She almost smiled. 'I'm forty-two.'
I grinned. 'See? I need facts. Who you are and what you want.'
Her mouth worked. 'It's very confidential.' Her mouth worked some more. 'But there was no sense in coming unless I tell you.'
'Right.'
She laced her fingers. 'All right. My name is Bertha Aaron. It is spelled with two A's. I am the private secretary of Mr. Lamont Otis, senior partner in the law firm of Otis, Edey, Heydecker, and Jett. Their office is on Madison Avenue at Fifty-first Street. I'm worried about something that happened recently and I want Mr. Wolfe to investigate it. I can pay him a reasonable fee, but it might develop that he will be paid by the firm. It might.'
'Were you sent here by someone in the firm?'
'No. Nobody sent me. Nobody knows I'm here.'
'What happened?'
Her fingers laced tighter. 'Maybe I shouldn't have come,' she said. 'I didn't realize… maybe I'd better not.'
'Suit yourself, Miss Aaron, Miss Aaron?'
'Yes. I am not married.' Her fingers flew apart to make fists and her lips tightened. 'This is silly. I've got to. I owe it to Mr. Otis. I've been with him for twenty years and he has been wonderful to me. I couldn't go to him about this because he's seventy-five years old and he has a bad heart and it might kill him. He comes to the office every day, but it's a strain and he doesn't do much, only he knows more than all the rest of them put together.' Her fists opened. 'What happened was that I saw a member of the firm with our opponent in a very important case, one of the biggest cases we've ever had, at a place where they wouldn't have met if they hadn't wanted to keep it secret.'
'You mean with the opposing counsel?'
'No. The client. With opposing counsel it might pos- sibly have been all right.'
'Which member of the firm?'
'I'm not going to say. I'm not going to tell Mr. Wolfe his name until he agrees to take the case. He doesn't have to know that in order to decide. If you wonder why I came, I've already said why I can't tell Mr. Otis about it, and I was afraid to go to any of the others because if one of them was a traitor another one might be in it with him, or even more than one. How could I be sure? There are only four members of the firm, but of course there are others associated-nineteen altogether. I wouldn't trust any of them, not on a thing like this.' She made fists again. 'You can understand that. You see what a hole I'm in.' 'Sure. But you could be wrong. Of course that's unethical, a lawyer meeting with an enemy client, but there could be exceptions. It might have been acciden- tal. When and where did you see them?'
'Last Monday, a week ago today. In the evening. They were together in a booth in a cheap restaurant- more of a lunchroom. The kind of place she would never go to, never. She would never go to that part of town. Neither would I, ordinarily, but I was on a personal errand and I went in there to use the phone. They didn't see me.'
'Then one of the members of the firm is a woman?'
Her eyes widened. 'Oh. I said 'she.' I meant the opposing client. We have a woman lawyer as one of the associates, just an employee really, but no woman firm member.' She laced her fingers. 'It couldn't possibly have been accidental. But of course it was conceivable, just barely conceivable, that he wasn't a traitor, that there was some explanation, and that made it even harder for me to decide what to do. But now I know. After worrying about it for a whole week I couldn't stand it any longer, and this afternoon I decided the only thing I could do was tell him and see what he said. If he had a good explanation, all right. But he didn't. The way he took it, the way it hit him, there isn't any question about it. He's a traitor.'
'What did he say?'
'It wasn't so much what he said as how he looked. He said he had a satisfactory explanation, that he was acting in the interest of our client, but that he couldn't tell me more than that until the matter had developed further. Certainly within a week, he said, and possibly tomorrow. So I knew I had to do something, and I was afraid to go to Mr. Otis because his heart has been worse lately, and I wouldn't go to another firm member. I even thought of going to the opposing counsel, but of course that wouldn't do. Then I thought of Nero Wolfe, and I put on my hat and coat and came. Now it's urgent. You can see it's urgent?'
I nodded. 'It could be. Depending on the kind of case involved. Mr. Wolfe might agree to take the job before you name the alleged traitor, but he would have to know first what the case is about-your firm's case. There are some lands he won't touch, even indirectly. What is it?'
'I don't want…' She let it hang. 'Does he have to know that?'
'Certainly. Anyhow, you've told me the name of your firm and it's a big important case and the opposing client is a woman, and with that I could-but I don't have to. I read the papers. Is your client Morton Sorell?'
'Yes.'
'And the opposing client is Rita Sorell, his wife?'
'Yes.'
I glanced at my wrist watch and saw 5:39, left my chair, told her, 'Cross your fingers and sit tight,' and headed for the hall and the stairs. Two new factors had entered and now dominated the situation: that if our first bank deposit of the new year came from the Sorell pile it would not be hay; and that one of the kind of jobs Wolfe wouldn't touch, even indirectly, was divorce stuff. It would take some doing, and as I mounted the three flights to the roof of the old brownstone my brain was going faster than my feet. In the vestibule of the plant rooms I paused, not for breath but to plan the approach, decided that was no good because it would depend on his mood, and entered. You might think it impossible to go down the aisles between the benches of those three rooms-cool, tropical, and intermediate- without noticing the flashes and banks of color, but that day I did, and then was in the potting room.
