“Sure, and you were right. It was so slick that I’m going to ask for a raise. Because there’s a loophole, namely we don’t have to monkey around. We can keep going the way I started. We’ve got a club to use on Mrs. Whitten, which means all of them, and if she hadn’t just been sliced and had her side sewed up we could phone her that we want her down here within the hour, along with the family. As it is, I guess that’s out. The alternative is for Mr. Wolfe and me to get in the car, which is out at the curb, and go there — now.”
I ignored a little grunt from Wolfe’s direction.
“It has been years,” I told Marko, “since I tried to get him to break his rule never to go anywhere outside this house on business, and I wouldn’t waste breath on it now. But this has nothing to do with business. You’re not a client, and Pompa isn’t, and he has told you that he wouldn’t take your money. This is for love, a favor to an old friend, which makes it entirely different. No question of rule-breaking is involved.”
Marko was gazing at me. “You mean go to Mrs. Whitten’s home?”
“Certainly. Why not?”
“Would they let you in?”
“You’re damn right they would, if that doctor has phoned her, and it’s ten to one he did.”
“Would it accomplish anything?”
“The least it would accomplish would be that there wouldn’t be a second murder as long as we were there. Beyond that — circumstances might offer suggestions. I might add, not being a candidate for president, that when I went there alone it accomplished a little something.”
Marko wheeled to Wolfe with his arms extended. “Nero, you must go! At once! You must!”