man is treacherous.'
Wolfe skipped the tribute. 'That will expedite matters,' he said approvingly. His eyes moved. 'I must tell the police about that bottle of poison reasonably soon, so the less I'm interrupted the better, but if you all refuse to say anything whatever I'll be wasting my time and might as well phone them now. There are one or two things I should know--for example, can I narrow it down? Of course Mr. Buff and Mr. O'Garro were on these premises yesterday afternoon. Were you, Mr. Hansen?'
'Yes.'
'When?'
'Roughly, from four o'clock until after six.'
'Were you, Mr. Heery?'
'I was here twice. I stopped in for a few minutes when I went to lunch, and around four-thirty I was here for half an hour.'
'That's too bad.' Wolfe put his palms on the table. 'Now, gentlemen, I'll be as brief as may be. When I'm through we can consider whether I have to enter a defense against Mr. Hansen's charge of treachery. Until the moment of Mr. Assa's collapse in my office last evening I was concerned only with the job I had been hired for, not with murder. I invited Mr. Cramer to the meeting because I expected that developments to be contrived by me.would remove both the contestants and yourselves as primary targets of his inquiry, which was surely desirable. My first objective was to demonstrate to the contestants that their receipt of the answers by mail had made it impossible to proceed with the verses that had been given them last week, and it would be futile for them to resist the inevitable; and to get their unanimous agreement to the distribution of new verses as soon as their freedom of movement was restored.'
'You say that now.' Hansen was buying nothing.
'It will be supported. I was confident I could do that, for they had no feasible alternative. Then I would be through with them and they would leave, and I would pursue the second objective with the rest of you. I confess that the second objective was not at all clear, and the path to it was poorly mapped, until nearly seven o'clock last evening, when Mr. Assa called. – Mr. Hansen, did you know that Mr. Assa came to see me at that hour yesterday?'
'No. I don't know it now.'
'Did you, Mr. Buff?'
'No.'
'Mr. O'Garro?'
'No!'
'Mr. Heery?'
'I did not.'
Wolfe nodded. 'One of you is lying, and that may help. He came and we talked. Mr. Goodwin was present, and he has typed a transcript of the conversation for Mr. Cramer. He could report it to you now, but it would take too long, so I'll summarize it. Mr. Assa said he was speaking for himself, not for the firm; that he had not consulted his associates. He congratulated me for what he called my brilliant stroke in sending the answers to the contestants and thereby rescuing the contest from ruin. He offered his personal guarantee for payment of my fee. He took a drink of Pernod and poured another. And he began and ended with a demand that I call off the meeting for last evening. As for me, I denied sending the answers to the contestants, and I refused to call off the meeting. He left in a huff.'
Wolfe took a breath. 'That was all I needed. Mr. Assa's pretended certainty that I had sent the answers, and his eagerness to give me credit for it privately, could only mean that he had sent them himself, having got them from the paper in Dahlmann's wallet, or that he knew who had. The former was much more probable. Now the second objective of the meeting, and the path to it, were quite clear. I would proceed as planned with the contestants, get their consent to a new agreement, and then dismiss them. After they had gone I would tackle Mr. Assa and the rest of you, in the presence of Mr. Cramer. I wasn't assuming that Assa had killed Dahlmann; on the contrary, I was assuming that he hadn't, since in that case he would hardly have dared expose himself as he did in coming to me. My supposition was that Assa had gone to Dahlmann's apartment, found him dead, and took the wallet--one of Mr. Cramer's theories, as you know. If so, it had to be disclosed to Mr. Cramer, and the sooner the better--the better not only for the demands of justice, but for my client, the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa. It would embarrass an individual, Vernon Assa, but it would be to the advantage of everyone else. It would eliminate the contestants as murder suspects, and would substantially lessen the burden of suspicion for the rest of you. I intended to expound that position to all of you and get you to help me exert pressure on Mr. Assa, and I expected to succeed.'
He took another deep breath, deeper. 'I am, as you see, confessing to an egregious blunder. It came from my failure to consider sufficiently the possibility that Mr. Assa had himself been duped or had miscalculated. I now condemn myself, but on the other hand, if I had known at nine o'clock last evening exactly what--'
'You can omit the if's,' Hansen said coldly. 'Apologize to yourself, we're not interested. How did Assa miscalculate?'
'By thinking that the man who had admitted to him that he had taken Dahlmann's wallet was telling the truth when he said that he had found Dahlmann dead. By dismissing the possibility that in fact he had killed Dahlmann.'
'Wait a minute,' Heery objected. 'You thought that yourself about Assa.'
'But Assa had come to me, and besides, I have said I blundered. It was painfully obvious, of course, when Assa died before my eyes. No effort was required to learn what had happened; the only question was, which one of you had made it happen. Which one--'
'Not obvious to me,' O'Garro said.
'Then I'll describe it.' Wolfe shifted in the chair, which was almost big enough but not used to him. 'Since that bottle is under guard, with great assurance. Yesterday afternoon Assa learned somehow that one of you had Dahlmann's wallet in your possession. Whether he learned it by chance or by enterprise doesn't matter; he learned it, and he confronted you. You--'
