'Fine. That's what I'm after, the facts. Let me have a look at them. If they appeal to us, Mr. Wolfe and I can ignore obligations as easy as you.'
He sat down, rested his elbows on the arms of the chair with his hands dangling, and thoroughly inspected a corner of a rug. I inspected him. He stood up again, said, 'I'll be back shortly,' and started for the door.
'Hold it,' I snapped. 'This is your place and I can't keep you from going to another room to phone, but if you do, any facts you furnish will need a lot of checking. It all comes down to which you like better, giving it to me straight or having a police doctor go over your patient.'
'I ought to kick you the hell out of here,' he said grimly.
I shook my head. 'Not now. If you had taken that attitude when that message was phoned up to you I would have had to think again, but now it's too late.' I gestured at the desk. 'Use that phone, if all you want is to tell Mrs. Whitten that a skunk named Goodwin has got you by the tail and you've got to break your promise to keep it quiet.' I took a step and held his eye with mine. 'You see, brother, when I said I was scared I meant it. Sons and daughters phooey. If Pompa is innocent, and he is, there's a murderer in that house, and an animal that has killed can kill again, and often does. What is going on there right now? I'd like to know, and I'm getting tired of talking to you. And what's more, something's biting you too or you wouldn't have let me up here.'
Cutler went and sat down again, and I sat on the edge of the couch, facing him. I waited.
'It couldn't be,' he declared.
'What couldn't be?'
'Something biting me.'
'Something bit Mrs. Whitten. Or was it a bite or a bullet or what?'
'It was a cut.' His voice was weary and precise, not gruff at all. 'Her son Jerome phoned me at a quarter to ten, and I went at once. She was upstairs on the bed and things were bloody. They had towels against her, pressing the wound together. There was a cut on her left side, five inches long and deep enough to expose the eighth rib, and a shallow cut on her left arm above the elbow, two inches long. The cuts had been made with a sharp blade. Twelve sutures were required in the side wound, and four in the arm. The loss of blood had been substantial, but not serious enough to call for more than iron and liver, which I prescribed. That was all. I left.'
'How did she get cut?'
'I was proceeding to tell you. She said she had gone in the late afternoon to a conference in her business office, made urgent by the death of her husband and the arrest of Pompa. It had lasted longer than expected. Riding back uptown, she had dismissed her chauffeur, sent him home in a taxi, and had driven herself around the park for a while. Then she drove to her house. As she got out of her car someone seized her from behind, and she thought she was being kidnapped. She gouged with her elbows and kicked, and suddenly her assailant released her and darted away. She crossed the sidewalk to her door, rang, and was admitted by Borly, the butler. Only after she was inside did she learn that she had been stabbed, or cut. The sons and daughters were there, and they phoned me and got her upstairs. They also, directed by her, cleaned up; indoors and out. The butler washed the sidewalk with a hose. He was doing that when I arrived. Mrs. Whitten explained to me that the haste in cleaning up was on account of her desire to have no hullabaloo, as she put it. Under the circumstances the episode would naturally have been greatly – uh, magnified. She asked me to do her the favor of exercising professional discretion, and I saw no sufficient reason to refuse. I shall explain to her that your threat to have a police doctor see her left me no choice.'
He turned up his palms. 'Those are the facts.'
I nodded. 'As you got them. Who was it that jumped her?'
'She doesn't know.'
'Man or woman?'
'She doesn't know. She was attacked from behind, and it was after dark. When her assailant dashed off, by the time she got straightened and turned he – or she – was the other side of a parked car. Anyway, she was frightened, and her concern was safety.'
'She didn't see him before he jumped her? As she drove up?'
'No. He could have been concealed behind the parked car.'
'Were there no passers-by?'
'None. No one appeared.'
'Did she scream?'
'I didn't ask her.' He was getting irritated. 'I didn't subject her to an inquisition, you know. She had been hurt and needed attention, and I gave it to her.'
'Sure.' I stood up. 'I won't say much obliged because I squeezed it out. I accept your facts – that is, what you were told – but I ought to warn you that you may get a phone call from Nero Wolfe. I can find my way out.'
He stood up. 'I think you used the word 'confidential.' May I tell Mrs. Whitten that she need not expect a visit from a police doctor?'
'I'll do my best. I mean it. But if I were you I wouldn't give her any more quick promises. They're apt not to stick.'
I reached for the doorknob, but he was ahead of me and opened it. He took me back down the hall and let me out, and even told me good night. The elevator man kept slanted eyes on me, evidently having been told of the vulgar message I had sent up to a tenant, so I told him that his starting lever needed oil, which it did. Outside I climbed in the car and rolled downtown a little faster than I was supposed to. The clock on the dash said ten minutes to midnight.
When I'm not in the house, especially at night, the front door is always chain bolted, so I had to ring
