certain that everybody here, every damn one of them, knows things about my daughter-in-law that I don’t know. Even my daughter. Even Nora.” His eyes were leveled at me. “It’s up to you. I’ve told you about my wife, she’ll talk your head off, but everything she tells you may or may not be so. Do you dance?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a good dancer?”
“Yes.”
“Lois likes to dance, but she’s particular. Take her out tomorrow evening. Has Roger hit you for a loan yet?”
“No. I haven’t been alone with him.”
“That wouldn’t stop him. When he does, let him have fifty or a hundred. Give him the impression that you stand in well with me-even let him think you have something on me. Buy my wife some flowers-nothing elaborate, as long as it’s something she thinks you paid for. She loves to have men buy things for her. You might take her to lunch, to Rusterman’s, and tip high. When a man tips high she takes it as a personal compliment.”
I wanted to move my chair back a little to get less of his cigar, but vetoed it. “I don’t object to the program personally,” I said, “but I do professionally. That’s a hell of a schedule for a secretary. They’re not halfwits.”
“That doesn’t matter.” He flipped it off with the cigar. “Let them all think you have something on me- let them think anything they want to. The point is that the house is mine and the money is mine, and whatever I stand for they’ll accept whether they understand it or not. The only exception to that is my daughter-in-law, and that’s what you’re here for. She’s making a horse’s ass out of my son, and she’s getting him away from me, and she’s sticking a finger in my affairs. I’m making you a proposition. The day she’s out of here, with my son staying, you get ten thousand dollars in cash, in addition to any fee Nero Wolfe charges. The day a divorce settles it, with my son still staying, you get fifty thousand. You personally. That will be in addition to any expenses you incur, over and above Wolfe’s fee and expenses.”
I said that no man can stop a conversation the way a woman can, but I must admit that Otis Jarrell had made a darned good stab at it. I also admit I was flattered. Obviously he had gone to Wolfe just to get me, to get me there in his library so he could offer me sixty grand and expenses to frame his daughter-in-law, who probably wasn’t a snake at all. If she had been, his itch to get rid of her would have been legitimate, and he could have left it as a job for Wolfe and just let me earn my salary.
It sure was flattering. “That’s quite a proposition,” I said, “but there’s a hitch. I work for Mr. Wolfe. He pays me.”
“You’ll still be working for him. I only want you to do what I hired him to do. He’ll get his fee.”
That was an insult to my intelligence. He didn’t have to make it so damned plain. It would have been a pleasure to square my shoulders and lift my chin and tell him to take back his gold and go climb a tree, and that would have been the simplest way out, but there were drawbacks. For one thing, it was barely possible that she really was a snake and no framing would be required. For another, if she wasn’t a snake, and if he was determined to frame her, she needed to know it and deserved to know it, but he was still Wolfe’s client, and all I had was what he had said to me with no witnesses present. For still another, there was the ten grand in Wolfe’s safe, not mine to spurn. For one more if we need it, I have my full share of curiosity.
I tightened my face to look uncomfortable. “I guess,” I said, “I’ll have to tell Mr. Wolfe about your proposition. I think I will. I’ve got to protect myself.”
“Against what?” he demanded.
“Well… for instance, you might talk in your sleep.”
He laughed. “I like you, Goodwin. I knew we’d get along. This is just you and me, and you don’t need protection any more than I do. You know your way around and so do I. What do you want now for expenses? Five thousand? Ten?”
“Nothing. Let it ride and we’ll see.” I loosened the face. “I’m not accepting your proposition, Mr. Jarrell. I’m not even considering it. If I ever found myself feeling like accepting it, I’d meet you somewhere that I was sure wasn’t wired for sound. After all, Horland’s Protective Agency might be listening in right now.”
He laughed again. “You
“Not cagey, I just don’t want my hair mussed. Do you want me to go on with the program? As you suggested?”
“Certainly I do. I think we understand each other, Goodwin.” He put a fist on the desk. “I’ll tell you this, since you probably know it anyway. I’d give a million dollars cash any minute to get rid of that woman for good and call it a bargain. That doesn’t mean you can play me for a sucker. I’ll pay for what I get, but not for what I don’t get. Any arrangements you make, I want to know who with and for exactly what and how much.”
“You will. Have you any more suggestions?”
He didn’t have, at least nothing specific. Even after proposing, as it looked to me, an out-and-out frame, he still thought, or pretended to, that I might raise some dust by cultivating the inmates. He tried to insist on an advance for expenses, but I said no, I would ask for it if and when needed. I was surprised that he didn’t refer again to my notion that I might have to tell Wolfe about his proposition; apparently he was taking it for granted that I would take my bread buttered on both sides if the butter was thick enough. He was sure we understood each other, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure of anything. Before I went he gave me two keys, one for the front door and one for the library. He said he had to make a phone call, and I said I was going out for a walk. He said I could use the phone there, or in my room, and I said that wasn’t it, I always took a little walk in the evening. Maybe we understood each other at that, up to a point.
I went to the front vestibule, took the private elevator down, nodded at the sentinel in the lobby-not the one who had been there when I arrived-walked east to Madison, found a phone booth, and dialed a number.
After one buzz a voice was in my ear. “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Orville Cather speaking.”
