Murder By The Book

6

WOLFE does not like conferences with clients. Many's the time he has told me not to let a client in. So when, that evening, following instructions, I phoned Wellman at his hotel and asked him to call at the office the next morning at eleven, I knew it looked as bad to Wolfe as it did to me.

Eight days had passed since we had seen our client, though we had had plenty of phone calls from him, some local and some from Peoria. Apparently the eight days hadn't done him any good. Either he was wearing the same gray suit or he had two of them, but at least the tie and shirt were different. His face was pasty. As I hung his coat on the rack I remarked that he had lost some weight. When he didn't reply I thought he hadn't heard me, but after we had entered the office and he and Wolfe had exchanged greetings and he was in the red leather chair, he apologized.

"Excuse me, what did you say about my weight?"

"I said you had lost some."

"I guess so. I haven't been eating much and I don't seem to sleep. I go back home and go to the office or the warehouse, but I'm no darned good, and I take a train back here, and I'm no good here either." He went to Wolfe. "He told me on the phone you didn't have any real news but you wanted to see me."

Wolfe nodded. "I didn't want to, I had to. I must put a question to you. In eight days I have spent - how much, Archie?"

"Around eighteen hundred bucks."

"Nearly two thousand dollars of your money. You said you were going through with this even if it pauperized you. A man should not be held to a position taken under stress. I like my clients to pay my bills without immoderate pangs. How do you feel now?"

Wellman looked uncomfortable. He swallowed. "I just said I don't eat much."

"I heard you. A man should eat." Wolfe gestured. "Perhaps I should first describe the situation. As you know, I regard it as established that your daughter was murdered by the man who, calling himself Baird Archer, phoned for an appointment with her. Also that he killed her because she had read the manuscript she told about in her letter to you. The police agree."

"I know they do." Wellman was concentrating. "That's something. You did that."

"I did more. Most of your money has been spent in an effort to find someone who could tell us something about either the manuscript or Baird Archer, or both. It missed success by a narrow margin. Yesterday afternoon a young woman named Rachel Abrams was murdered by being pushed from a window of her office. Mr. Goodwin entered her office three minutes later. This next detail is being withheld by the police and is not for publication. In a notebook in her desk Mr. Goodwin found entries showing that last September a Baird Archer paid her ninety-eight dollars and forty cents for typing a manuscript. Of course that clinches it that your daughter was killed because of her knowledge of the manuscript, but I was already acting on that assumption, so it doesn't help any. We are -"

"It proves that Baird Archer did it!" Wellman was excited. "It proves that he's still in New York! Surely the police can find him!" He came up out of the chair. "I'm going -"

"Please, Mr. Wellman." Wolfe patted the air with a palm. "It proves that the murderer was in that building yesterday afternoon, and that's all. Baird Archer is still nothing but a name, a will-o'-the-wisp. Having missed Rachel Abrams by the merest tick, we still have no one alive who has ever seen or heard him. As for finding his trail from yesterday, that's for the police and they do it well; we may be sure that the building employees and tenants and passers-by are being efficiently badgered. Sit down, sir."

"I'm going up there. To that building."

"When I have finished. Sit down, please?"

Wellman lowered himself, and nearly kept going to the floor when his fanny barely caught the edge of the leather. He recovered and slid back a few inches.

"I must make it plain," Wolfe said, "that the chance of success is now minute. I have three men interviewing Miss Abrams' family and friends, to learn if she spoke to any of them about Baird Archer or his manuscript, but they have already talked with the most likely ones and have got nothing. Mr. Goodwin has seen everyone at the office of Scholl and Hanna who could possibly have what we're after, and he has also called on other publishers. For a week the police, with far greater resources than mine, have been doing their best to find a trace of either Baird Archer or the manuscript. The outlook has never been rosy; now it is forlorn."

Wellman's glasses had slipped down on his nose, and he pushed them back. "I asked about you before I came here," he protested. "I thought you never gave up."

"I'm not giving up."

"Excuse me. I thought you sounded like it."

"I'm merely describing the situation. Forlorn is not too strong a word. It would indeed be desperate but for one possibility. The name Baird Archer was first seen on a sheet of paper in the handwriting of Leonard Dykes. It would not be poopery to assume that when he wrote that list of names, obviously invented, he was choosing a pseudonym for a manuscript of a novel, whether written by him or another. But it is a fact, not an assumption, that he included that name in a list he compiled, and that that was the name of Miss Abrams' client, and it was also the name on the manuscript read by your daughter, and the name given by the man who phoned her for an appointment. If I make this too elaborate it is because I must make sure that it is completely clear."

"I like it clear."

