Before Midnight

Chapter 12

Thank the Lord those next four days are behind me instead of ahead. I admit that there are operations and situations where the best you can do is set a trap and then wait patiently for the victim to spring it, and in such a case I can wait as patiently as the next one, but we had set no trap. Waiting for the victim to make the trap himself and then spring it called for more patience than I had in stock.

Wolfe had asked me what I would suggest, and I spent part of the time from Thursday noon to Friday noon, in between phone calls and personal appearances of LBA personnel and Talbott Heery, trying to hit on something. I had to agree with him that there was no point in tagging along after the cops on any of the routines. Altogether, while sitting at my desk or on the stool in the kitchen, or brushing my teeth, or shaving, or looking out the window, I conceived at least a dozen bright ideas, none of them worth a damn when you turned them over. I did submit one of them to Wolfe after dinner Thursday evening: to get the five contestants together in the office, and tell them it had been thought that Dahlmann had put the answers to the last five verses in a safe deposit box, but evidently he hadn’t, since none could be found, and there was no authentic list of answers against which their solutions could be checked, and therefore other verses, not yet devised, would have to replace the ones they had. He asked what good it would do. I said we would get their reactions. He said we already had their reactions, and besides, LBA would properly reject a procedure that made them out a bunch of bungling boobies.

There was nothing in Friday’s papers that struck a spark, but at least they didn’t announce that Cramer had got his man and the case was solved. Just the contrary. No one had been tapped even as a material witness, and it was plain, from the way the Gazette handled it, that the field was still wide open. Lon Cohen phoned again around noon to ask what Wolfe was waiting for, and I told him for a flash. He asked what kind of flash, and I told him to ask Miss Frazee.

The climax of the phone calls from the clients began soon after lunch Friday. Wolfe was up in his room to be away from the turmoil. He had finished Beauty for Ashes and started on Party of One, not in verse, by Clifton Fadiman. The climax was in three scenes, the hero of the first one being Patrick O’Garro. It was the third call from him in the twenty-four hours, and he made it short and to the point. He asked to speak to Wolfe and I gave him the usual dose. He asked if I had anything to report and I said no.

“All right,” he said, “that’s enough. This is formal notice that our agreement with him is canceled and he is no longer representing Lippert, Buff and Assa. This conversation is being recorded. He can send a bill for services to date. Did you hear me?”

“Sure I hear you. I’d like to say more because my phone conversations don’t get recorded very often, but there’s nothing to say. Goodbye.”

I went to the hall, up the flight of stairs to Wolfe’s room, tapped on the door, and entered. He was in the big chair by the window, in his shirt sleeves with his vest unbuttoned, with his book.

“You look nice and comfortable,” I said approvingly, “but you prefer the chair downstairs and you can come on down if you want to. O’Garro just phoned and canceled the order. We’re fired. He said the conversation was being recorded. I wonder why it makes a man feel important to have what he says on the phone recorded? I don’t mean him, I mean me.”

“Bosh,” he said.

“No, really, it did make me feel important.”

“Shut up.” He closed his eyes. In a minute he opened them. “Very well. I’ll be down shortly. It’s a confounded nuisance.”

I agreed and left him. As I went back downstairs my feelings were mixed. Getting tossed out on our ear would certainly be no fun, it wouldn’t help our prestige any, and it would reduce our bill by about ninety-five per cent to a mere exorbitant charge for consultation, but I did not burst into tears as I began strolling around the office to wait for developments. At least the fat son of a gun would have to snap out of it and show something. At least his eyes would get a rest from the strain of constant reading. At least I wouldn’t have to try to dig up more ways of explaining why they couldn’t speak to a genius while he was fermenting.

The phone rang, and I answered it, and was told by a baritone that I recognized, “This is Rudolph Hansen. I want to speak to Mr. Wolfe.”

I didn’t bother. I said curtly, “Nothing doing. Orders not to disturb.”

“Nonsense. He has already been disturbed by the message from Mr. O’Garro. Let me speak to him.”

“I haven’t given him the message from O’Garro. When he tells me to disturb him on no account he means it.”

“You haven’t given him that message?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“My God, how many times must I say it? Do... not... disturb.”

“That certainly is a strange way of — no matter. It’s just as well. Mr. O’Garro was too impetuous. His message is hereby canceled, on my authority as counsel for the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa. Mr. Wolfe is too highhanded and we would like to be kept better informed, but we have full confidence in him and we want him to go on. Tell him that — no, I’ll tell him. I’ll drop in a little later. I’m tied up here for the present.”

I thanked him for calling, hung up, and mounted the stairs again to Wolfe’s room; and by gum, he wasn’t reading. He had put the book down and was sitting there looking imposed upon.

“I said I’d be down shortly,” he growled.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to. Go right on working. Hansen phoned as counsel for the firm. O’Garro was too impetuous, he said. They have full confidence in you, which shows how little — oh well. You’re to keep at it. I didn’t ask him if the conversation was recorded.”

He picked up his book. “Very well. Now you may reasonably expect a respite.”

“Not for long. Hansen’s dropping in later.”

He grunted and I left him.

The respite was a good ten minutes, maybe eleven, and it was ended at the worst possible moment. I had turned on the television and got the ball game, Giants and Dodgers, and Willie Mays was at bat in the fourth inning with a count of two and one, when the phone rang. Dialing the sound off but not the picture, I got at the phone, and received a double jolt. With my ears I heard Oliver Buff saying that both O’Garro and Hansen were too impetuous and had it wrong, and going on from there, and simultaneously with my eyes I saw Mays pop a soft blooper into short center field that I could have caught on the tip of my nose. I turned my back on that, but the rest of Buff I had to take. When he was through I went and turned off the TV, and once again ascended the stairs.

Wolfe frowned at me suspiciously. “Is this flummery?” he demanded.

“Not to my knowledge,” I told him. “It sounds like their voices.”

“Pfui. I mean you. The call by Mr. Hansen voided the one by Mr. O’Garro. You could have invented both of them; it would be typical.”

“Sure I could, but I didn’t. You asked for a ceasefire on badgering and got it. This time it was Buff. LBA seems to be tossing coins and giving me a play-by-play report. Buff voided both O’Garro and Hansen. He says they have been conferring and just reached a decision. They want a report by you personally on progress to date, and they’re all at the LBA office, including Talbott Heery, and can’t leave to come here, so you’re to go there. At once. Otherwise the deal is off. I told him, first, that you never go outdoors on business, and second, that I wasn’t supposed to disturb you and I wasn’t going to. He had heard that before. He said you would be there by four o’clock, or else. It is now a quarter past three. May I offer a suggestion?”

“What?”

“If you ever take another job for that outfit, even to find out who’s stealing the paper clips, get it in writing, signed by everybody. I’m tired out running up and down stairs.”

He didn’t hear me. With his elbow on the chair arm, he was pulling gently at the tip of his nose with thumb and forefinger. After a little he spoke. “As I said yesterday, the tension is extremely severe, and something had to snap. I doubt if this is it. This is probably merely the froth of frustration, but it may be suggestive to watch the bubbles. How long will it take you to get there?”

“This time of day, fifteen to twenty minutes.”

“Ample. Get them together. All of them.”

“Sure. Do I just tell them I’m you, or shall I borrow one of your suits and some pillows?”

“You are yourself, Archie. But I must define your position. You’ve been demanding instructions and here they are. Sit down.”

I moved a chair up.