Might as Well Be Dead

Chapter 19

A few days later Cramer dropped in at six o’clock and called me Archie when I let him in. After getting settled in the red leather chair, accepting beer, and exchanging some news and views with Wolfe, he stated, not aggressively, “The District Attorney wants to know where and how you got the key to the locker. I wouldn’t mind knowing myself.”

“I think you would,” Wolfe declared.

“Would what?”

“Would mind. It would only ruffle you to no purpose. If the District Attorney persists, and I tell him it came to me in the mail and the envelope has been destroyed, or that Archie found it on the sidewalk, what then? He has the murderer, and you delivered him. I doubt if you will persist.”

He didn’t.

The problem of the fee, which had to be settled as soon as Peter Hays had been turned loose, was a little more complicated. Having mentioned to James R. Herold, while under a strain, the sum of fifty thousand dollars, Wolfe wanted to stick to it, but fifty grand and expenses seemed pretty steep for a week’s work, and besides, he was already in the 80 % bracket. He solved it very neatly, arranging for Herold to donate a check for $16,666.67 to Johnny Keems’s widow and one for the same amount to Ella Reyes’ mother. That left $16,666.66, plus expenses, for Wolfe, and makes a monkey out of people who call him greedy, since he got only $16,666.66 instead of $16,666.67. And P.H., after he got from under, finally conceded that his father and mother were his parents, though the announcement of the wedding in the Times had it Peter Hays, and the Times is always right.

They were married a month or so after Patrick A. Degan had been convicted of first-degree murder, and a couple of weeks later they called at the office. I wouldn’t have recognized P.H. as the guy I had seen that April day through the steel lattice. He looked comparatively human and even acted human. I want to be fair, but I also want to report accurately, and the fact is that he didn’t impress me as any particular treat. When they got up to go Selma Hays moved to the corner of Wolfe’s desk and said she had to kiss him. She said she doubted if he wanted to be kissed, but she simply had to.

Wolfe shook his head. “Let us forgo it. You wouldn’t enjoy it and neither would I. Kiss Mr. Goodwin instead; that will be more to the point.”

I was right there. She turned to me, and for a second she thought she was going to, and so did I. But as pink started to show in her cheeks she drew back, and I said something, I forget what. That girl has sense. Some risks are just too big to take.