They all stared at him. May demanded, “How do you know that?”
“I know more than that,” Wolfe assured her. “But that’s what I give you now. Accept it; it’s good — Next, Mr. Dunn, I offer you a suggestion. Yesterday Mr. Goodwin found Miss Karn seated in the living room, talking with April Hawthorne who was disguised with a veil to pass as Mrs. Noel Hawthorne.”
Dunn nodded. “That was one thing—”
“One thing you came here now to see me about. Of course. But my suggestion: Mr. Goodwin, on an impulse, parted the draperies that conceal the bar, and saw Mr. Stauffer standing there. Last evening Stauffer offered Goodwin a thousand dollars not to tell the police about it. Goodwin refused the bribe, but he didn’t tell the police, and I didn’t tell Inspector Cramer when he called on me this morning. But we might strike a bargain with Stauffer. Since he was Hawthorne’s deputy in the foreign department of Daniel Cullen and Company, he must know the truth about that leakage on the Argentine loan. If it happened as you suspected yesterday, when Mrs. Hawthorne was found—”
“You’re way behind,” Stauffer interrupted gruffly.
Wolfe’s brow lifted. “Behind?”
“Yes. You’re going to suggest that Dunn forces me to tell the truth about the loan business by threatening to inform the police that I was hiding behind that curtain when Naomi Karn was there. Aren’t you?”
“I thought we might try that.”
“Well, you’re late. As long as Hawthorne was alive it was impossible for me to tell Dunn about it, I simply couldn’t, but I told him this morning, and we confronted Mrs. Hawthorne with it and made her sign a statement. That was what made her vindictive enough to go to the police with a bunch of lies—”
“We don’t know that she lied,” May objected. “Even if she stuck to the truth, it’s enough to challenge Wolfe’s statement that April’s in no danger—”