A Right to Die

He made a face. 'No.'

'Second, Beth Tiger, and on her I must get personal. I have some idea, from things you've said these two weeks, how you feel about a colored man marrying a white girl. You don't feel. How about a white man marrying a colored girl?'

'Pfui.'

'You may have a surprise coming. So far it may be only lust, but as I ate breakfast this morning I caught myself wondering if she can make Creole fritters, and you know what that may mean-or I suppose you don't. My room would do for both of us for a while, until the little ones start to come, and as for their color of course I can't say. As for the professional situation, she too was in the building, and she had a much better motive than Mrs. Brooke; she wanted to marry Dunbar herself.'

'Presumably.'

'Not presumably, certainly. That will be a problem for me, but I'll manage. Professionally, the problem is to get her down one flight and into the apartment. Have you any suggestions?'

'No.'

'Neither have I. If Mrs. Brooke and Miss Tiger are filed, it could have been someone else who lives in the building. Saul and Fred and Orrie could check on all the tenants in a few days, and if they drew a blank we would know that the murderer probably entered the building around eight o'clock or soon after, and left it before Mrs. Brooke arrived. Someone in the neighborhood probably saw him coming or going. Saul and Fred and Orrie would be handicapped for that combing job by their color, so it would be better to use three or four Negro operatives. There are quite a few available. Okay?'

'No.'

'I agree. That was third. Fourth, have Saul and Fred and Orrie check the alibis of the ROCC staff. Not just the ones who were here, all thirty-four of them. Some of them may have felt as Ewing did about Dunbar marrying a white girl, only more so. Any of them might have known about the phone call. One of the females might have been able to imitate Susan's voice, and she might have left at five o'clock. But the main thing, check all their alibis. Three weeks should do it, or maybe four. Does that appeal to you?'

'No.'

'Very well. You presumed that I am aware of the situation and I said I am. There isn't one single solitary sensible thing that you can do or I can do or Saul and Fred and Orrie can do.'

He nodded. 'You're right.' He switched the reading light on and picked up the book he was just starting, _Science: The Glorious Entertainment_, by Jacques Barzun.

I glared at him. He had made a monkey of me. One of my main functions, perhaps the mainest, is to ride him if and when he lies down on the job, and he had muzzled me. My intention, of course, had been to dare him to suggest a move, to show how much smarter he was than me, and he knew it.

'Go to hell,' I said emphatically and turned to the typewriter and banged.

I don't know how long he would have stalled on that one-a day or a week or forever. At dinner he started on automation. He has always been anti-machine, and on automation his position was that it would soon make life an absurdity. It was already bad enough; on a cold and windy March day he was eating his evening meal in comfortable warmth, and he had no personal connection whatever with the production of the warmth. The check that paid the oil bill was connected, but he wasn't. Soon, with automation, no one would have any connection with the processes and phenomena that make it possible to stay alive. We would all be parasites, living not on some other living organisms but on machines, arrived at the ultimate ignominy. I tried to put up a stiff argument, but he knows more words. We were still at it when we got up to cross to the office for coffee, and were in the hail when the doorbell rang.

It was Paul Whipple. Wolfe, seeing him through the one-way glass, let out a growl; he hadn't finished with automation. But it was the client, and besides, since we had no notion of what to do next, we had better see if he had.

No. All he had was a question. Being polite, he didn't ask it until Fritz had brought the coffee, and Wolfe had poured and I had passed, and he had taken a couple of sips. The steam dimmed his black-rimmed cheaters, and he got out a handkerchief to wipe them.

'My two friends told me what happened,' he said. 'They said you didn't tell them not to.'

Wolfe was trying to look as if he didn't mind having unexpected company and not succeeding. 'I told them they could tell you but no one else.'

'They won't. You said there might be a development that would show promise. Did it?'

'Yes and no.' Wolfe drank, put his cup down, and took a deep breath. 'Mr. Whipple. I intended to reserve this, and if you had telephoned I would have. But you troubled to come, and you have a right to your question. Your son could be out tomorrow. Perhaps on bail, but at liberty.'

The cheaters dropped to the floor, but the rug is soft. 'My God,' he said, just loud enough to hear. 'I knew it. I knew you could do it.'

'I haven't done much. I won't give you the particulars; I'll only tell you that I have verifiable information which makes it highly unlikely that Susan Brooke was alive when your son arrived at the apartment. It is sufficiently persuasive to convince the police that it would be inadvisable to hold your son on a murder charge. But it doesn't give the murderer's name or even hint at it.'

Whipple was staring, concentrating. Without his glasses he looked older. 'But I don't- If she was dead when he got there…'

'Yes. The information makes that conclusion hard to challenge. I can have him released, probably under bail as a material witness. Then the police will be galled. They will suspect you and your wife, and everyone associated with the Rights of Citizens Committee. They will suspect your son, not of actually doing the deed but of being implicated. He can be conclusively cleared only by producing the murderer, and that will be much more difficult with the police everywhere, harassing everyone, including me. Especially me. I don't want to give them the information I have. I want them to keep your son in custody, satisfied that they have the culprit. You can of course