“Ten minutes... but I was here! Right here in this chair! You knew I wanted to see her! What kind of a trick—”
“I know you wanted to see her. But I didn’t want you to, and she is perfectly safe if she gets through the traffic. I do not intend that you shall see Miss Frost until I’ve had a talk with you. It was a trick, yes, but I’ve a right to play tricks. What about your own tricks? What about the outright lies you have been telling the police since the day Molly Lauck was murdered? Well, sir? Answer me!”
McNair started twice to speak, but didn’t. He looked at Wolfe. He sat down. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and then put it back again without using it. Sweat showed on his forehead.
Finally he said, in a thin cool voice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you know.” Wolfe pinned him down with his eyes. “I’m talking about the box of poisoned candy. I know how Miss Frost became aware of its contents. I know that you have known from the beginning, and that you have deliberately withheld vital information from the police in a murder case. Don’t be an idiot, Mr. McNair. I have a statement signed by Helen Frost; there was nothing else for her to do. If I told the police what I know you would be locked up. For the present I don’t tell them, because I wish to earn a fee, and if you were locked up I couldn’t get at you. I pay you the compliment of assuming that you have some brains. If you poisoned that candy, I advise you to say nothing, leave here at once, and beware of me; if you didn’t, talk to the point, and there will be no dodging the truth.” Wolfe leaned back and murmured, “I dislike ultimatums, even my own. But this has gone far enough.”
McNair sat motionless. Then I saw a shiver in his left shoulder, a quick little spasm, and the fingers of his left hand, on the arm of his chair, began twitching. He looked down at them, and reached over with his other hand and gripped and twisted them, and the shoulder had another spasm, and I saw the muscles jerking in the side of his neck. His nerves were certainly shot. His eyes moved around and fell on the empty glass standing on the edge of Wolfe’s desk, and he turned to me and asked as if it were a big favor:
“Could I have a little more water?”
I took the glass and went and filled it and brought it back, and when he didn’t lift his hand to take it I put it down on the desk again. He paid no attention to it.
He muttered aloud, but to no one in particular. “I’ve got to make up my own mind. I thought I had, but I didn’t expect this.”
Wolfe said, “If you were a clever man you’d have done that before the unexpected forced you.”