Prisoner's Base

"He wanted the keys, certainly," Wolfe conceded, "but he didn't have to kill Mrs. Fomos to get them. He killed her because she was herself a danger to him, as great a danger as Miss Eads. It would have done him no good to kill the one unless he killed the other. That was my hypothesis as early as Tuesday evening, but there were then too many alternatives, more easily tested, to give it priority. Wednesday Mr. Goodwin called on Mrs. Jaffee and Mr. Fomos, and late that afternoon Mr. Irby came and provided me with bait to get you people here. Thursday morning Mrs. Jaffee came, as the result of a brilliant maneuver by Mr. Goodwin the day before, and gave me much better bait than Mr. Irby had supplied, and, as you all know, I used it. But for that maneuver by Mr. Goodwin, Mrs. Jaffee would not have come to see me, and almost certainly she would be alive now. That seems to me much firmer ground for his feeling of responsibility for her death than her phone call to him Thursday night and its sequel. It is regrettable, but not surprising, that his feeling was so intense as to warp his mental processes and pervert his judgment. I did and do sympathize with him."

"Is all this necessary?" Bowen wanted to know.

"Perhaps not," Wolfe allowed, "but I'm exposing a murderer and claim a measure of indulgence. You must have expected to spend hours here. Am I tedious?"

"Go ahead."

"And Thursday afternoon Mr. Irby returned with his client, Mr. Hagh, who had flown from Venezuela. I no longer needed him or his client as bait for you, but I invited them to join us that evening, provided they came as observers and not participants. As you know, they were here. What is it, Archie?"

"I'll tend to me," I told him. I had left my chair and was moving. I won't say I had caught up with him, but at least I could see his dust, and I admit that I had also seen Saul Panzer, not with any flourish, take a gun from his pocket and rest it on his thigh. I did not display a gun. I merely circled around the end of the couch and stopped, and stood less than arm's length northwest of Eric Hagh's right shoulder. He didn't turn his head, but he knew I was there. His eyes were glued to Wolfe.

"Okay," I told Wolfe. "I'm not warped enough to break his neck. How come?"