Free Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 41 by The Doorbell Rang Page A

found by the police in your son’s apartment. Perhaps you knew that.”
    She nodded. “Yes.”
    “I supposed you did, so I mentioned it. We have learned some other facts which I have been instructed not to mention. You’ll understand that. Mr. Wolfe wants to save them until he has enough to act on. But yesterday afternoon a man told him that he knows that an FBI agent killed your son, and he backed it up with some information. I won’t give you his name, or the information, but he’s a reliable man and the information is solid, though it isn’t enough to prove it. So Mr. Wolfe wants all he can get from people who were close to your son—for instance, people to whom he may have told things he had learned about the FBI. Of course you are one of them, and so is Miss Hinckley. And Mr. Yarmack. I was told to make it clear to you that Mr. Wolfe is not looking for a client or a fee. He is doing this on his own and doesn’t want or expect anyone to pay him.”
    Her eyes were still on me, but her mind wasn’t. She was considering something. “I see no reason …” she said, and stopped.
    I waited a little, then said, “Yes, Mrs. Althaus?”
    “I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. I have suspected it was the FBI, ever since Mr. Yarmack told me that nothing about them was found in the apartment. So has Mr. Yarmack, and so has Miss Hinckley. I don’t think I am a vindictive woman, Mr. Goodwin, but he was my—” Her voice was going to quiver, and she stopped. In a moment she went on. “He was my son. I am still trying to realize that he—he’s gone. Did you know him? Did you ever meet him?”
    “No.”
    “You’re a detective.”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re expecting me to help you find—to fix the blame for my son’s death. Very well, I want to. But I don’t think I can. He rarely spoke to me about hiswork. I don’t remember that he ever mentioned the FBI. Miss Hinckley has asked me that, and Mr. Yarmack. I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything about it, I’m truly sorry, because if they killed him I hope they will be punished. It says in Leviticus ‘Thou shalt not avenge,’ but Aristotle wrote that revenge is just. You see, I have been thinking about it. I believe—”
    She turned to face the arch. A door had closed, and there were voices, and then a girl appeared. As she approached I got up, but Mrs. Althaus kept her chair. The pictures in the
Gazette
file understated it. Marian Hinckley was a dish. She was an in-between, neither blonde nor brunette, brown hair and blue eyes, and she moved straight and smooth. If she wore a hat she had ditched it in the foyer. She came and gave Mrs. Althaus a cheek kiss, then turned to look at me as Mrs. Althaus pronounced my name. As the blue eyes took me in I instructed mine to ignore any aspect of the situation that was irrelevant to the job. When Mrs. Althaus invited her to sit I moved a chair up. As she sat she spoke to Mrs. Althaus. “If I understood you on the phone—did you say Nero Wolfe knows it was the FBI? Was that it?”
    “I’m afraid I didn’t get it straight,” Mrs. Althaus said. “Will you tell her, Mr. Goodwin?”
    I described it, the three points: why Wolfe was interested, what had made him suspicious, and how his suspicion had been supported by what a man told him yesterday. I explained that he didn’t
know
it was the FBI, and he certainly couldn’t prove it, but he intended to try to and that was why I was there.
    Miss Hinckley was frowning at me. “But I don’t see … Has he told the police what the man told him?”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, “I guess I didn’t make it plainenough. He thinks the police know it was the FBI, or suspect it. For instance, one thing he wants to ask you people: Are the police keeping after you? Coming back again and again, asking the same questions over and over? Mrs. Althaus?”
    “No.”
    “Miss Hinckley?”
    “No. But we’ve told them everything we know.”
    “That doesn’t matter. In a murder