'There were people there for dinner. Do you want their names?'
'Yes.'
'They were clients of Hazen's. Mrs. Victor Oliver, a widow. Mrs. Henry Lewis Talbot, the wife of the banker. Ambrose Perdis, the shipping tycoon. Jules Khoury, the inventor. And Mr. and Mrs. Hazen and me. Seven. After dinner Hazen told Lucy-his wife-that we were going to discuss a business matter and she left. I left soon after that, and that was the last I saw him alive, there with them.'
'How did you spend the next six hours?'
'I walked to the Overseas Press Club-it's a short walk-and was there until around midnight, and then I went home and went to bed. And stayed in bed.'
'You were associated with Mr. Hazen in his busi- ness?'
'I was in his employ.'
'In what capacity?'
'Mostly I write stuff. Handouts, plugs, the usual junk. Also I was supposed to use my contacts. I was a newspaperman when Hazen hired me a little more than a year ago.'
'If they were going to discuss a business matter why did you leave?'
'I wasn't needed. Or wanted.'
'Then why were you there at all?' Weed put his hands on the chair arms, levered his fanny up, settled farther back, and took a breath. He rubbed his chair arms with his palms. 'You don't think Lucy killed him,' he said. 'Or you wouldn't be working for her. But even if she didn't she's in one hell of a jam. If you're half as good as you're supposed to be… I don't know. Maybe I ought to give you a different answer than the one I gave the District Attorney when he asked why I was there. The right answer. Even if it makes you think I killed him. I didn't.'
'If you did, Mr. Weed, you're doomed in any case, no matter what answers you give.'
'Okay, then here's why I was there. Exclusive for you. Hazen liked to have me in the same room with his wife because he knew how I felt about her. God only knows how he knew, I certainly tried not to show it and I thought I did pretty well, and I'm sure she doesn't know, but he did. He was a remarkable man. He had a sixth sense about people, and maybe a seventh and an eighth, but he also had blind spots. He actually didn't know how his wife felt about him, or if he did he was even more remarkable than I thought.'
'Did you know?'
'Of course.'
'She told you?'
'My God, no. I doubt if she even told her best friend. Don't think that the way I feel about her made me imagine it. I saw her when he touched her, how she tried to cover up. So that's why I was invited to dinner last night. I don't think he expected or hoped to see me squirm, he didn't have to, he knew how I felt. Of course he was a sadist, but he was a damned subtle one. I was onto him, in a way, after I had been with him a couple of months, but I didn't leave because I… I had met her.'
'And your feeling for her was returned?'
'Certainly not. I was just a guy that worked for her husband.'
'Rather a forlorn situation for you.'
'Yeah. That's the right word, forlorn. I told you because you asked why I was there, and I've got a little idea how you work, and you're working for her. An- other thing you might want to know, I think there was something screwy about his business. I know the public-relations game is mostly just a high-grade racket, but even so. Take the four people who were there last night. Why did Mrs. Victor Oliver, the sixty-year-old widow of a millionaire broker, pay him two thousand dollars a month? She needs public rela- tions like I need a hole in the head. The same for Mrs. Talbot-twenty-five hundred a month. Maybe her hus- band, the banker, could use a P.R. expert, granted that there is one, but why her? Jules Khoury's amounts vary, sometimes a couple of thousand, sometimes more. Possibly an inventor likes to stand in well with the public, though I don't see why, and during the time I've been there Khoury has got damn little for his money. Ambrose Perdis is the screwiest of all. For his business, his shipping corporations, he uses one of the big P.R. operators, the Codray Associates, but person- ally he has paid Hazen more than forty thousand dollars this past year. I'm not supposed to know all this. I got curious and I got at the records one day.'
Wolfe grunted. 'A man who hires another man to forge distinction for him deserves as little as he gets. Are you suggesting that Mr. Hazen extorted those sums?'
'I don't know, but he didn't earn them. I admit that very few P.R. operators do earn what they get. If any.'
'Did he have any clients other than those four?'
'Sure, about a dozen. Fifteen altogether, as of yes- terday. His total take was over a quarter of a million a year.'
Wolfe looked up at the clock. 'It will be my dinner time in five minutes. If my assumption that Mrs. Hazen didn't kill her husband is correct, and if you didn't, who did?'
That question gets a helpful answer about once in a hundred times. It was obvious that Weed had given it no brain room at all before he rang our doorbell, be- cause he had either thought that Lucy had done it or known that he had, so he had no guesses ready. He was more than willing; the idea appealed to him; but he had to start from scratch, and five minutes wasn't enough. He thought that Wolfe should forget about dinner, though he didn't say so, which was just as well. He said he would return after dinner, but Wolfe said no, if he would leave his phone number he would hear from us. He would have left the bills there on Wolfe's desk if I hadn't handed them to him.
By the time we had finished dinner and were back in the office, with coffee, I had no personal worry. If the bullets had matched we would have heard from Cramer by then. Wolfe got at the letters to sign, still on his desk, and as he finished the last one and I took it he spoke. 'Did Mr. Weed shoot him?'
