headed in the opposite direction, toward the kitchen. As I emerged to the sidewalk a gust of winter wind nearly took my hat, and as I clapped my hand on it here came Avery, his coat on his arm. When he tried to put the coat on, the wind tossed it around, so I helped him, and he thanked me. A murderer and a blackmailer, both with good manners. Second Avenue was downtown, so we walked to Third for a taxi. When we had got one and were in and rolling I rather expected Avery to start a conversation, but he didn't. 204 Not a word. I didn't look at him, but out of the corner of my eye I saw that his hand was working inside his overcoat pocket. If he had nerve he also had nerves. Wolfe made more concessions during the five days of the Blount thing than he usually makes in a year. Ordinarily, at ten minutes to two, the hour at which Avery and I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone and entered, Wolfe is right in the middle of lunch, and I was expecting to have to entertain the guest in the office for at least half an hour while we waited. But as I learned later from Fritz, he had been told when he took up the breakfast tray that lunch would be at 12:45 sharp. To you that merely means that Wolfe had sense enough to change the schedule when it was called for, but to me it meant that at breakfast time he had taken it for granted that half an hour with Avery at Piotti's would be all I would need and I would have him at the office before two o'clock. It's nice to have your gifts recognized, but some day he'll take too much for granted. So I had barely got the guest into the office and seated in the red leather chair when Wolfe entered. I went and shut the door. Saul and Fred and Orrie would soon be passing by on their way to the kitchen with the recorder and tape. As I returned to my desk Avery was blurting, 'I'm here under protest, and if you think you and Goodwin?' 'Shut up!' It wasn't a roar, just the crack of a 205 whip. Wolfe, seated, turned to me: 'Was there any difficulty?' 'No, sir.' I sat. 'All okay. More than enough. To the question did he enter that house at that time Wednesday, a flat yes. He offered me ten thousand cash now and a guarantee of twenty grand more within a week if I would sign a statement that I hadn't seen him. He didn't?' 'That's a lie,' Avery said. So he hadn't started a conversation in the taxi because he had been too busy deciding on his line, and the line was to call me a liar and make Wolfe start from scratch. Not so dumb at that. Wolfe leaned back and regarded him, not with hostility, merely as an object of interest. Of course he was just passing the time until the trio arrived. 'A book could be written,' he said, 'on the varieties of conduct of men in a pickle. Men confronted with their doom. In nearly all cases the insuperable difficulty is that their mental processes are numbed by the emotional impact of the predicament. It is a fallacy to suppose that the best mind will deal most effectively with a crisis; if the emotion has asphyxiated the mind what good is it? Take you with Mr Goodwin in that restaurant. Since you have succeeded in your profession you probably have a fairly capable mind, but you reacted like a nincompoop. You should either have defied him and prepared to fight it out, or, asking him to sign a document that would 206 remove his threat, you should have met his demands in full; and you should have admitted nothing. Instead, you tried to dicker, and you made the one vital admission, that you had entered that house Wednesday evening. Indeed?' 'That's a lie.' Apparently that was to be his verse and chorus. Not a bad idea if he had the guts to fight it out, but in that case he should get up and go. The doorbell rang. I went and opened the door to the hall a crack. Fritz came from the kitchen and went to the front and opened up, and here came the trio, not stopping at the rack to take their coats off. Saul nodded at my face in the crack as he passed, and Orrie made the sign, a jerk with the tips of his thumb and forefinger joined. When they had disappeared into the kitchen I swung the door wide, returned to my desk, and reached around behind it to flip a switch. That was all that was needed at my end. Wolfe was talking. '... and perhaps that would have been your wisest course. After Mr Goodwin had spoken with you from his hotel room last night, you knew you were in mortal danger, and you thought he was its sole agent. He alone had knowledge of the crucial fact; but for him, you had little to fear. Why didn't you kill him, at whatever hazard? You knew where he was and you had all night. Disguise yourself and bribe one of the hotel staff, any amount 207 required, to get you into the room. Engage the room next to his, or above or below it, and go from window to window. A man in your plight should be able to scale a perpendicular wall of marble by force of will. Any normal will can overcome a mere difficulty; one made desperate by impending disaster should?' The house phone buzzed. I took it and said, 'Archie,' and Saul's voice came: 'All set.' 'Right. I'll buzz you.' I hung up and gave Wolfe a nod, and he nodded back and sat up. 'I'm boring you,' he told Avery. 'What you might have done is vinegar. What matters now is what you're going to do, and to consider that realistically you must hear something.' He turned. 'All right, Archie.' I pushed the button, three short, and swiveled to face Avery. In a moment there was a faint whirring sound from a grill at the wall back of my desk, where the loudspeaker was, then a few little crackles, then other noises, not loud, which could have been from a restaurant where people were moving and eating and talking, and then my voice: 'The spaghetti here is something special. Better have some.' After a slight pause another voice: 'I'm not hungry.' 'The wine is special too.' 'I never drink during the day.' 'Neither do I usually, but this is a special occasion. How much did you bring?' 208 J 'I came out of curiosity. What kind of a trick is this?' 'Look, you'll just waste your breath dodging. I saw you go in Kalmus's house Wednesday and I saw you come out. Yesterday I asked?' 'What time did I go in? What time did I come out?' As Wolfe had said, a book could be written on the varieties of conduct of men in a pickle. At the sound of the first words, mine, Avery frowned at me. When his own voice came, 'I'm not hungry,' he twisted his neck to look around, right and then left. Then he clamped his teeth on his lip and sat frowning at me through my main spiel, and when he said, 'That's all tommyrot, every word of it,' he nodded in approval. But when I asked him did he enter that house at that time Wednesday and he said yes, he yawped, That's a lie!' and bounced up and started for me. I was on my feet by the time he arrived, but he had no idea of slugging or choking, he had no idea at all, he was merely reacting. I sidestepped only because I wanted to hand something to Wolfe?the slip of paper?and he was in the way. Wolfe took it and read it while all that came from the grill was the background restaurant noise when I had been reading it, and he dropped it on his desk just as I dropped it on the table and said, 'You could frame it.' Good timing. And Avery stopped reacting and 209 acted. He lunged to get the slip of paper, but I beat him to it. I call your attention to Wolfe. If he had hung onto it he might have had the bother of warding offAvery, so he left it to me. More taking for granted. Avery grabbed my arm and I didn't jerk loose, thinking the poor goof might as well have the satisfaction of that much personal contact. He was gripping me with both hands, but when I told him, or the speaker did, that Wolfe had him wrapped up and addressed straight to hell, which I admit was a little corny, he let go and stood, his jaw set, looking down at Wolfe. I stepped to the end of my desk and reached around to the switch and turned it off, and when I faced around Saul