A Right to Die

make that impossible. You can tell me that if I withhold the information you'll tell them I have it. If you do, I'll have to give it to them at once and quit. Have I made it clear?'

'Yes.' Whipple lowered his head. I had seen many people, sitting in that chair, lower or turn their heads when they found how hard it was to use their brains while they were meeting Wolfe's eyes. Seeing the glasses on the floor, he bent over to pick them up, got his handkerchief out again, and rubbed, slow motion.

'I won't urge you,' Wolfe said.

He looked up. 'Oh, you don't have to. I was thinking about my wife. If she knew he could be home tomorrow -but she doesn' have to know.' He jerked his shoulders up. 'I won't tell her.' He put the glasses on. 'The information-will it keep? Can you still use it, if…'

'I can use it at any time. I have it in writing, a signed statement, by the woman your friends saw here this afternoon.'

'Will they be involved?'

'No.'

'Do I know her?'

'I doubt it. I won't name her.'

'I-I'm going to ask a question.'

'You have already asked three. I may answer it.'

'Do you know-I mean do you think you know-who killed her?'

'No. I have no inkling. I have no plan. I have only a commitment, and I intend to meet it, though at the moment I have no idea when or how. How many times has the answer to some bothersome question come while you were brushing your teeth?'

'More than once.'

'I'll be brushing mine in a couple of hours. Not with an electric thing; with that machine the fear of electrocution would squelch all mental processes. As an anthropologist, are you concerned with the menace of automation?'

'As an anthropologist, no.'

'As a man you are.'

'Why… yes.'

'Your son is twenty-one years old. Are you aware that by averting this calamity for him we will be compelling him inevitably to suffer a worse one?'

Very neat. Confronted by a father worried sick about a son locked up for the big one, he had dealt with that in less than a quarter of an hour and steered him to automation; a fresh audience, better than me, since he had had me at dinner. Neat.

12

I should have known better. As I sat at my breakfast table in the kitchen Wednesday-morning, disposing of corn muffins and shirred eggs with sherry and chives, my eyes were on the Times propped on the rack, but they were sharing attention with my ears. If the house phone buzzed it would be Wolfe, in his room, to tell me to come up for instructions. I should have known better. His line about getting answers to questions while brushing his teeth had been merely a way to sneak up on automation. I don't say he had never got an idea while brushing his teeth, but if so it was when we were on something urgent. There was nothing urgent about this. What the hell, Dunbar Whipple was safe and sound, getting three meals a day-though it would have been different if Wolfe had been eating the meals. That would have been urgent.

That Wednesday was about as unsatisfactory a day as I have ever spent, speaking professionally. Wolfe's taking time out from a job was nothing new, far from it, but always before I had had the satisfaction of poking him; as I said, that was one of my main functions. Now I couldn't. I was on record that nobody could do anything, and that day nobody did, for sure. The only action performed or word spoken that had anything to do with the case came around five o'clock when Wolfe was up in the plant rooms fiddling with the orchids. The phone rang, and I said aloud, 'Automation again.' I lifted the receiver.

'Nero Wolfe's office, Archie Goodwin speaking.'

'This is Peter Vaughn. I'm calling now because I knew Wolfe wouldn't be there. I can't take him.'

'Neither can I. Today. Are you up and dressed?'

'Sure. I slept _seventeen hours_. I wanted to know, have you seen her?'

'Yes, and so has Mr. Wolfe. She spent an hour here Yesterday afternoon. Relax. She admits it as you told it. Naturally you want to know if we have passed it on. We haven't. For the present we're saving it. I wouldn't advise you to drop in on her for tea. She'd probably put vinegar in it, or something worse. By the way, I meant to ask you yesterday, have you ever heard her do imitations? People's voices?'

'Yes, often. She's good at it. She was on the stage, you know.'

'Oh, she was?'

'Yes, Dolly Drake. Not a star, nothing like that. I believe she quit when she married Kenneth, but of