Instead of Evidence

I

Among the kinds of men I have a prejudice against are the ones named Eugene. There’s no use asking me why, because I admit it’s a prejudice. It may be that when I was in kindergarten out in Ohio a man named Eugene stole candy from me, but if so I have forgotten all about it. For all practical purposes, it is merely one facet of my complex character that I do not like men named Eugene.

That and that alone accounted for my offish attitude when Mr. and Mrs. Eugene R. Poor called at Nero Wolfe’s office that Tuesday afternoon in October, because I had never seen or heard of the guy before, and neither had Wolfe. The appointment had been made by phone that morning, so I was prejudiced before I ever got a look at him. The look hadn’t swayed me much one way or the other. He wasn’t too old to remember what his wife had given him on his fortieth birthday, but neither was he young enough to be still looking forward to it. Nothing about him stood out. His face was taken at random out of stock, with no alterations. Gray herringbone suits like his were that afternoon being bought in stores from San Diego to Bangor. Really his only distinction was that they had named him Eugene.

In spite of which I was regarding him with polite curiosity, for he had just told Nero Wolfe that he was going to be murdered by a man named Conroy Blaney.

I was sitting at my desk in the room Nero Wolfe used for an office in his home on West Thirty-fifth Street, and Wolfe was behind his desk, arranged in a chair that had been specially constructed to support up to a quarter of a ton, which was not utterly beyond the limits of possibility. Eugene R. Poor was in the red leather chair a short distance beyond Wolfe’s desk, with a little table smack against its right arm for the convenience of clients in writing checks. Mrs. Poor was on a spare between her husband and me.

I might mention that I was not aware of any prejudice against Mrs. Poor. For one thing, there was no reason to suppose that her name was Eugene. For another, there were several reasons to suppose that her fortieth birthday would not come before mine, though she was good and mature. She had by no means struck me dumb, but there are people who seem to improve a room just by being in it.

Naturally Wolfe was scowling. He shook his head, moving it a full half-inch right and left, which was for him a frenzy of negation.

“No, sir,” he said emphatically. “I suppose two hundred men and women have sat in that chair, Mr. Poor, and tried to hire me to keep someone from killing them.” His eyes twitched to me. “How many, Archie?”

I said, to oblige him, “Two hundred and nine.”

“Have I taken the jobs?”

“No, sir. Never.”

He wiggled a finger at Eugene. “For two million dollars a year you can make it fairly difficult for a man to kill you. That’s about what it costs to protect a president or a king, and even so consider the record. Of course, if you give up all other activity it can be done more cheaply, say forty thousand a year. A cave in a mountainside, never emerging, with six guards you can trust and a staff to suit—”

Eugene was trying to get something in. He finally did. “I don’t expect you to keep him from killing me. That’s not what I came for.”

“Then what the deuce did you come for?”

“To keep him from getting away with it.” Eugene cleared his throat. “I was trying to tell you. I agree that you can’t stop him, I don’t see how anybody can. Sooner or later. He’s a clever man.” His voice took on bitterness. “Too damn clever for me and I wish I’d never met him. Sure, I know a man can kill a man if he once decides to, but Con Blaney is so damn clever that it isn’t a question whether he can kill me or not, the question is whether he can manage it so that he is in the clear. I’m afraid he can. I would bet he can. And I don’t want him to.”

His wife made a little noise and he stopped to look at her. Then he shook his head at her as if she had said something, took a cigar from his vest pocket, removed the band, inspected first one end and then the other to decide which was which, got a gadget from another vest pocket and snipped one of the ends, and lit up. He no sooner had it lit than it slipped out of his mouth, bounced on his thigh, and landed on the rug. He retrieved it and got his teeth sunk in it. So, I thought to myself, you’re not so doggone calm about getting murdered as you were making out to be.

“So I came,” he told Wolfe, “to give you the facts, to get the facts down, and to pay you five thousand dollars to see that he doesn’t manage it that way.” The cigar between his teeth interfered with his talking, and he removed it. “If he kills me I’ll be dead. I want someone to know about it.”

Wolfe’s eyes had gone half shut. “But why pay me five thousand dollars in advance? Wouldn’t someone know about it? Your wife, for instance?”

Eugene nodded. “I’ve thought about that. I’ve thought it all out. What if he kills her too? I have no idea how he’ll try to work it, or when, and who is there besides my wife I can absolutely trust? I’m not taking any chances. Of course I thought of the police, but judging from my own experience, a couple of burglaries down at the shop, and you know, the experiences of a businessman, I’m not sure they’d even remember I’d been there if it happened in a year or maybe two years.” He stuck his cigar in his mouth, puffed twice, and took it out again. “What’s the matter, don’t you want five thousand dollars?”

Wolfe said gruffly, “I wouldn’t get five thousand. This is October. As my nineteen forty-five income now stands, I’ll keep about ten per cent of any additional receipts after paying taxes. Out of five thousand, five hundred would be mine. If Mr. Blaney is as clever as you think he is, I wouldn’t consider trying to uncover him on a murder for five hundred dollars.” He stopped and opened his eyes to glare at the wife. “May I ask, madam, what you are looking so pleased about?”

