Briggs blinked. 'I really couldn't say, Jim. I make so many suggestions, I may well have made this one. I know Louis phoned in at his lunch recess to ask for some figures, and we were discussing it.'
'That's right,' Kustin agreed. 'You said it was being considered.'
'You're having a hell of a time answering a simple question,' a biting voice told them. It was Conroy O'Malley, the ex. 'The suggestion came from me. I phoned you around eleven o'clock, Jim, and you told me about Nero Wolfe smashing in, and I said the only thing to do was have a talk with him.'
Corrigan screwed up his lips. 'That's right. Then I went in to get Emmett's opinion.'
Wolfe went at O'Malley. 'You phoned Mr. Corrigan around eleven this morning?'
'Yes.'
'What about?'
'To get the news. I had been out of town for a week, and the minute I returned the police had got ct me again about Baird Archer. I wondered why.'
'What were you doing out of town?'
'I was in Atlanta, Georgia, getting facts about the delivery of steel for a bridge.'
'On behalf of whom?'
'This firm.' O'Malley's mouth twisted until it was distorted almost to a diagonal. 'You don't think my old associates would let me starve, do you? No indeed. I eat every day. Not only do I get a share of the income from unfinished business when I left, I am also given work to do outside the office. Do you know what is the outstanding characteristic of my former associates? Love for their fellow man.' He tapped his chest with a forefinger. 'I am their fellow man.'
'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.'
