She had opened her brown leather handbag and taken out a chequebook and a little gold fountain-pen. Resting the chequebook on the bag, she was writing in it with the pen. Wolfe's question got no reply until she had finished writing, torn out the cheque, returned the book and pen to the bag, and snapped the bag shut. Then she looked at him.

“I don't want you to expose my husband, Mr Wolfe. She was holding the cheque with her thumb and fingertip. “God knows I don't! I just want to know. You're not ugly and afraid and neurotic like me, you're big and handsome and successful and not afraid of anything. When I knew I had to have help and my cousin couldn't do it, and I wouldn't go to anyone I knew, I went about it very carefully. I found out all about you, and no one knows I did, or at least why I did. If my husband is doing something that will hurt me that will be the end; but I don't want to expose him, I just have to know. You are the greatest detective on earth, and you're an honest man. I just want to pay you for finding out where and how my husband is getting money, that's all. You can't possibly say you won't do it. Not possibly!

She left her chair and went to put the cheque on his desk in front of him. “It's for ten thousand dollars, but that doesn't mean I think that's enough. Whatever you say. But don't you dare say I want to expose him! My God-expose him?

She had my sympathy up to a point, but what stuck out was her basic assumption that rich people can always get anything they want just by putting up the dough.

That's enough to give an honest working man, like a private detective for instance, a pain in three places. The assumption is of course sound in some cases, but what rich people are apt not to understand is that there are important exceptions.

This, however, was not one of them, and I hoped Wolfe would see that it wasn't.