The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

Even without the picture test I would have passed her-her small slender figure with its honest angles, her hair with its honest gray, her eyes with their honest doubt. As I turned a chair to sit facing her I decided to be as honest as possible. She was saying that Miss Hinckley would come soon, but she would prefer not to wait. She had understood me to say on the phone that her son had been killed by an agent of the FBI. Was that correct?

Her eyes were straight at me, and I met them. "Not strictly," I told her. "I said that someone told Mr Wolfe that. I should explain about Mr Wolfe. He is-uh-eccentric, and he has certain strong feelings about the New York Police Department. He resents their attitude toward him and his work, and he thinks they interfere too much. He reads the newspapers, and especially news about murders, and a couple of weeks ago he got the idea that the police and the District Attorney were letting go on the murder of your son, and when he learned that your son had been collecting material for an article about the FBI he suspected that the letting go might be deliberate. If so, it might be a chance to give the police a black eye, and nothing would please him better."

Her eyes were staying straight at me, hardly a blink. "So," I said, "we had no case on our hands, and he started some inquiries. One thing we learned, a fact that hasn't been published, was that nothing about the FBI, no notes or documents, was 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 informalion 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."