Wolfe couldn’t stand to see a woman look pleased.
Mrs. Poor was regarding him with a little smile of obvious approval. “Because,” she said, in a voice that was pleased too, and a nice voice, “I need help and I think you’re going to help me. I don’t approve of this. I didn’t want my husband to come here.”
“Indeed. Where did you want him to go, to the Atlantic Detective Agency?”
“Oh, no, if I had been in favor of his going to any detective at all, of course it would have been Nero Wolfe. But— may I explain?”
Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall. Three-forty. In twenty minutes he would be leaving for the plant rooms on the roof, to monkey with the orchids. He said curtly, “I have eighteen minutes.”
Eugene put in with a determined voice, “Then I’m going to use them—” But his wife smiled him out of it. She went on to Wolfe, “It won’t take that long. My husband and Mr. Blaney have been business partners for ten years. They own the firm of Blaney and Poor, manufacturers of novelties — you know, they make things like matches that won’t strike and chairs with rubber legs and bottled drinks that taste like soap—”
“Good God,” Wolfe muttered in horror.
She ignored it. “It’s the biggest firm in the business. Mr. Blaney gets the ideas and handles the production, he’s a genius at it, and my husband handles the business part, sales and so on. But Mr. Blaney is really just about too conceited to live, and now that the business is a big success he thinks my husband isn’t needed, and he wants him to get out and take twenty thousand dollars for his half. Of course it’s worth a great deal more than that, at least ten times as much, and my husband won’t do it. Mr. Blaney is very conceited, and also he will not let anything stand in his way. The argument has gone on and on, until now my husband is convinced that Mr. Blaney is capable of doing anything to get rid of him.”
“Of killing him. And you don’t agree.”
“Oh, no. I do agree. I think Mr. Blaney would stop at nothing.”