Too Many Clients

He picked up the remaining item. "Adopting that reasoning, at least tentatively, I was left with this. This is a picture, reproduced in a magazine, of a gathering in the ballroom of the Churchill Hotel, a banquet of the National Plastics Association. Mr. Yeager is at the microphone. The caption gives the names of the men on the dais with him, including you. No doubt you are familiar with the picture?" "Yes. I have it framed on the wall of my office." "Well." Wolfe dropped it on his desk. "I asked myself, what if it was you whom Miss Perez saw in the hall on your way to the elevator Sunday evening between seven and nine? What if, having this picture in her collection, she recognized you? What if, later, having learned that Yeager had been killed up in that room--for she must have seen her father and mother transporting the body--she guessed that you had killed him, decided to make you pay for her silence, communicated with you, made an appointment to meet you, and kept it? You will concede that those were permissible questions."

"Permissible? Yes." Aiken was disdainful. "You don't need permission to ask preposterous questions."