He made a face. “This will be distasteful. Bring keys.”
I went to the cabinet at the far wall, opened a drawer, and made selections. Although I couldn’t qualify on the witness stand as a lock expert, I know a Hotchkiss from a Euler, and I can open your suitcase with a paper clip if you’ll be patient. Moving the box to my desk, I sat and started in. I had selected four types, little boxes of assortments. In three minutes I eliminated the first type, and in another three the second one. The third seemed more promising, and I was getting hot when Wolfe growled, “Get a hammer and screwdriver.”
As he spoke it clicked and I had it. I raised the lid. The box was empty. I upended it for Wolfe to see. “Yeah,” I said. “It sure is distasteful.”
He took in air, about a bushel, and let it out again. “It’s just as well. It would probably have presented us with a problem. More than one. I presume he decided it was a mistake to tell his wife of it and removed the contents. Elsewhere in the house?”
“I doubt it.”
“So do I.” He leaned back, closed his eyes, and pushed his lips out. In a moment he pulled them in, and then out and in, out and in. He was working. A minute passed, two minutes, three... He opened his eyes and straightened up. “Lock the box and leave it on your desk. Put the keys away. Have a gun in your hand when you admit them, and go to your desk and stay there. Proceed.”
I proceeded. After locking the box and returning the keys to the cabinet, I moved four of the yellow chairs up, in a row facing Wolfe’s desk, got the gun out, opened the door to the front room, and invited them to enter. The gentlemen followed the ladies. I went to my desk and pronounced names, and when they were seated I sat, with the gun in my hand resting on my thigh.
Wolfe’s eyes went right and then left. “This shouldn’t take long,” he said. “First the situation. I shall not resort to euphemism. You were being blackmailed by Mr. Hazen, either collectively — please don’t interrupt. Either collectively or separately. He had other victims, but you four alone were paying him around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, ostensibly for professional services, but that was merely a subterfuge. I don’t know whether the police know that or not, probably not, but I do. If there was any doubt it was removed when Mr. Goodwin found you in that house surreptitiously, looking for something, and you offered him a large sum of money. So much—”
“I didn’t,” Mrs. Oliver blurted. “Mr. Perdis did.”
“Pfui. You were there. Did you object? So much for that. I am acting for my client, Mrs. Hazen. She is being held under suspicion of killing her husband, and has given me certain information. This is one item: one day about a year ago her husband showed her a box, a metal box, he had in his bedroom. To show it to her he removed the bottom drawer of a chest and pried up the board the drawer slid on, and the box was underneath the board. He told her that if he died she should get the box, have it opened by a locksmith, and burn the contents without looking at them. It was to get that box that Mr. Goodwin went there this evening, with Mrs. Hazen’s key and authority. After you left the room he removed the drawer and lifted the board, and got it. It’s there on his desk.”
That was like him. I hadn’t told him that I had sent them from the room before I got it, and that they hadn’t seen it; he took it for granted. I appreciate his compliments, but some day he may overestimate me. I had no idea where or what he was headed for, but I thought a little gesture wouldn’t hurt, so I got the box with my left hand, the gun being in my right, and displayed it. Four pairs of eyes were on it, glued to it. Anne Talbot mumbled something. Perdis started up, thought better of it, and sank back. Jules Khoury muttered, “So it was there.” I had the gun, but there were four of them, so I got up, detoured around them to the safe, opened the safe door, put the box in, closed the door, and spun the knob. As I returned to my chair Wolfe was speaking.
“I have a proposal to make, but first a question or two. My objective, of course, is to demonstrate that Mrs. Hazen did not kill her husband. Yesterday evening you dined at her table. After dinner she went to her room, and soon after that Mr. Weed left. I’m not going to ask about the sequence and the times of your departures, or where you went and what you did; the police have got all that from you, and if the matter can be resolved by such details they are extremely competent at that sort of thing, and they are ahead of me, with an army. But I want to know about your conversation with Mr. Hazen after his wife and Mr. Weed left. What was said?”
“Nothing,” Khoury declared.
“Nonsense. Mr. Hazen had told his wife he was going to discuss something with you. What?”
“Nothing of any importance. He opened champagne. We discussed the stock market. He asked Mrs. Talbot what plays she had seen. He got Perdis talking about ships.”
“He talked about poisons,” Perdis said.
“He talked about his wife’s father,” Mrs. Oliver said. “He said his wife’s father was a great inventor, a genius.”
Wolfe scowled at them. “This is egregious. If he discussed some aspect of his peculiar relations with you, naturally you didn’t tell the police about it. But I know of those relations and the police don’t. I intend to know what was said.”
“You don’t understand, Mr. Wolfe.” It was Anne Talbot. She was leaning forward, appealing to him. “You didn’t know him. He was a monster. He was a demon. He didn’t want to discuss anything, he just wanted to have us there together, and we had to go. It was his special kind of torture. He wanted each of us to know about the others and to know that the others knew about us. He liked to see us trying to act as if it were just a... just a dinner party. You didn’t know him.”
“He was a devil,” Perdis said.
Wolfe surveyed them. “Did he reveal to any of you the nature of his hold on the others, last evening or any other time? Or hint at it?”
Anne Talbot and Khoury shook their heads. Mrs. Oliver said, “No, oh, no.” Perdis said, “I think he hinted. For instance, poison. I thought he hinted.”
“But no particulars?”
“No.”
“I must concede that he was not an estimable man. Very well, he is dead, and here we are. As I said, I have a proposal. It is highly likely, all but certain, that he kept in that box whatever support he had for his demands on you. The box is in my safe. I don’t desire or intend to inspect its contents. But Mrs. Hazen is my client and I am committed to protect both her person and her property. She is not bound to follow her husband’s instructions to burn the contents of the box, and it would be quixotic to destroy anything so valuable. I will surrender it to you, you four, for one million dollars.”
They gawked at him.
“That’s a large sum, but it is not exorbitant. In another seven years, if Mr. Hazen had lived, you would have paid him more than that, and that wouldn’t have ended it. This will; this will be final. If I left it to you to apportion the burden you would probably haggle, and time is short; so I shall expect one quarter of the million from each of you, either in currency or certified checks, within twenty-four hours. There is no question of extortion by Mrs. Hazen or me; we haven’t seen the contents of the box; I only say, as her agent, you may have them at that price if you want them.”
“You haven’t opened the box,” Perdis said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“What if it’s empty?”
“You get nothing and you pay nothing.” Wolfe looked up at the clock. “The box will be opened here tomorrow at midnight, with all of you present, or earlier if and when you meet the terms. If it is empty, so much for that. If it isn’t, there will of course be a difficulty. None of you will want the others to inspect the items that pertain to him. I don’t want to look at any of them. I suggest that Mr. Goodwin, who is thoroughly discreet, may remove the items singly, examine each one only enough to determine whom it applies to, and hand it over. If you have a better procedure to suggest, do so.”