The Second Confesion

That was all for then. I spent two hours with the morning mail and the accumulation in my drawer. At eleven-two he entered, told me good morning as he always did no matter how much we had talked on the phone, got installed behind his desk, and inquired grumpily, “Is there anything you must ask me?” “Nothing I can't hold, no, sir.” “Then I don't want to be interrupted. By anyone.” “Yes, sir. Are you in pain?” “Yes. I know who killed Mr Rony, and how and why.” Tfou do. Does it hurt?” “Yes.” He sighed deep. “It's the very devil. When you know all you need to know about a murderer, what is ordinarily the easiest thing to prove?” “That's a cinch. Motive.” He nodded. “But not here. I doubt if it can be done. You have known me, in the past, to devise a stratagem that entailed a hazard. Haven't you?” “That's understating it. I have known you to take chances that have given me nightmares.” “They were nothing to this. I have devised a stratagem and spent fifteen thousand dollars on it. But if I can think of a better way I'm not going to risk it.” He sighed again, leaned back, closed his eyes, and muttered, “I don't want to be disturbed.” That was the last of him for more than nine hours. I don't think he uttered more than eighty words between eleven-nine in the morning and eight-twenty in the evening. While he was in the office he sat with his eyes closed, his lips pushing out and in from time to time, and his chest expanding every now and then, I would say five inches, with a deep sigh. At the table, during lunch and dinner, there was nothing wrong with his appetite, but he had nothing to offer in the way of conversation. At four o'clock he went up to the plant rooms for his customary two hours, but when I had occasion to ascend to check on a few items with Theodore, Wolfe was planted in his chair in the potting room, and Theodore spoke to me only in a whisper. I have never been able to get it into Theodore's head that when Wolfe is concentrating on a business problem he wouldn't hear us yelling right across his nose, so long as we don't try to drag him into it.

Of the eighty words he used during those nine hours, only nine of them-one to an hour-had to do with the stratagem he was working on. Shortly before dinner he muttered at me, “What time is Mr Cohen free in the evening?” I told him a little before midnight.