“Better make it four. I’ll have to leave soon and I have a dinner engagement.”
“Cancel it,” Wolfe snapped.
“I’m afraid I can’t, really.”
“Then I can’t take this job.” Wolfe was curt. “What do you expect, with this thing already a week old?” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’ll need you, all of you, certainly all evening, and probably most of the night. I must know all that you know about Mr. Keyes and Mr. Talbott. Also, if I am to remove this unjust suspicion of you from the minds of the police and the public, I must begin by removing it from my own mind. That will take many hours of hard work.”
“Oh,” Dorothy Keyes put in, her brows going up, “you suspect us, do you?”
Wolfe, ignoring her, asked Broadyke, “Well, sir?”
“I’ll have to phone,” Broadyke muttered.
“You may,” Wolfe conceded, as if he were yielding a point. His eyes moved, left and right and left again, and settled on Audrey Rooney, whose chair was a little in the rear, to one side of Wayne Safford’s. “Miss Rooney,” he shot at her, “you seem to be the most vulnerable, since you were on the scene. When did Mr. Keyes dismiss you from his employ, and what for?”
Audrey had been sitting straight and still, with her lips tight. “Well, it was—” she began, but stopped to clear her throat and then didn’t continue because of an interruption.
The doorbell had rung, and I had left it to Fritz to answer it, which was the custom when I was engaged with Wolfe and visitors, unless superseding orders had been given. Now the door to the hall opened, and Fritz entered, closed the door behind him, and announced. “A gentleman to see you, sir. Mr. Victor Talbott.”