A Right to Die

He regarded Wolfe, opened his mouth and closed it again, about-faced, and was going. Wolfe raised his voice to tell his back, 'We are under arrest!'

'Balls,' Cramer said without stopping. As I got up and went to the hall to see that he was outside when the door shut, I was thinking that you couldn't blame him for being rude. He was facing the fact that they were slapping the big one on a man that Nero Wolfe had decided to take on. I didn't offer to help him with his hat and coat; it wouldn't have been appreciated. When he was out and the door shut I stepped back in the office. Wolfe was back in his chair, looking sour.

I went to my desk and sat. 'At least twelve hours,' I said. 'I might as well be in jail.' I swiveled, got out paper and carbons, and swung the typewriter around.

'What are you doing?' he demanded.

'Starting that damn report.'

'Why don't you badger me first?'

'Waste of time. Anyway, didn't I say no?'

'Yes. Why?'

I swiveled to face him. 'You know why, since you phoned Whipple. When he barked at you, 'What did you do, what did you do,' I thought to myself, so he didn't kill her. If he had killed her of course he would be putting on an act, but that act was just too good. Only a genius could be that good, and I've never seen any genius besides you. Then when he told me I knew who killed her. Then when he apologized to you. Do I have to go on?'

'No. It was manifest. He couldn't possibly have been dissembling. You're aware that the report is required not only for Mr. Cramer. I must have it.'

'Sure. Proceeding as usual. Giving me a long, mean, extremely difficult job.'

I turned and got at the paper and carbons.

6

It took eleven hours plus, four hours Thursday evening and most of Friday. Thirty-two pages and the affidavit. That may seem slow, but for most of it I had no notes. At a quarter past four Friday afternoon I put it in an envelope with a label addressed to Inspector Cramer, took it to a notary public on Eighth Avenue to have the affidavit made official, and then, in a taxi, to Homicide South on 20th Street. I also took a taxi back. It was a nice sunny winter day for a walk, but the Gazette was on the stands and there was an item in it which I wanted to enjoy at leisure.

There had been interruptions. Whipple had phoned late Thursday evening to say that Oster, the lawyer, had been glad to hear that he would have Nero Wolfe's help and had approved on behalf of his client. At eight-thirty Friday morning, already at my desk, I was buzzed by Wolfe on the house phone from his room and instructed to call Lon Cohen and tell him that if he cared to send a reporter to 35th Street we would have an item that might be printable; and furthermore I was told to send the reporter up to the plant rooms if he came between nine and eleven. He came a little after ten, and Fritz took him up in the elevator. That wasn't unprecedented but it was out of the ordinary. It was too bad I couldn't tell Dunbar Whipple that, in the interest of a Negro, Wolfe was making an exception he had rarely made in the interest of any white man. I wondered then, and I still do, whether words had anything to do with it, knowing how he is about words. As he had told me, discussing words one evening at the dinner table, negro means black in Spanish and nero means black in Italian. And he had been born in Montenegro, Black Mountain. Maybe something buried in him but not dead, in his cesspool and/or garden.

Of the other phone calls I need to report only one, shortly after lunch, from Oster, when it was arranged that he and Whipple would come at six o'clock for a conference.

In the cab returning from 20th Street I read the item three times. It was on page 3, with the headline: NERO WOLFE SITS IN. Not bad. About anyone else it would probably have been STEPS IN. God knows he sits. It went:

Nero Wolfe, the well-known private detective, is working on the Susan Brooke murder case. He announced today that he has been engaged by Harold R.. Oster, attorney for Dunbar Whipple, who has been charged with the murder (see page 1), to investigate certain aspects of the affair.

According to the record, not one of Wolfe's clients has ever been convicted of murder. Asked this morning by a Gazette reporter if he didn't feel that in this case he was endangering his record, he replied with a flat no. He said that he has good reason to believe that Dunbar Whipple is innocent, and he is confident that, working with Oster, he will be able to procure evidence that will clear him.

He declined to disclose his reasons for believing that Whipple is innocent or the nature of the evidence he expects to get. But for some people the mere fact that he is willing to have it known publicly that he is engaged in the defense of Whipple will be signiflcant. Others will say that there is always a first time.

No picture of the well-known detective, though there were a dozen shots of him in the Gazette morgue. I'd have to write a letter to the editor.

When I entered the old brownstone and went to the office I noticed something. The Gazette is delivered there every day around five o'clock, and it wasn't on my desk, and I wanted the extra copy. I went to the kitchen and asked Fritz if he had it, and he said no, Wolfe had phoned down from the plant rooms to bring it up. More out of the ordinary. He likes to see his name in the paper as well as you do, but he always waits until he comes down to the office. As I got the milk from the refrigerator and poured a glass I was thinking that if you stick around long enough you'll see everything.