Plot It Yourself

The committee chairman cleared his throat. He looked around. “I’ve told you how I feel,” he said. “I was never enthusiastic about hiring a private detective, but I went along with the majority of the committee. Now this matter has gone far beyond the province of the committee, what it was set up for. Three people have been killed. Nero Wolfe told the committee last week, last Wednesday, that he was going to expose the murderer of Simon Jacobs whether we terminated our engagement with him or not. Now I suppose he’s going to expose the murderer of Jane Ogilvy and Kenneth Rennert. All right, that’s fine, I’m all for exposing murderers, but that’s not the job of this committee. It’s not only not our job it’s probably illegal and it could get us into serious trouble. We have no control over what Nero Wolfe does. He said he would have to have a free hand, that he wouldn’t tell us what he was doing or was going to do. I say that’s dangerous. As I said before, if the council doesn’t instruct the committee to terminate the engagement with Nero Wolfe, the only thing I can do is resign from the committee. The way I feel. I’ll have to.”

Two or three of them started to say something, but Tabb tapped on the glass. “You’ll all get a chance later. Mr Oshin? Briefly.”

Oshin squashed a cigarette in an ashtray. “I’m in a different position now,” he said, “now that Kenneth Rennerfs dead. Before today I could be accused of having a personal interest, and I did. I don’t deny that when I kicked in ten thousand dollars it was chiefly because I thought it might save me paying Rennert ten times that. Now personally I’m out from under. My ten thousand was a contribution to the expenses of the committee, and one of the publisher members. Dexter, has said he’ll contribute whatever is necessary, and I think we should tell Nero Wolfe to go ahead. If we don’t we’re quitters. If he wants to expose a murderer, all right, if he exposes a murderer he will also expose the man that has been back of this plagiarism racket, and that’s what we hired him for. He hasn’t been murdered, he’s still alive and still loose, and are we going to back out just because we’ve found out that he’s not only a racketeer but a killer? I don’t like threats to resign, I never have, but if you instruct the committee to fire Nero Wolfe I’ll have to resign, and I wish I could resign from the NAAD too.”

There were murmurs, and Tabb tapped on the glass again. “Miss Wynn? Briefly, please.”