“Search me. You’re the word specialist. I’m ignorant.”
His hands abruptly left his pockets, and for a second I thought he was going to make contact, but he only rubbed his palms together. “If it’s blackmail,” he said, “there must be a threat. If I pay, what then?”
“No threat. You get the information, that’s all.”
“And if I don’t pay?”
“You don’t get it.”
“Who does?”
I shook my head. “I said no threat. I’m just trying to sell you something.”
“Of course. A threat doesn’t have to be explicit. It has been published that Wolfe is investigating the death of Mrs. Fromm.”
“Right.”
“But she didn’t engage him to do that, since surely she wasn’t anticipating her death. This is how it looks. She paid Wolfe to investigate something or somebody, and that evening she was killed. He considered himself under obligation to investigate her death. You can’t be offering to sell me information that Wolfe regards as being connected with her death, because you couldn’t possibly suppress such evidence without Wolfe’s connivance, and you’re not claiming that, are you?”