Bullet for One

II

Ferdinand Pohl was speaking.

Sitting there in the office with my chair swiveled so that my back was to my desk, with Wolfe himself behind his desk to my left, I took Pohl in. He was close to twice my age. Seated in the red leather chair beyond the end of Wolfe’s desk, with his leg-crossing histing his pants so that five inches of bare shin showed above his garterless sock, there was nothing about him to command attention except an unusual assortment of facial creases, and nothing at all to love.

“What brought us together,” he was saying in a thin peevish tone, “and what brought us here together, is our unanimous opinion that Sigmund Keyes was murdered by Victor Talbott, and also our conviction—”

“Not unanimous,” another voice objected.

The voice was soft and good for the ears, and its owner was good for the eyes. Her chin, especially, was the kind you can take from any angle. The only reason I hadn’t seated her in the chair nearest mine was that on her arrival she had answered my welcoming smile with nothing but brow-lifting, and I had decided to hell with her until she learned her manners.

“Not unanimous, Ferdy,” she objected.

“You said,” Pohl told her, even more peevish, “that you were in sympathy with our purpose and wanted to join us and come here with us.”

Seeing them and hearing them, I made a note that they hated each other. She had known him longer than I had, since she called him Ferdy, and evidently she agreed that there was nothing about him to love. I was about to start feeling that I had been too harsh with her when I saw she was lifting her brows at him.

“That,” she declared, “is quite different from having the opinion that Vic murdered my father. I have no opinion, because I don’t know.”

“Then what are you in sympathy with?”

“I want to find out. So do you. And I certainly agree that the police are being extremely stupid.”

“Who do you think killed him if Vic didn’t?”

“I don’t know.” The brows went up again. “But since I have inherited my father’s business, and since I am engaged to marry Vic, and since a few other things, I want very much to know. That’s why I’m here with you.”

“You don’t belong here!”

“I’m here, Ferdy.”

“I say you don’t belong!” Pohl’s creases were wriggling. “I said so and I still say so! We came, the four of us, for a definite purpose, to get Nero Wolfe to find proof that Vic killed your father!” Pohl suddenly uncrossed his legs, leaned forward to peer at Dorothy Keyes’ face, and asked in a mean little voice, “And what if you helped him?”

Three other voices spoke at once. One said, “They’re off again.”

Another, “Let Mr. Broadyke tell it.”

Another, “Get one of them out of here.”

Wolfe said, “If the job is limited to those terms, Mr. Pohl, to prove that a man named by you committed murder, you’ve wasted your trip. What if he didn’t?”