Wolfe couldn’t stand to see a woman look pleased.

Mrs. Poor was regarding him with a little smile of obvious approval. “Because,” she said, in a voice that was pleased too, and a nice voice, “I need help and I think you’re going to help me. I don’t approve of this. I didn’t want my husband to come here.”

“Indeed. Where did you want him to go, to the Atlantic Detective Agency?”

“Oh, no, if I had been in favor of his going to any detective at all, of course it would have been Nero Wolfe. But— may I explain?”

Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall. Three-forty. In twenty minutes he would be leaving for the plant rooms on the roof, to monkey with the orchids. He said curtly, “I have eighteen minutes.”

Eugene put in with a determined voice, “Then I’m going to use them—” But his wife smiled him out of it. She went on to Wolfe, “It won’t take that long. My husband and Mr. Blaney have been business partners for ten years. They own the firm of Blaney and Poor, manufacturers of novelties — you know, they make things like matches that won’t strike and chairs with rubber legs and bottled drinks that taste like soap—”

“Good God,” Wolfe muttered in horror.

She ignored it. “It’s the biggest firm in the business. Mr. Blaney gets the ideas and handles the production, he’s a genius at it, and my husband handles the business part, sales and so on. But Mr. Blaney is really just about too conceited to live, and now that the business is a big success he thinks my husband isn’t needed, and he wants him to get out and take twenty thousand dollars for his half. Of course it’s worth a great deal more than that, at least ten times as much, and my husband won’t do it. Mr. Blaney is very conceited, and also he will not let anything stand in his way. The argument has gone on and on, until now my husband is convinced that Mr. Blaney is capable of doing anything to get rid of him.”

“Of killing him. And you don’t agree.”

“Oh, no. I do agree. I think Mr. Blaney would stop at nothing.”

“Has he made threats?”

She shook her head. “He isn’t that kind. He doesn’t make threats, he just goes ahead.”

“Then why didn’t you want your husband to come to me?”

“Because he’s simply too stubborn to live.” She smiled at Eugene to take out any sting, and back at Wolfe. “There’s a clause in the partnership agreement, they signed it when they started the business, that says if either one of them dies the other one owns the whole thing. That’s another reason why my husband thinks Mr. Blaney will kill him, and I think so too. But what my husband wants is to make sure Mr. Blaney gets caught, that’s how stubborn he is, and what I want is for my husband to stay alive.”

“Now, Martha,” Eugene put in, “I came here to—”

So her name was Martha. I had no prejudice against women named Martha.

She kept the floor. “It’s like this,” she appealed to Wolfe. “My husband thinks that Mr. Blaney is determined to kill him if he can’t get what he wants any other way, and I think so too. You yourself think that if a man is determined to kill another man nothing can stop him. So isn’t it perfectly obvious? My husband has over two hundred thousand dollars saved up outside the business, about half of it in war bonds. He can get another twenty thousand from Mr. Blaney for his half of the business—”

“It’s worth twenty times that,” Eugene said savagely, showing real emotion for the first time.

“Not to you if you’re dead,” she snapped back at him and went on to Wolfe. “With the income from that we could live more than comfortably — and happily. I hope my husband loves me — I hope he does — and I know I love him.” She leaned forward in her chair. “That’s why I came along today — I thought maybe you would help me persuade him. It isn’t as if I wouldn’t stand by my husband in a fight if there was any chance of his winning. But is there any sense in being so stubborn if you can’t possibly win? If instead of winning you will probably die? Now does that make sense? I ask you, Mr. Wolfe, you are a wise and clever and able man, what would you do if you were in my husband’s position?”

Wolfe muttered, “You put that as a question?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well. Granting that you have described the situation correctly, I would kill Mr. Blaney.”

She looked startled. “But that’s silly.” She frowned. “Of course you’re joking, and it’s no joke.”

“I’d kill the bastard in a second,” Eugene told Wolfe, “if I thought I could get away with it. I suppose you could, but I couldn’t.”

“And I’m afraid,” Wolfe said politely, “you couldn’t hire me for that.” He glanced at the clock. “I would advise against your consulting even your wife. An undetected murder is strictly a one-man job. Her advice, sir, is sound. Are you going to take it?”

“No.” Eugene sounded as stubborn as she said he was.

“Are you going to kill Mr. Blaney?”

“No.”

“Do you still want to pay me five thousand dollars?”

“Yes, I do.”

Mrs. Poor, who was rapidly becoming Martha to me, tried to horn in, but bigger and louder people than her had failed at that when orchid time was at hand. Wolfe ignored her and went on to him, “I advise you against that too, under the circumstances. Here are the circumstances — Archie, take your notebook. Make a receipt reading, ‘Received from Eugene R. Poor five thousand dollars, in return for which I agree, in case he dies within one year, to give the police the information he has given me today, and to take any further action that may seem to me advisable.’ Sign my name and initial it as usual. Get all details from Mr. Poor.” Wolfe pushed back his chair and got the levers of his muscles in position to hoist the bulk.

