The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

"To you, perhaps. But surely, in a muddle with an unsolved murder, they would dog you; but they don't. I am not accusing you of murder, sir, not at the moment; I am merely showing that the police are either shirking or slighting their duty. Unless you have given them an impregnable alibi for the night of November twentieth. Have you?"

"No. Impregnable, no."

"Have you, Mr Quayle?"

"Nuts," Quayle said. Bad manners again.

Wolfe eyed him. "You are here by sufferance. You wanted to know what I am up to. I am making that clear. Impelled solely by my private interest, I hope to disclose the implication of the FBI in a murder and the failure of the police to do their duty. In that effort I must guard against the danger of being balked by circumstance. Yesterday I received in confidence information strongly indicating the guilt of the FBI, but it is not conclusive. I dare not ignore the possibility that the apparent inaction of the police is merely tactical, that they and the FBI both know the identity of the murderer, and that they are holding off until they have decisive evidence. I must be fully satisfied on that point before I move. You can help to satisfy me, and if instead you choose to flout me I don't want you here. Mr Goodwin has ejected you once and he can do so again if necessary. He would be even more effective with an audience; he likes an audience as well as I do. If you prefer to stay, I asked you a question."

Quayle's jaw was set. The poor guy was in a fix. Seated next to him, so close he could have reached out and touched her, was the girl for whom and before whom he had pitched into a nosy newshound, begging Lon Cohen's pardon, and now he was being crowded by a nosy bloodhound. I expected him to turn his head, either to her to show that for her sake he could swallow even his pride, or to me to show that I was really no problem, but he stayed focused on Wolfe.

"I told you I would control myself," he said. "All right. I have no impregnable alibi for the night of November twentieth. That answers your question, and now I ask one. How do you expect Miss Hinckley to help to satisfy you?"