Before Midnight

Chapter 17

It was Vernon Assa. He wasn’t as much of a misfit for the red leather chair as Mrs. Wheelock, at least he was plump, and his deep tan went well with the red, but he was much too short. I have surveyed a lot of people in that chair, and there has only been one who was exactly right for it. I must tell about him some time.

You might have thought, after what had just been said upstairs, that Wolfe would have been spreading butter on the caller, but he wasn’t. When he came down, after brushing his hair and tucking his shirt in, he crossed to his chair, sat, and said brusquely, “I can spare a few minutes, Mr. Assa. What can I do for you?”

Assa looked at me. I thought he was going to start the old routine about seeing Wolfe privately, but apparently he only wanted something attractive to look at while he got his words collected. I remembered that at the first visit of the LBA bunch he had been the impatient one, snapping at Hansen to get on and telling Wolfe he was wasting time, but now he seemed to feel that deliberation was better.

He looked at Wolfe. “About the meeting this evening. You’ll have to call it off.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe cocked his head. “Under what compulsion?”

“Well... it’s obvious. Isn’t it?”

“Not to me. I’m afraid you’ll have to elaborate.”

Assa shifted in the chair. I had noticed that he seemed to be having trouble getting comfortably adjusted. “You realize,” he said, “that our main problem is solved, thanks to you. The problem that brought us to you last Wednesday in a state of panic. There was no chance of finishing the contest without confusion and some discord after what happened to Dahlmann, and the wallet gone, but as it looked when we came to you we were headed for complete disaster, and you have prevented it. Hansen is certain that legally we are in the clear. With the contestants receiving the answers as they have, and it won’t do Miss Frazee any good to deny she got them, if we repudiate those verses and replace them with others, as of course we will, our position would be upheld by any court in the land. There is still serious embarrassment, but that couldn’t be helped. You have rescued the contest from utter ruin by a brilliant stroke and are to be congratulated.”

“Mr. Assa.” Wolfe’s eyes, on him, were half closed. “Are you speaking for my client, the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa, or for yourself?”

“Well... I am a member of the firm, as you know, but I came here on my own initiative and responsibility.”

“Do your associates know you’re here and what for?”

“No. I didn’t want to start a long and complicated discussion. I decided to come only half an hour ago. Your meeting starts at nine, and it’s nearly seven now.”

“I see. And you are assuming that I sent the answers to the contestants — or had them sent.”

Assa passed his tongue over his lips. “I didn’t put it baldly like that, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. Goodwin is in your confidence anyway. It was impossible to figure why one of the contestants would have sent them, if he had killed Dahlmann and got them from the wallet, and that leaves only you.”

“Not impossible,” Wolfe objected. “Not if he found to his dismay that in the situation he had created they were worse than useless to him.”

Assa nodded. “I considered that, of course, but still thought it impossible. Another reason I didn’t mention my coming to my associates was that I realize you can’t acknowledge what you did to save us. I don’t expect you to acknowledge it even to me, and you certainly wouldn’t if one or two of them had come along, especially Hansen. We wouldn’t want you to acknowledge it anyhow, because we’ve hired you, and the legal position would probably be that we did it ourselves, and that would be disastrous. So you see why I didn’t put it baldly.”

“Thank you for your forbearance,” Wolfe said drily. “But why must the meeting be called off?”

“Because it can’t do any good and may do harm. What good can it do?”

Wolfe’s eyes were still half closed. “It can help me to earn a fee. I accepted Mr. Hansen’s definition of my job: ‘to find out who took the wallet and got the paper.’ It remains to be performed.”

“It doesn’t have to be performed, not now, since the contest problem is solved. You’ve earned your fee and you’ll get it.”

“You’ve admitted, Mr. Assa, that you’re speaking only for yourself.”

The red tip of his tongue showed again, flicking his lips. “I’ll guarantee the fee,” he said.

Wolfe shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not acceptable. My responsibility is to my client, and his reciprocal responsibility, to pay me, is not transferable. As for canceling the meeting, that’s out of the question. If such a request came unanimously from Messrs. Buff, O’Garro, Hansen, Heery — and you, and cogent reasons were given, I might consider it, but would probably refuse. As it is, I won’t even consider it.”

Assa looked at me. He glanced at the refreshment table, came back to me, and said, “There’s a bottle of Pernod there. That’s my drink. Could I have some?”

