always do. 13 IT WORKED. Driving downtown and across to the garage on Tenth Avenue, I considered the approach. Over the years I suppose I have told Wolfe 10,000 bare-faced lies, or, if you prefer inbetween figures, make it 8,392, either on personal matters that were none of his business or on business details that couldn't hurt and might help, but I have no desire to break a world record, and anyway the point was to make it stick if possible. I decided on a flank attack and then to play it by ear. When I entered the office at 6:22, he was at his desk working on the Double-Crostic in the Times, and of course I didn't interrupt. I took my jacket off and draped it on the back of my chair, loosened my tie, went to the safe and got the checkbook and took it to my desk, and got interested in the stubs for the month of June. That was a flank attack all right. In a few minutes, maybe eight, he looked up and frowned at me and asked, 'What's the balance now?' 'It depends,' I said. I twisted around to get Exhibit A from my jacket pocket and rose and handed it across. He read it, taking his time, dropped it on the desk, narrowed his eyes at me, and said, 'Grrr.' 'She changed the fifty to sixty-five herself,' I said. 'That heading could have been Archie Goodwin has sixty-five thousand instead of Nero Wolfe. She didn't actually suggest it, but she thinks I'm pretty good. She said so. When I told her you 106 Please Pass the Guilt were quitting and handed her the check, she said, 'How much did Browning pay him?' I told her that if I talked for five hours I might be able to convince her that you wouldn't double-cross a client, but actually I doubt it. You may not give a damn what she thinks of my employer, but I do. I brought her to you. She said things and I said things, and when it became evident that nothing else would convince her, I went to a typewriter and wrote that. I don't claim the wording is perfect. I am not Norman Mailer.' 'Bah. That peacock? That blowhard?' 'All right, make it Hemingway.' 'There was a typewriter there?' 'Sure. It was the big room on the fourth floor where apparently she does everything but eat and sleep. As you see, the paper is a twenty-pound bond at least half rag. Yours is only twenty percent rag.' He gave it a look, a good look, and I made a note to pat myself on the back for not doing it on my typewriter. 'I admit,' I said, 'that I didn't try to talk her out of it. I certainly did not. In discussing it I told her that I thought it would work, that it's ten to one that someone knows something that would crack it open, and that fifty grand is a lot of bait. That was before she changed it to sixty-five. This is a long answer to your question, What's the balance? As I said, it depends. I brought the check back, but it would only cost eight cents to mail it. If we do, the balance will be a little under six thousand dollars. There was the June fifteenth income tax payment. I'm not badgering you, I'm just answering your question. But I'll permit myself to mention that this way it would not be a frantic squawk for someone to pull you out of a mudhole. I will also mention that if I phone her that the ad--correction, advertisement--has been placed, she will mail another check. For sixty-five thousand. She would make it a million if it would help. As of now nothing else on earth matters to her.' What he did was typical, absolutely him. He didn't say 'Very Please Pass the Guilt 107 well' or 'Tear the check up' or even 'Confound it.' He picked the thing up, read it slowly, scowling at it, put it to one side under a paper weight, said 'I'm doing some smoked sturgeon Muscovite. Please bring a bottle of Madeira from the cellar,' and picked up the Double-Crostic. 14 the ad was on page 6 of the Times Tuesday morning and page 9 of the Gazette that afternoon--two columns, bold face, with plenty of space all around--and two more conditions had been added: 1. The $65,000 may all be paid to one person, or it may be divided among two or more people. 2. The $65,000 or any part of it will be paid only for information, not for a suggestion, conjecture, or theory.