Eugene’s eyes were moist with tears, but they came, not from emotion, but from smoke from his second cigar. In fact, throughout the interview his nervousness seemed to concentrate on his cigar. He had dropped it twice, and the smoke seemed determined to go down the wrong way and make him cough. But he was able to speak all right.

“That’s no good,” he objected. “You don’t even say what kind of action. At least you ought to say—”

“I advised you against it under the circumstances.” Wolfe was on his feet. “Those, sir, are the circumstances. That’s all I’ll undertake. Suit yourself.” He started to move.

But Eugene had another round to fire. His hand went into a pocket and came out full of folded money. “I hadn’t mentioned,” he said, displaying the pretty objects, “that I brought it in cash. Speaking of income tax, if you’re up to the ninety per cent bracket, getting it in cash would make it a lot more—”

Wolfe’s look stopped him. “Pfui,” Wolfe said. He hadn’t had as good a chance to show off for a month. “I am not a common cheat, Mr. Poor. Not that I am a saint. Given adequate provocation, I might conceivably cheat a man — or a woman or even a child. But you are suggesting that I cheat, not a man or woman or child, but a hundred and forty million of my fellow citizens. Bah.”

We stared at his back as he left, as he knew we would, and in a moment we heard the sound of his elevator door opening.

I flipped to a fresh page in my notebook and turned to Eugene and Martha. “To refresh your memory,” I said, “the name is Archie Goodwin, and I’m the one that does the work around here. I am also, Mr. Poor, an admirer of your wife.”

He nearly dropped his cigar again. “You’re what?”

“I admire your wife as an advice-giver. She has learned one of the most important rules, that far as life falls short of perfection it is more fun outside the grave than in it. With over two hundred thousand bucks—”

“I’ve had enough advice,” he said as if he meant it. “My mind is made up.”

“Okay.” I got the notebook in position. “Give me everything you think we’ll need. First, basic facts. Home and business addresses?”

It took close to an hour, so it was nearly five o’clock when they left. I found him irritating and therefore kept my prejudice intact. I wondered later what difference it would have made in my attitude if I had known that in a few hours he would be dead. Even if you take the line that he had it coming to him, which would be easy to justify, at least it would have made the situation more interesting. But during that hour, as far as I knew, they were just a couple of white-livers, scared stiff by a false alarm named Blaney, so it was merely another job.

I was still typing from my notes when at six o’clock, after the regulation two hours in the plant rooms, Wolfe came down to the office. He got fixed in his chair, rang for Fritz to bring beer, and demanded, “Did you take that man’s money?”

I grinned at him. Up to his old tricks. I had been a civilian again for only a week, and here he was already treating me like a hireling just as he had for years, acting as if I had never been a colonel, as in fact I hadn’t, but anyway I had been a major.

I asked him, “What do you think? If I say I took it, you’ll claim that your attitude as you left plainly indicated that he had insulted you and you wouldn’t play. If I say I refused it, you’ll claim I’ve done you out of a fee. Which do you prefer?”

He abandoned it. “Did you word the receipt properly?”

“No, sir. I worded it the way you told me to. The loot is in the safe and I’ll deposit it tomorrow. I told him you’d prefer a check, but he said there it was, he had taken the trouble to get it, why not take it? He still thinks you’ll forget to report it to your hundred and forty million fellow citizens. By the way, if Blaney does perform I’m going to marry the widow. Something unforeseen has happened. I have an ironclad rule that if the ankles are more than half as big around as the calves that settles it, I am absolutely not interested. But you saw her legs, and in spite of them I would rate her—”

“I did not see her legs. Do your typing. I like to hear you typing. If you are typing you can’t talk.”

To humor him I typed, which as it turned out was just as well, since that neat list of facts was going to be needed before bedtime. It was finished when Fritz entered at eight o’clock to announce dinner, the main item of which was a dish called by Wolfe and Fritz “Cassoulettes Castelnaudary,” but by me boiled beans. I admit they were my favorite beans, which is saying something. The only thing that restrained me at all was my advance knowledge of the pumpkin pie to come.

Back in the office, where the clock said nine-forty, I was just announcing my intention of catching a movie by the tail at the Rialto when the phone rang. It was Inspector Cramer, whose voice I hadn’t heard for weeks, asking for Wolfe. Wolfe picked up his receiver, and I stuck to mine so as to get it firsthand.

“Wolfe? Cramer. I’ve got a paper here, taken from the pocket of a dead man, a receipt for five thousand dollars, signed by you, dated today. It says you have information to give the police if he dies. All right, he’s dead. I don’t ask you to come up here, because I know you wouldn’t, and I’m too busy to go down there. What’s the information?”

Wolfe grunted. “What killed him?”

“An explosion. Just give—”

“Did it kill his wife too?”

“Naw, she’s okay, only overcome, you know. Just give—”

“I haven’t got the information. Mr. Goodwin has it. Archie?”

I spoke up. “It would take quite a while, Inspector, and I’ve got it all typed. I can run up there—”

“All right, come ahead. The Poor apartment on Eighty-fourth Street. The number is—”

“I know the number. I know everything. Sit down and rest till I get there.”