When a caller comes without an appointment, I am supposed to leave him on the stoop until I consult Wolfe, and I do, but this was a crisis. Not only were we up a stump; there was even a chance that Wolfe would be pigheaded enough to try that cockeyed stunt with the Perez family if he wasn't sidetracked. So I invited her to enter, led her to the office and on in, and said, 'Mr. Wolfe, Mrs. Yeager. Mrs. Thomas G. Yeager.' He glared at me. 'I wasn't informed that I had an appointment.' 'No, sir. You didn't.' 'I didn't stop to phone,' Ellen Yeager said. 'It's urgent.' She went to the red leather chair and took it as if she owned it, put her bag on the stand, and aimed sharp little eyes at Wolfe. 'I want to hire you to do something.' She reached for the bag, opened it, and took out a checkfold. 'How much do you want as a retainer?' Client number four, not counting the phony Yeager. When I go scouting for clients I get results. She was going on. 'My husband was murdered, you know about that. I want you to find out who killed him and exactly what happened, and then I will decide what to do about it. He was a sick man, he was oversexed, I know all about that. I've kept still about it for years, but I'm not going to let it keep me from--' Too Many Clients 95 Wolfe cut in. 'Shut up,' he commanded. She stopped, astonished. 'I'm blunt,' he said, 'because I must be. I can't let you rattle off confidential information under the illusion that you are hiring me. You aren't and you can't. I'm already engaged to investigate the murder of your husband.' 'You are not,' she declared. 'Indeed?' 'No. You're engaged to keep it from being investigated, to keep it from coming out, to protect that corporation, Continental Plastic Products. One of the directors has told me all about it. There was a meeting of the board this morning, and Benedict Aiken told them what he had done and they approved it. They don't care if the murderer of my husband is caught or not. They don't want him caught. All they care about is the corporation. I'll own a block of stock now, but that doesn't matter. They can't keep me from telling the District Attorney about that room if I decide to.' 'What room?' 'You know perfectly well what room. In that house on Eighty-second Street where Julia McGee went last night and you got her and brought her here. Benedict Aiken told the board about it, and one of them told me.' Her head jerked to me. 'Are you Archie Goodwin? I want to see that room. When will you take me there?' She jerked back to Wolfe. That's a bad habit, asking a question and not waiting for an answer, but it's not always bad for the askee. She opened the checkfold. 'How much do you want as a retainer?' She was impetuous, no question about that, but she was no fool, and she didn't waste words. She 96 Rex Stout didn't bother to spell it out: and if Wolfe tried to do what she thought he had been hired to do, clamp a lid on it, she could queer it with a phone call to the DA's office, and therefore he had to switch to her. He leaned back and clasped his fingers at the center of his frontal mound. 'Madam, you have been misinformed. Archie, that paper Mr. Aiken signed. Let her read it.' I went and got it from the cabinet and took it to her. To read it she got glasses from her bag. She took the glasses off. 'It's what I said, isn't it?' 'No. Read it again. Archie, the typewriter. Two carbons.' I sat, pulled the machine around, arranged the paper with carbons, and inserted them. 'Yes, sir.' 'Single-spaced, wide margins. The date. I, comma, Mrs. Thomas G. Yeager, comma, hereby engage Nero Wolfe to investigate the circumstances of the death of my late husband. The purpose of this engagement is to make sure that my husband's murderer is identified and exposed, comma, and Wolfe is to make every effort to achieve that purpose. If in doing so a conflict arises between his obligation under this engagement and his obligation under his existing engagement with Continental Plastic Products it is understood that he will terminate his engagemeent with Continental Plastic Products and will adhere to this engagement with me. It is also understood that I will do nothing to interfere with Wolfe's obligation to Continental Plastic Products without giving him notice in advance.'