The other conditions, with only three words changed, followed. We had discussed a certain probability and decided nothing could be done about it. Would Homicide South see the ad? Sure. Would they keep an eye, several eyes, on our front door to see who came? Sure again. Then what? They would horn in on our investigation of a murder. They would try to get for nothing what our client had offered $65,000 for. They would probably even put a tap on our phone, and the scientists have done such wonders for mankind that you can no longer tell whether your wire has been tapped or not. I admit science works both ways; we intended to record all conversations with callers, either in person or by phone. Also, with the bank balance fat again, we had reserves ready. Saul and Fred and Qrrie Please Pass the Guilt 109 were back, and at two p.m. Tuesday they were in the front room playing pinochle. The very first one was wild. There had been four phone calls, but they had all been obvious screwballs. The first one in the flesh rang the doorbell a little before three o'clock. Through the one-way glass panel in the front door, he looked like a screwball too, but I opened the door and he handed me a card--a small blue card with a name on it in fancy dark blue letters: Nasir ibn Bekr. Okay, a foreign screwball, but I let him in. He was slim and wiry, he came about up to my chin, his hair and face and eyes were all very dark, and his nose would have gone with a man twice his size. On that warm June day his jacket was buttoned and the collar of his blue shirt was limp. When I turned after closing the door, he handed me a piece of paper, the ad clipped from the Times, and said, 'I will see Mr. Nero Wolfe.' 'Perhaps,' I said. 'He's busy. You have information?' 'I am not sure. I may have.' Not a screwball. Screwballs are sure. I asked him to wait, motioning to the bench, took the card to the office and handed it to Wolfe, and was told to bring him, but I didn't have to. He was there, right behind me. The big Keraghan in the office is thick, but there's no rug in the hall; he was the silent type. He should be closer to me than the red leather chair, so I blocked it off and motioned to the yellow one near the corner of my desk. Then I went and closed the door to the hall, for a reason. The arrangement was that when I admitted a visitor and intended to show him to the office, I would notify the trio by tapping on the door to the front room. When I had got the visitor to the office, I would close that door so that they would not be seen as they went down the hall to the alcove at the kitchen end, and they would take a look at the visitor through the peephole that was covered on the office side by a trick picture of a waterfall. They would also listen. As I crossed back to my desk, Nasir ibn Bekr said, 'Of course this is being recorded,' and I said, 'Then I won't have to take notes.' 110 Please Pass the Guilt Wolfe said, 'The conditions in the advertisement are clear?' He nodded. 'Certainly. Perfectly clear. The information I have, it is my personal knowledge, but its worth is for you to determine. I must ask a question. We find nothing in your record to indicate clearly your position regarding the situation in the Near East. Are you anti-Zionist?' 'No.' He turned to me. 'Are you?' 'No. My only objection to Jews is that one of them is as good a poker player as I am. Sometimes a little better.' He nodded. 'They have learned how to use guile. They have had to.' To Wolfe: 'Perhaps you know that there are Ara1' terrorists--mostly Palestinians--active in this country, mostly in Washington and New York.' 'It is said that there are, yes.' 'It is not just said. There are. I am one.' He unbuttoned the top button of his jacket, slipped his hand in, and brought out a small brown envelope. From it he got a folded paper. He rose to hand it to Wolfe, but terrorists are in my department and I moved fast enough to get a hand to it first. As I unfolded it, he sat and said, 'That is the names of five men, but I am not sure it is then: real names. It is the only names I know for them. We meet every week, once a week, on Sunday afternoon, in an apartment in Jackson Heights. That is the address and telephone number. Armad Qarmat lives there. I do not have addresses for the others. As you see, my name is not there. I have printed them because with names like ours that is better than writing.' I had given it a look and handed it to Wolfe. 'I see you have television,' Nasir ibn Bekr said. 'Perhaps you saw a program on CAN in May, May seventh, 'Oil and Mecca.'' Wolfe shook his head. 'I turn on the television rarely, only to confirm my opinion of it.' Not having been asked, I didn't Please Pass the Guilt 111 say that I had seen the 'Oil and Mecca' program at Lily Rowan's. 'It was a full hour,' the terrorist said. 'It was partly a documentary in pictures of the production of oil in Arab countries, but it was also a commentary. It did not say that the existence and welfare of Israel were of more importance to civilization, and of course to democracy, than the Arabian oil, but it strongly implied that. It was definitely anti-Arabian and pro-Israel. That was a Wednesday. The following Sunday we discussed it, and we wrote a letter to CAN demanding a retraction of the lies it told. The next Sunday Armad said there had been no answer ta the letter, and he had learned that the man responsible for the program was a vice- president of CAN named Amory Browning. That was Sunday, May eighteenth. We decided that it was an opportunity to take action against the anti-Arabian propaganda in this country.' His head turned to me and back to Wolfe. 'I should explain that I became a member of the group only a year ago, not quite a year, and I am not yet completely in their confidence. Especially Armad Qarmat has not fully decided about me, and that is why I said I am not sure, I may have information. I do know they had three bombs, I saw them one day. In April. That Sunday, May eighteenth, one of them suggested using one of the bombs at the CAN office, and if possible the office of Amory Browning. There was some discussion, and I saw that Armad Qarmat stopped it on account of me. As I said, he has not fully accepted me. The next Sunday, May twenty-fifth, one of them spoke of the explosion of a bomb in Amory Browning's office, killing Peter Odell, another vice-president, but Armad Qarmat said that should not be discussed. Since then there have been four meetings, four Sundays, and the bomb has not been mentioned.'
He tilted his head back and took a couple of breaths, then looked at me and back at Wolfe. 'There,' he said, 'I have told you. This morning I saw your advertisement. Sixty-five thou- 112 Please Pass the Guilt sand dollars is a
