Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

If Avery Ballou had somehow dropped all his stack, and had been kicked out of his job as president of the Federal Holding Corporation, he wouldn't have starved. I have never seen a neater job of wrapping and taping than he had done on the little package he put on Wolfe's desk before he sat down. Any shipping room in town would have grabbed him. I am assuming that he had done it himself on account of what was in it, but I admit it might have been packaged at the bank. The seams in his face were deeper than ever, and he looked as tired as his wife had felt. Seated, he lowered his head and rubbed his brow with a palm, slowly back and forth. On Tuesday that had been followed by a request for a drink, but now apparently he was beyond that. He raised his head, pulled his shoulders up, looked at Wolfe, and said, "You said I couldn't hire you or pay you."

"And told you why," Wolfe said.

"I know. But the situation is – I want you to reconsider it." He turned to me. "You said you could find out when that man Cather learned my name. Have you?"

I shook my head. "You said it isn't important now."

"You also said it could have been as long as four months ago."

"Right. I said 'certainly.' Or eight months, or ten."

"Four is enough." He returned to Wolfe. "I know you have had a wide experience, but you may not realize the absolute necessity of good repute for a man of my standing. Byron wrote 'The glory and the nothing of a name,' but he was a poet. A poet can take liberties that are fatal to a man like me. As I think I told you, I took great precautions when I visited Miss Kerr. No one who ever saw me enter or leave that building could possibly have recognized me. I had full reliance on her discretion; I was more than liberal with her, financially. I was completely certain that nobody whatever knew of my… diversion."

He stopped, apparently inviting comment. Wolfe obliged. "You should know that your only safe secrets are those you have yourself forgotten."

He nodded. "I now suspect that there are many things I should know that I don't know. My reliance on Miss Kerr was misplaced. I was a fool. I should have known that she might… form an attachment. I assume she did, with Cather? She became attached to him?"

Wolfe turned to me. "Archie?"

"She burned," I told Ballou. "She wanted to marry him."

"I see. I was a fool. But that explains why she told him my name, and that's important. She was discreet, but of course with him there was no discretion. Doesn't that follow?"