He turned to her. 'No retainer is necessary; I have none from Mr. Aiken. Whether I bill you or not, and for what amount, will depend. I wouldn't FR1;Too Many Clients 97 expect a substantial payment from two separate clients for the same services. And I would expect none at all from you if, for instance, I found that you killed your husband yourself.' 'You wouldn't get any. There was a time when I felt like killing him, but that was long ago when the children were young.' She took the original from me and put on her glasses to read it. 'This isn't right. When you find out who killed him you tell me and I decide what to do.' 'Nonsense. The People of the State of New York will decide what to do. In the process of identifying him to my satisfaction and yours I will inevitably get evidence, and I can't suppress it. Archie, give her a pen.' 'I'm not going to sign it. I promised my husband I would never sign anything without showing it to him.' A corner ofWolfe's mouth went up--his version of a smile. He was always pleased to get support for his theory that no woman was capable of what he called rational sequence. 'Then,' he asked, 'shall I rewrite it, for me to sign? Committing me to my part of the arrangement?' 'No.' She handed me the papers, the one Aiken had signed and the one she hadn't. 'It doesn't do any good to sign things. What counts is what you do, not what you sign. How much do you want as a retainer?' He had just said he didn't want one. Now he said. 'One dollar.' Apparently that struck her as about right. She opened her bag, put the checkfold in it, took out a purse, got a dollar bill from it, and left the chair to ?ri i'-'.'aft.iKs, '^ '. .y;r.?; ^ .^ .a/yf^o ;h^ ^^^'^''y-h- ^?i.f.Arr1.;,. . ll^i^^^^^''^^.^^^ ^''?^;;<wy! ?;|ll3Salwa-'^'^ ^.'^r-'*:^ .si?' ^<.?^&^'l'sB'' ^^^ft^^L^''.^;.^.'^':^;-!. .?^.A-^A^^'xa^T;1.^ Chapter 9 t the meeting of those two, Wolfe and Cramer, naturally I am not an impartial -observer. Not only am I committed and involved; there is also the basic fact that cops and private detectives are enemies and always will be. Back of the New York cop are the power and authority of eight million people; back of the private detective is nothing but the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and while that's a fine thing to have it doesn't win arguments. But though I am not impartial I'm an observer, and one of the privileges of my job is to be present when Cramer walks into the office and aims his sharp gray eyes at Wolfe, and Wolfe, his head cocked a little to the side, meets them. Who will land the first blow, and will it be a jab, a hook, or a swing? A; On this occasion I got cheated. That first quick impact didn't take place because Mrs. Yeager didn't let it. As Cramer crossed the sill into the office she was there confronting him, demanding, 'Am I being followed around?' Cramer looked down at her. He was polite. 'Good morning, Mrs. Yeager. I hope you haven't 102 Rex Stout been annoyed. When there's a murderer loose we don't like to take chances. For your protection we thought it advisable?' 'I don't need any protection and I don't want any!' With her head tilted back the crease between her chins wasn't so deep. 'Did you follow me here?' 'I didn't. A man did. We?' 'Where is he? I want to see him. Bring him in here. I'm telling you and I'm going to tell him, I will not be followed around. Protect me?' She snorted. 'You didn't protect my husband. He gets shot on the street and put in a hole and you didn't even find him. A boy had to find him. Where's this man?' 'He was merely obeying orders.' Cramer's tone sharpened a little. 'And he followed you here, and maybe you do need protection. There are things to be protected from besides personal violence, like making mistakes. Maybe coming here was one. If you came to tell Nero Wolfe something you haven't told us, something about your husband, something that is or may be connected with his death, it was a mistake. So I want to know what you've said to him and what he said to you. All of it. You've been here nearly half an hour.' For half a second I thought she was going to spill it, and she did too. My guess would be that what popped into her mind was the notion that the simplest and quickest way to see that room on 82nd Street would be to tell Cramer abut it, and she might actually have acted on it if Wolfe's voice hadn't come at her from behind. 'I'll return your retainer if you want it, madam.' 'Oh,' she said. She didn't turn. 'I hired him to do something,' she told Cramer. 'To do what?' Too Many Clients 103 'To find out who killed my husband. You didn't even find his body, and now all you do is follow me around, and this stuff about protecting me when there's nothing to protect me from. If I had anything to tell anybody I'd tell him, not you.' She took a step. 'Get out of the way; I'm going to see that man.' 'You're making a mistake, Mrs. Yeager. I want to know what you said to Wolfe.' 'Ask him.' Seeing that Cramer wasn't going to move, she circled around him, headed for the hall. I followed her out and to the front. As I reached for the knob she came close, stretched her neck to get her mouth near my ear, and whispered, 'When will you take me to see that room?' I whispered back, 'As soon as I get a chance.' I would have liked to stay at the door to see how she went about finding her tail, but if Cramer was going to blurt at Wolfe, 'When did you take over that room on Eightysecond Street?' I wanted to be present, so I closed the door and went back to the office. Cramer wasn't blurting. He was in the red leather chair, the front half of it, with his feet planted flat. Wolfe was saying, '. . . and that is moot. I'm not obliged to account to you for my acceptance of a retainer unless you charge interference with the performance of your official duty, and can support the charge.' 'I wouldn't be here,' Cramer said, 'if I couldn't support it. It wasn't just the report that Mrs. Yeager was here that brought me. That would be enough, finding that you were sticking your nose into a murder investigation, but that's not all. I'm offering you a chance to cooperate by asking you a straight question: What information have you got 104 Rex Stout about Yeager that might help to identify the person that killed him?' So he knew about the room, and we were up a tree. I went to my desk and sat. It would be hard going, and probably the best thing for Wolfe to do would be to empty the bag and forget the clients. He didn't. He hung on. He shook his head. 'You know better than that. Take a hypothesis. Suppose, for instance, that I have been informed in confidence that a certain person owed Yeager a large sum of money and Yeager was pressing for payment. That
