If Death Ever Slept

“That doesn’t matter.” He flipped it off with the cigar. “Let them all think you have something on me-let them think anything they want to. The point is that the house is mine and the money is mine, and whatever I stand for they’ll accept whether they understand it or not. The only exception to that is my daughter-in-law, and that’s what you’re here for. She’s making a horse’s ass out of my son, and she’s getting him away from me, and she’s sticking a finger in my affairs. I’m making you a proposition. The day she’s out of here, with my son staying, you get ten thousand dollars in cash, in addition to any fee Nero Wolfe charges. The day a divorce settles it, with my son still staying, you get fifty thousand. You personally. That will be in addition to any expenses you incur, over and above Wolfe’s fee and expenses.”

I said that no man can stop a conversation the way a woman can, but I must admit that Otis Jarrell had made a darned good stab at it. I also admit I was flattered. Obviously he had gone to Wolfe just to get me, to get me there in his library so he could offer me sixty grand and expenses to frame his daughter-in-law, who probably wasn’t a snake at all. If she had been, his itch to get rid of her would have been legitimate, and he could have left it as a job for Wolfe and just let me earn my salary.

It sure was flattering. “That’s quite a proposition,” I said, “but there’s a hitch. I work for Mr. Wolfe. He pays me.”

“You’ll still be working for him. I only want you to do what I hired him to do. He’ll get his fee.”

That was an insult to my intelligence. He didn’t have to make it so damned plain. It would have been a pleasure to square my shoulders and lift my chin and tell him to take back his gold and go climb a tree, and that would have been the simplest way out, but there were drawbacks. For one thing, it was barely possible that she really was a snake and no framing would be required. For another, if she wasn’t a snake, and if he was determined to frame her, she needed to know it and deserved to know it, but he was still Wolfe’s client, and all I had was what he had said to me with no witnesses present. For still another, there was the ten grand in Wolfe’s safe, not mine to spurn. For one more if we need it, I have my full share of curiosity.

I tightened my face to look uncomfortable. “I guess,” I said, “I’ll have to tell Mr. Wolfe about your proposition. I think I will. I’ve got to protect myself.”

“Against what?” he demanded.