"Good." Wolfe sighed. He was not enjoying himself. "I undertook to learn about that manuscript through your daughter's associates or the person who typed it, and I have met defeat. I've been licked. The only connection with Baird Archer that has not been explored is that of Leonard Dykes, and it is certainly flimsy, the bare fact that he wrote that name down; but to explore it is our only hope."

"Then go ahead."

Wolfe nodded. "That's why I needed to see you. This is February twenty-seventh. Dykes was fished out of the water on New Year's Day. He had been murdered. The police rarely skimp on a murder, and the law office where Dykes worked assuredly saw a great deal of them. Mr. Goodwin has been permitted to see the file. People there were even asked then about Baird Archer, along with the other names on that list Dykes had written. Dykes had few intimacies or interests outside the office where he worked. Then, eight days ago, I showed the police that the name of Baird Archer connected Dykes's death with that of your daughter, and of course they again went after the people in that law office and are still after them. All possible questions have probably been asked, not once but over and over, of those people. It would be useless for me to open an inquiry there in the conventional manner. They wouldn't even listen to my questions, let alone answer them."

Wellman was concentrating. "You're saying you can't do it."

"No. I'm saying the approach must be oblique. Young women work in law offices. Mr. Goodwin may have his equal in making the acquaintance of a young woman and developing it into intimacy, but I doubt it. We can try that. However, it will be expensive, it will probably be protracted, and it may be futile - for your purpose and mine. If there were only one young woman and we knew she had information for us, it Would be simple, but there may be a dozen or more. There's no telling what it will cost, or how long it will take, or whether we'll get anything. That's why I had to ask you, shall we try it or do you want to quit?"

Wellman's reaction was peculiar. He had been concentrating on Wolfe, to be sure he got it clear, but now he had shifted to me, and his look was strange. He wasn't exactly studying me, but you might have thought I had suddenly grown an extra nose or had snakes in my hair. I sent my brows up. He turned to Wolfe.

"Do you mean -" He cleared his throat. "I guess it's a good thing you asked me. After what I said here that day you have a right to think I would stand for anything, but that's a little too - with my money - a dozen young women - first one and then another like that -"

"What the devil are you suggesting?" Wolfe demanded. I not only kept my face straight, I stepped in, for three good reasons: we needed the business, I wanted to get a look at Baird Archer, and I did not want John R. Wellman to go back and tell Peoria that New York detectives debauched stenographers wholesale on order.

"You misunderstand," I told Wellman. "Much obliged for the compliment, but by intimacy Mr. Wolfe meant holding hands. He's right that sometimes I seem to get along with young women, but it's because I'm shy and they like that. I like what you said about its being your money. You'll have to take my word for it. If things start developing beyond what I think you would approve, I'll either remember it's your money and back off or I'll take off of the expense account all items connected with that subject."

"I'm not a prude," Wellman protested.

"This is farcical!" Wolfe bellowed.

"I'm not a prude," Wellman insisted manfully, "but I don't know those young women. I know this is New York, but some of them may be virgins."

"Absolutely possible," I agreed. I reproved Wolfe. "Mr. Wellman and I understand each other. His money is not to be used beyond a certain point, and he'll take my word for it. That right, Mr. Wellman?"

"I guess that'll do," he conceded. Meeting my eyes, he decided his glasses needed cleaning, removed them, and wiped them with his handkerchief. "Yes, that'll do."

Wolfe snorted. "There is still my question. The expense, the time it will take, the slender prospect of success. Also it will be in effect an investigation of the death of Leonard Dykes, not of your daughter. The approach will be oblique in more ways than one. Well, sir? Do we proceed or quit?"

"We proceed." Our client, still our client, put his glasses back on. "If I might - I would like to be assured that our relations are confidential. I wouldn't want my wife or my pastor to know about this - uh - this development."

Wolfe was looking as if he might bellow again, so I put in fast, "They won't, not from us. No one will."

"That's good. Do you want another check?"

Wolfe said we didn't, not just yet. That seemed to dispose of all the issues, but Wellman wanted to ask some questions, chiefly about Rachel Abrams and the building where her office was. Apparently he intended to go up there and poke around, and I was all for it, anything to get him outside before he got to worrying again about virgins, or Wolfe's resentment at having to confer with a client got out of hand.

After showing Wellman out I returned to the office. Wolfe was leaning back, scowling, running a fingertip around a race track on the arm of his chair.

I stretched and yawned. "Well," I remarked, "I suppose I'd better go up and change my clothes. The light brown, you know. They like a soft material that doesn't scratch when they put their head on your shoulder. Meanwhile you can be thinking up my instructions."

"There will be no instructions," he growled. "Confound it, get me something, that's all." He leaned forward to ring for beer.