The Second Confesion

What kept him, of course, was the need to get his self-respect back in condition before he went home and to bed, and after the terrific jolt of learning that he had nurtured a Commie in his bosom for years it wasn't so simple. The detail that seemed to hurt most of all was the first confession-the one he had got Kane to sign. He had drafted it himself-he admitted it; he had thought it was a masterpiece that even a Chairman of the Board could be proud of; and now it turned out that, except for the minor item that Rony had been flat instead of erect when the car hit him, it had been the truth! No wonder he had trouble getting it down.

He insisted on going back over everything. He even wanted answers to questions such as whether Kane had seen Rony pour his doped drink in the ice bucket, which of course we couldn't give him. Wolfe generously supplied answers when he had them. For instance, why had Kane signed the repudiation of his statement that he had killed Rony accidentally? Because, Wolfe explained, Sperling had told him to, and Kane's only hope had been to stick to the role of Webster Kane in spite of hell. True, within ten breaths he was going to be torn loose from it by the cold malign stares of his former comrades, but he didn't know that when he took the pen to sign his name.

When Sperling finally left he was more himself again, but I suspected he would need more than one night's sleep before anyone would see him smiling like an angel.

That was all except the tail. Every murder case, like a kite, has a tail. The tail to this one had three sections, the first one public and the other two private.

Section One became public the first week in July, when it was announced that Paul Emerson's contract was not being renewed. I happened to know about it in advance because I was in the office when, one day the preceding week, James U.

Sperling phoned Wolfe to say that the Continental Mines Corporation was grateful to him for removing a Communist tumour from its internal organs and would be glad to pay a bill if he sent one. Wolfe said he would like to send a bill but didn't know how to word it, and Sperling asked him why. Because, Wolfe said, the bill would ask for payment not in dollars but in kind. Sperling wanted to know what he meant.