The Second Confesion

What is it?” Dykes shrugged. “They've finished on the cars and got the one that killed him.

It's the one they did last, the one that's parked out back. Nero Wolfe's.” “No question about it!” Noonan crowed.

CHAPTER Eleven

I had a funny mixed feeling. I was surprised, I was even flabbergasted, that is true. But it is also true that the surprise was cancelled out by its exact opposite; that I had been expecting this all along. They say that the conscious mind is the upper tenth and everything else is down below. I don't know how they got their percentages, but if they're correct I suppose nine-tenths of me had been doing the expecting, and it broke through into the upper layer when Ben Dykes put it into words.

Wolfe darted a glance at me. I lifted my brows and shook my head. He nodded and lifted his glass for the last of his beer.

“That makes it different,” said Sperling, not grief-stricken. “That seems to settle it.” “Look, Mr Archer,” Lieutenant Noonan offered. “It's only a hit-and-run now, and you're a busy man and so is Dykes. This Goodwin thinks he's tough. Why don't I just take him down to the barracks?” Archer, skipping him, asked Dykes, “How good is it? Enough to bank on?” “Plenty,” Dykes declared. “It all has to go to the laboratory, but there's blood on theUnder side of the fender, and a button with a piece of his jacket wedged between the axle and the spring, and other things. It's good all right.” Archer looked at me. “Well?” I smiled at him. “I couldn't put it any better than you did, Mr Archer. My contribution is entirely negative. If that car killed Rony I was somewhere else at the time. I wish I could be more help, but that's the best I can do.” “I'll take him to the barracks,” Noonan offered again.

Again he was ignored. Archer turned to Wolfe. “You own the car, don't you? Have you got anything to say?” “Only that I don't know how to drive, and that if Mr Goodwin is taken to a barracks, as this puppy suggests, I shall go with him.” The DA came back to me. “Why don't you come clean with it? We can wind it up in ten minutes and get out of here.” Tm sorry,” I said courteously. “If I tried to fake it at a minute's notice I might bitch it up and you'd catch me in a lie.” “You won't tell us how it happened?” “No, I won't. I can't.” Archer stood up and spoke to Sperling. “Is there another room I can take him to?