“That was actually the impression,” Wolfe murmured.
“It was indeed. I could back all this up with various miscellaneous items, for instance your sending for the Stenophone Wednesday morning, which is the chief reason I lean to Tuesday, but let’s go on to number three: what was the big idea? When you found the cylinder why didn’t you say so? Because you let your personal opinions interfere with your professional actions, which reminds me I must do some reading up on ethics. Because your opinion of the NIA coincides roughly with some other people’s, including my own, but that’s beside the point, and you knew the stink about the murders was raising cain with the NIA, and you wanted to prolong it as much as possible. To accomplish that you even went to the length of letting yourself be locked in your room for three days, but there I admit another factor enters, your love of art for art’s sake. You’ll do anything to put on a good show, provided you get top billing.”
“How long is this going on?”
“I’m about through. Number four, why did you drop the client and return the dough, is easy. There’s always a chance that you may change your mind some day and decide you want to go to heaven, and a plain unadulterated double cross would rule it out. So you couldn’t very well have kept the NIA’s money, and gone on having it for a client, while you were doing your damnedest to push it off a cliff. Here, however, is where I get cynical. What if no reward had been publicly offered? Would you have put on the show just the same? I express no opinion, but boy, I have one. Another thing about ethics-exactly what is the difference between having a client and taking a fee, and accepting a reward?”
“Nonsense. The reward was advertised to a hundred million people and the terms stated. It was to be paid to whoever earned it. I earned it.”
“Okay, I merely mention the point. I don’t question your going to heaven if you decide you want in. Incidentally, you are not absolutely watertight. If Saul Panzer was put under oath and asked what he did from Wednesday to Saturday, and he replied that he kept in touch with Henry A. Warder to make sure that Warder could be had when needed, and then if you were asked where you got the idea that you might need Henry A. Warder, mightn’t you have a little trouble shooting the answer? Not that it will happen, knowing Saul as I do. – Well. Let’s see. I guess that’s about all. I just wanted you to know that I resent your making contemptuous remarks about your brain.”
Wolfe grunted. There was a silence. Then his eyes opened half way and he rumbled:
“You’ve left one thing out.”
“What?”
“A possible secondary motive. Or even a primary one. Taking all that you have said as hypothesis-since of course it is inadmissible as fact-look back at me last Tuesday, six days ago, when-by hypothesis-I found the cylinder. What actually would have taken precedence in my mind?”
“I’ve been telling you. Not what would have, what did.”
“But you left one thing out. Miss Gunther.”
“What about her?”
“She was dead. As you know, I detest waste. She had displayed remarkable tenacity, audacity, and even imagination, in using the murder of Mr. Boone for a purpose he would have desired, approved, and applauded. In the middle of it she was herself murdered. Surely she deserved not to have her murder wasted. She deserved to get something out of it. I found myself-by hypothesis-in an ideal position to see that that was taken care of. That’s what you left out.”
I stared at him. “Then I’ve got a hypothesis too. If that was it, either primary or secondary, to hell with ethics.”
THE END
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