Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 14 - The Second Confession by Rex Stout

Author:Rex Stout [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-75616-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

Sperling looked up. “Signed by Webster Kane,” he said. He stretched forward to hand the paper to the District Attorney. “Witnessed by me. If you want it more detailed I don’t think he’ll have any objection. Here he is—you can ask him.”

Archer took it and ran his eye over it. In a moment he looked up and, with his head to one side, gazed at Kane. Kane met the gaze.”

Archer tapped the paper with a finger. “You wrote and signed this, did you, Mr. Kane?”

“I did,” Kane said clearly and firmly but without bragging.

“Well—you’re a little late with it, aren’t you?”

“I certainly am.” Kane did not look happy, but he was bearing up. The fact that he let his hair do as it pleased was of some advantage to him, for it made it seem less unlikely that the man with the head and face of a young statesman—that is, young for a statesman—would make such a fool of himself. He hesitated and then went on, “I am keenly aware that my conduct was indefensible. I can’t even explain it in terms that make sense to me now. Apparently I’m not as good in a crisis as I would like to think I am.”

“But this wasn’t much of a crisis, was it? An unavoidable accident? It happens to lots of people.”

“I suppose it does—but I had killed a man. It seemed like a hell of a crisis to me.” Kane gestured. “Anyhow, you see what it did to me. It threw me completely off balance.”

“Not completely.” Archer glanced at the paper. “Your mind was working well enough so that when Goodwin went to the car and drove away, down that same drive, only fifteen minutes after the accident, you thought there was a good chance that it would be blamed on him. Didn’t you?”

Kane nodded. “I put that in the statement deliberately, even though I knew it could be construed like that. I can only say that if that thought was in my mind I wasn’t conscious of it. How did I put it?”

Archer looked at the paper. “Like this: ‘His going away in the car seemed somehow to make up my mind for me. I went into the house and up to my room,’ and so on.”

“That’s right.” Kane looked and sounded very earnest. “I was simply trying to be thoroughly honest about it, after behavior of which I was ashamed. If I had in me the kind of calculation you have described I didn’t know it.”

“I see.” Archer looked at the paper, folded it, and sat holding it. “How well did you know Rony?”

“Oh—not intimately. I had seen him frequently the past few months, mostly at the Sperling home in New York or here.”

“Were you on good terms with him?”

“No.”

It was a blunt uncompromising no. Archer snapped, “Why not?”

“I didn’t like what I knew of the way he practiced his profession. I didn’t like him personally—I just didn’t like him. I knew that Mr. Sperling suspected him of

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