Prisoner's Base

"Why not? So has everyone else. If you don't like it here, go back where you came from. Sit down and listen and start cooking up a defense."

Irby was there with a hand on his arm, and the big handsome chiseling ex-husband let himself be urged back to his seat in the rear.

Wolfe resumed to Brucker: "Regarding Mr. Hagh, you said that he wouldn't even have had to come to New York, that he could have hired someone to kill his former wife. What was the significance of your suggestion that the deed had been done by a hired assassin?"

"I don't know." Brucker was frowning. "Was it significant?"

"I think it may have been. In any case, I am impressed by your enterprise in hustling off to Venezuela for a candidate when there was no lack of eligibles near at hand. But the question arises, what was in it for Mr. Hagh? Why did he want her dead?"

"I don't know."

"Someone would have to know. Miss Duday offered the singular suggestion, to Mr. Goodwin, that Miss Eads had denied she had signed the document, or Mr. Hagh thought she was going to, and so he had to destroy her. That is doubly puerile. First, she had acknowledged that she had signed the document. Second, she had offered, through Mr. Irby, to pay one hundred thousand dollars in settlement of the claim-just last week. Whereupon Mr. Hagh, in a fit of pique, dashes to the airport for a plane to New York, flies here and kills her, after first killing her maid to get a key, and flies back again. Does that sound credible?"

"No."

"Then arrange it so it does. Why did Mr. Hagh kill his former wife?"

"I can't tell you."

"That's a pity, since the simplest way for you people to make me doubt your guilt would be to offer an acceptable substitute. Have you one?"

"No."

"Have you anything else to offer?"

"No."

"Do you wish to make any comment on what has been said about Miss O'Neil?"

"I do not."

Wolfe's gaze went left. "Mr. Quest?"

Chapter 12