He wanted a question, and Wolfe obliged. “What should you have done?”
“I should have killed him. He sat there in his wheelchair — his arteries have gone bad, and he can’t walk — he sat there in my father’s house, the owner of it, and he said he would send me a thousand a month from the money my father had made. It was an invitation to murder. If I had killed him, with due precaution of course, under my sister’s will I would have received for the rest of my life an annual income of some forty thousand dollars. The idea did occur to me, but I’m no good at all with any kind of intricacy, and though I have never learned how to behave, my instinct of self-preservation is damned keen.”
He gestured. “That’s what brought me here, that instinct. If for any reason this creature, this brother-in-law, this Theodore Huck in a wheelchair, stopped considering my needs, I would shortly die of starvation. I am incapable of sustaining life, even my own — especially my own. So when, at my rooms in Paris, I received a communication warning me of possible danger, I took a plane to New York. My brother-in-law made me welcome at my father’s house — damned gracious of him — and I’ve been there nearly two weeks now, and I’m stumped, and that’s why I’m here. There are three—”
He stopped abruptly, aimed the quick little gray eyes at me, sent them back to Wolfe, and said, “This is confidential.”
Wolfe nodded. “Things discussed in this room usually are. Your risk, sir.”
“Well.” He screwed his pinched little mouth, making it even smaller. He shrugged. “Well. I think the warning I got was valid. There are three women in that house with him, besides the cook and maids: the housekeeper, Mrs. Cassie O’Shea, who is a widow; a nurse, Miss Sylvia Marcy; and a so-called secretary, Miss Dorothy Riff. They’re all after him, and I think one of them is getting him, but I don’t know which one and I can’t find out. The trouble is, I have developed a formula for getting on terms with women, but in this case I can’t use it and I’m lost. I need to know as soon as possible which one of those women is landing my brother-in-law.”
Wolfe snorted. “So you can intervene? With your formula?”
“Good God, no.” Lewent was shocked. “It would be a damned nuisance, and anyway there would soon be another one and I would have time for nothing else. Also I would like to get back to Europe before the holidays. I merely want to engage her sympathetic interest. I want to secure her friendship. I want to make absolutely certain that she will be permanently well disposed toward me after she lands Huck. That will take me three weeks if it is Miss Marcy or Miss Riff, four if it is Mrs. O’Shea. It is not a sordid familial flimflam. It’s a perfectly legitimate inquiry. Isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” Wolfe conceded. “But it’s fantastic.”
“Not at all. It’s practical and damned sensible. My income for the rest of my life depends entirely on the goodwill of my brother-in-law. If he marries, especially if he marries a woman considerably younger than he is, how long will his goodwill last — twelve thousand dollars’ worth, year after year — if his wife hasn’t got it too?”