Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 25 by Before Midnight Page B

prizes. If you ask why I’m being so outspoken with you, it’s because our interests touch but do not conflict. If and when I get anything you might need you shall have it.”
    “Quite a job.” Cramer was eying him, not as a neighbor. “How are you going to learn who took the wallet without tagging the murderer?”
    “Perhaps I can’t. That’s where our interests touch. But the murder is not my concern.”
    “I see. Just a by-product. And you say that the paper Dahlmann showed them and put back in his wallet didn’t have the answers on it.”
    “Well.” Wolfe pursed his lips. “Not categorically. On that point I am restrained. That is what my clients have told you, and it would be uncivil for me to contradict them. In any case, that illustrates the difference between your objective and mine. Since one of my purposes is to achieve a fair and satisfactory distribution of the prizes, the contents of that paper are of the first importance to me. But to you, that is of no importance at all. What matters to you is not whether the paper contained the answers, but whether the contestants thought it did. If you had good evidence that one of them thought that Dahlmann was only hoaxing them, you’d have to eliminate him as a suspect. By the way, have you any such evidence?”
    “No. Have you?”
    “No, sir. I have no evidence of anything whatever.”
    “Do you believe that one of the contestants killed him?”
    Wolfe shook his head. “I’ve told you, I’m not working on a murder. I think it likely that one of them took the wallet—only a conjecture, not a belief.”
    “Are you saying there might have been two of them—one killed him and one took the wallet?”
    “Not at all. Of course my information is scanty. I haven’t even read the account in the evening paper, knowing it couldn’t be relied on. Have you reason to think there were two?”
    “No.”
    “You are assuming that whoever killed him took the wallet?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then so am I. As I said, there’s no conflict. You agree?”
    There was some beer left in Cramer’s bottle, and he poured it, waited a little for the foam to go down, drank, put the glass down, and licked his lips.
    He looked at Wolfe. “I’ll tell you. I have never yet bumped into you in the course of my duties without conflict before I was through, but I don’t say it couldn’t possibly happen. As it stands now, if I take you at your word—I say if—I think we might get along. I think your clients are holding out on us. I think they’re worried more about what happens to their goddam contest than what happens to a murderer, and that’s why I’m willing to believe your job is what you say it is. I think they have probably given it to you straight, and I’d like to know exactly what they’ve told you, but I certainly don’t expect you to tell me. I think that on the contest part, especially the paper Dahlmann had in his wallet, you’re on the inside track, and you know things or you’ll learn things we don’t know and maybe can’t learn. God knows I don’t expect to pump them out of you, but I do expect you to realize that it won’t hurt you a damn bit to loosen up with anything I could use.”
    “It’s a pity,” Wolfe said.
    “What’s a pity?”
    “That you choose this occasion for an appeal instead of the usual bludgeon, because this time I’m armored. Mr. Rudolph Hansen, who is a member of the bar, made our conversation a privileged communication by taking a dollar from me as a retainer. I’m hisclient. It’s a pity you don’t give me a chance to raise my shield.”
    Cramer snorted. “A lot you need it. I’ve had enough goes at you without a shield. But this is a new one. You can’t tell me anything because it’s all privileged, huh?”
    “No, sir.” Wolfe was a little hurt. “I acquiesced in Mr. Hansen’s subterfuge only to humor him. What I was told under the cloak of privilege may be of help in connection with the contest, but it wouldn’t