In Wolfe’s room the light of dawn was at the window, even through the thick shrubbery just outside. It was my second dawn in a row, and I was beginning to feel that I might as well join the Milkmen’s Union and be done with it. My eyes felt as if someone had painted household cement on my lids and let it dry. Wolfe had his open, and was still in his chair.
I said, “Congratulations. All you need is wings to be an owl. Shall I leave a call for twelve noon? That would leave you eight hours till dinnertime, and you’d still be ahead of schedule.”
He made a face. “Where have they got Mr. Berin in jail?”
“I suppose at Quinby, the county seat.”
“How far away is it?”
“Oh, around twenty miles.”
“Does Mr. Tolman live there?”
“I don’t know. His office must be there, since he’s the prosecuting attorney.”
“Please find out, and get him on the phone. We want him and the sheriff here at eight o’clock. Tell him-no. When you get him, let me talk to him.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
I spread out my hands. “It’s 4:30 a.m. Let the man-”
“Archie. Please. You tried to instruct me how to handle colored men. Will you try it with white men too?”
I went for the phone.
12
PETTIGREW, THE SQUINT-EYED sheriff, shook his head and drawled, “Thank you just the same. I got stuck in the mud and had to flounder around and I’d get that chair all dirty. I’m a pretty good stander anyhow.”
My friend Barry Tolman didn’t look any too neat himself, but he wasn’t muddy and so he hadn’t hesitated about taking a seat. It was 8:10 Thursday morning. I felt like the last nickel in a crap game, because like a darned fool I had undraped myself a little after five o’clock and got under the covers, leaving a call for 7:30, and hauling myself out again after only two hours had put me off key for good. Wolfe was having breakfast in the big chair, with a folding table pulled up to him, in a yellow dressing gown, with his face shaved and his hair combed. He possessed five yellow dressing gowns and we had brought along the light woolen one with brown lapels and a brown girdle. He had on a necktie, too.
Tolman said, “As I told you on the phone, I’m supposed to be in court at 9:30. If necessary my assistant can get a postponement, but I’d like to make it if possible. Can’t you rush it?”
Wolfe was sipping at his cocoa for erosion on the bite of roll he had taken. When that was disposed of he said, “It depends a good deal on you, sir. It was impossible for me to go to Quinby, as I said, for reasons that will appear. I’ll do all I can to hurry it. I haven’t been to bed-”
“You said you have information-”
“I have. But the circumstances require a preamble. I take it that you arrested Mr. Berin only because you were convinced he was guilty. You don’t especially fancy him as a victim. If strong doubt were cast on his guilt-”
“Certainly.” Tolman was impatient. “I told you-”
“So you did. Now let’s suppose something. Suppose that a lawyer has been retained to represent Mr. Berin, and I have been engaged to discover evidence in Berin’s defense. Suppose further that I have discovered such evidence, of a weight that would lead inevitably to his acquittal when you put him on trial, and it is felt that it would be imprudent to disclose that evidence to you, the enemy, for the present. Suppose you demand that I produce that evidence now. It’s true, isn’t it, that you couldn’t legally enforce that demand? That such evidence is our property until the time we see fit to make use of it-provided you don’t discover it independently for yourselves?”
Tolman was frowning. “That’s true, of course. But damn it, I’ve told you that if the evidence against Berin can be explained-”
“I know. I offer, here and now, an explanation that will clear him; but I offer it on conditions.”
“What are they?”
Wolfe sipped cocoa and wiped his lips. “They’re not onerous. First, that if the explanation casts strong doubt on Berin’s guilt, he is to be released immediately.”
“Who will decide how strong the doubt is?”
“You.”
“All right, I agree. The court is sitting and it can be done in five minutes.”
“Good. Second, you are to tell Mr. Berin that I discovered the evidence which set him free, I am solely responsible for it, and God only knows what would have happened to him if I hadn’t done it.”
Tolman, still frowning, opened his mouth, but the sheriff put in, “Now wait, Barry. Hold your horses.” He squinted down at Wolfe. “If you’ve really got this evidence it must be around somewhere. I suppose we’re pretty slow out here in West Virginia-”
“Mr. Pettigrew. Please. I’m not talking about the public credit, I’m not interested in it. Tell the newspaper men whatever you want to. But Mr. Berin is to know, unequivocally, that I did it, and Mr. Tolman is to tell him so.”
Tolman asked, “Well, Sam?”
The sheriff shrugged. “I don’t give a damn.”
“All right,” Tolman told Wolfe. “I agree to that.”
“Good.” Wolfe set the cocoa cup down. “Third, it is understood that I am leaving for New York at 12:40 to-night and under no circumstances-short of a suspicion that I killed Mr. Laszio myself or was an accomplice-am I to be detained.”
Pettigrew said good-humoredly, “You go to hell.”
“No, not hell.” Wolfe sighed. “New York.”
Tolman protested, “But what if this evidence makes you a material and essential witness?”
“It doesn’t, you must take my word for that. I’m preparing to take yours for several things. I give you my word that within thirty minutes you’ll know everything of significance that I know regarding that business in the dining room. I want it agreed that I won’t be kept here beyond my train time merely because it is felt I might prove useful. Anyway, I assure you that under those circumstances I wouldn’t be useful at all; I would be an insufferable nuisance. Well, sir?”
Tolman hesitated, and finally nodded. “Qualified as you put it, I agree.”
If there is a way a canary bird sighs when you let it out of a cage, Wolfe sighed like that. “Now, sir. The fourth and last condition is a little vaguer than the others, but I think it can be defined. The evidence that I am going to give you was brought to me by two men. I led up to its disclosure by methods which seemed likely to be effective, and they were so. You will resent it that these gentlemen didn’t give you these facts when they had an opportunity, and I can’t help that. I can’t estop your feelings, but I can ask you to restrain them, and I have promised to do so. I want your assurance that the gentlemen will not be bullied, badgered or abused, nor be deprived of their freedom, nor in any way persecuted. This is predicated on the assumption that they are merely witnesses and have no share whatever in the guilt of the murder.”
The sheriff said, “Hell, mister, we don’t abuse people.”
“Bullied, badgered, abused, deprived of freedom, persecuted, all excluded. Of course you’ll question them as much as you please.”