I said certainly and asked if he wanted ice, and he said no. I took him the Pernod and an Old-Fashioned glass, and he poured two fingers as plump as his own, and darned if he didn’t toss it off as if it were a jigger of bourbon. I’m not a Pernod drinker, but there is such a thing as common sense. Not only that, he poured again, this time only one finger, and then, without taking a sip, put the glass down on the little table at his elbow, beside the bottle.

He swallowed a couple of times for a chaser. “That’s a highhanded attitude, Mr. Wolfe,” he said. He paused to collect more words. “Frankly, I don’t see what you expect to accomplish. You’ll get your fee, and from our standpoint, as far as the contest is concerned, it no longer matters who got the wallet. Of course it may still be a factor in the murder, but you weren’t hired to investigate the murder. That’s up to the police. Why do you insist on this meeting?”

“To finish my job. What I engaged to do.”

“But you’re more apt to undo what you’ve already done. The police know now — they were told on your advice — that you have had a copy of the answers in your possession since last Wednesday. How far the discretion of the police can be trusted I don’t know, but it’s conceivable that one or more of the contestants have learned about it, and if so, God only knows what would happen at the meeting. You might even find yourself backed into a corner where you had to admit you had mailed the answers to them, and LBA would be responsible, and we’d be in a deeper hole than ever.”

“You would indeed,” Wolfe conceded. “But if that’s your fear, dismiss it. There will be no such admission by me.”

“What will there be?”

“I couldn’t tell you if I would. I have formed certain conjectures and I intend to explore them. That’s what the meeting is for, and I shall not abandon it.”

Assa regarded him in silence, steadily, for a full half a minute. At length he broke it. “When your man Goodwin came to our office on Friday and got the word for you to go ahead, he wanted it unanimous. He polled us, and I voted yes with the others. Now I don’t, so it’s no longer unanimous. I ask you to suspend operations until I have conferred with my associates — say until tomorrow noon. I not only ask you, I direct you.”

Wolfe was shaking his head. “I’m afraid I can’t oblige you, Mr. Assa. Time’s important now, now that the spark has been struck and the fire started. It’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“To stop.”

Assa’s eyes dropped. He gazed at his right palm, saw nothing there to encourage him, tried the left, and there was nothing there either. “Very well,” he said, and arose, in no haste, and started for the door. Considering the turn things had taken, I wouldn’t have been astonished if Wolfe had told me to fasten onto him and lock him in the front room until nine o’clock, but he didn’t, so I got up and followed the guest into the hall. I didn’t resent his not thanking me for holding his topcoat and opening the door, since he was obviously preoccupied.

Back in the office, I stood and looked down at Wolfe. “I suppose,” I observed, “it doesn’t matter who struck the spark as long as it caught.”

“Yes. Get Mr. Cramer.”

I sat at my desk and dialed. It was a bad time of day to get Cramer ordinarily, but when something big was stirring, or refusing to stir, he sometimes ate at his desk instead of going home for what he called supper. That was one of the times. From the way he growled at me, it was very much one of the times.

Wolfe took it. “Mr. Cramer? I thought you might be interested in a meeting at my office this evening. We’re going to discuss the Dahlmann case. It will—”

“Who’s going to discuss it?”

“Everyone concerned — that is, everyone I know about. It will of course be confined to the theft of the wallet, since that’s what I’m investigating, but it will inevitably touch upon points that affect you, so I’m inviting you to come — as an observer.”

Silence. Cramer could have been chewing a bite of a corned beef sandwich, or he could have been chewing what he had heard.

“What have you got?” he demanded.

“For myself, a reasonable expectation. For you, the possibility of a suitable disclosure. Have I ever wasted your time on frivolity?”

“No. Not on frivolity. There’s no use asking you on the phone.... Stebbins will be there in ten minutes.”

“No, sir. Nor you. I need a little time to arrange the inside of my head, and my dinner will be ready shortly. The meeting will be at nine o’clock.”

“I’ll bring Stebbins with me.”

“By all means. Do so.”

We hung up.

“You know darned well,” I said, “that Purley will bring handcuffs, and he hates to take them back empty—”

I stopped because he was leaning back and closing his eyes, and his lips were starting to move, pushing out and then in, out and in.... He was working at last. I went across the hall for two more chairs.