Plot It Yourself

Chapter 17

In bed at three and out of it at ten Wednesday morning, I was an hour short of my regular requirement of eight hours’ sleep, but with Wolfe working his lips and giving up on Alice Porter and arranging a before-breakfast session with the hired hands, all five of them, it looked as if we were getting set for a showdown, and in that case I should be willing to make a major personal sacrifice, so I rolled out at ten. Also I made it snappy showering and dressing and eating breakfast, and got to the office at eleven-fifteen, only a quarter of an hour after Wolfe got down from the plant rooms. He was at his desk with the morning mail. I went and sat and watched him slit envelopes. His hands are quick and accurate, and he would be good at manual labour provided he could do it sitting down. I asked if he wanted help and he said no. I asked if there were any instructions.

“Perhaps.” He quit slitting and looked up. “After we discuss a matter.”

“Good. I guess I’m awake enough to discuss if it’s not too complicated. First I’ll report my conversation with Alice Porter during our drive to Carmel. At one point she said, ‘I never drive at night on account of my eyes. It gives me a headache.’ That’s the crop. Not another word. I made no advances because after the way you suddenly quit on her I had no idea where to poke. Next, it wouldn’t hurt if I had some notion of what Saul and Fred and Orrie and Dol Bonner and Sally Corbett are up to. So that when they call in I’ll know what they’re talking about.”

“They’ll report to me.”

“I see. Like that again. What I don’t know won’t hurt you.”

“What you don’t know will make no demands on your powers of dissimulation.” He put the letter-opener down. It was a knife with a horn handle that had been thrown at him in 1954, in the cellar of an old border fort in Alabama, by a man named Bua. The Marley.38 with which I had short Bua was in a drawer of my desk. He continued, “Besides, you won’t be here. I have made an assumption which was prompted by the question, why is Alice Porter alive? Why did X remove the other three so expeditiously and make no attempt to remove her? And why is she so cocksure that she is in no danger? Alone in that secluded house, with no companion but a dog that dotes on strangers, she shows no trepidation whatever, though X could be lurking at her door or behind a bush by day or by night. Why?”

I flipped a hand. “Any one of a dozen reasons. The best is the simplest. Also it’s been done so often that she wouldn’t have to invent it. She wrote a detailed account of how she and X put the bite on Ellen Sturdevant, probably saying it was X’s idea, and put it in an envelope. She also put in the envelope things that would corroborate it, for instance something in X’s handwriting, maybe a couple of letters he had written her; that would make it better. She sealed the envelope thoroughly with wax and tape, and wrote on it. ‘To be opened on my death and not before,’ and signed it. Then she deposited it with somebody she was sure she could trust to follow the instructions, and she told X about it, probably sending him or giving him a copy of what she had written. So X was up a stump. It was done first about three thousand B.C., and maybe a million times since, but it still works. It has saved the lives of thousands of blackmailers, and also of a lot of fine citizens like Alice Porter.” I flipped a hand again. “I like that best, but of course there are others.”

He grunted. “That one will do. That’s the assumption I have made. I think it highly probable. So where is the envelope?”

I raised a brow. “Probably somewhere in the United States, and there are now fifty of them. I doubt if she sent it out of the country. Do you want me to find it?”

“Yes.”

I got up. “Are you in a hurry?”

“Don’t clown. If such an envelope exists, and I strongly suspect that it does, I want to know where it is. If we can get our hands on it, all the better, but merely to locate it would be enough. Where would you start?”

“I’d have to think it over. Her bank, her lawyer if she has one, her pastor if she goes to church, a relative or an intimate friend-”

“Much too diffuse. It would take days. You might get a hint, or even better than a hint, from the executive secretary, Cora Ballard. Alice Porter joined that association in 1951, was dropped for non-payment of dues in 1954, and rejoined in 1956. I gathered that Miss Ballard is extremely well informed about the members, and presumably she will help if she can. See her.”

“Okay. She may not be enthusiastic. She wanted them to fire you. But I suppose she’ll-”

The doorbell rang. I stepped to the hall, took a look through the one-way glass panel, and turned to tell Wolfe, “Cramer.” He made a face and growled, “I have nothing for him.” I asked if I should tell him that and ask him to come back tomorrow, and he said yes, and then said, “Confound it, he’ll be after me all day and you won’t be here. Let him in.”

I went to the front and opened the door and got a shock, or rather, a series of shocks. Cramer said, “Good morning,” distinctly, as he crossed the threshold, plainly implying that I was a fellow being. Then he dropped his hat on the bench and waited while I closed the door, instead of tramping on to the office. Then he not only told Wolfe good morning but asked him how he was. Evidently it was Brotherhood Day, I had to control an impulse to slap him on the back or poke him in the ribs. To cap it, he said as he sat in the red leather chair, “I hope you won’t be charging me rent for this chair.” Wolfe said politely that a guest was always welcome to a seat to rest his legs, and Cramer said, “And a glass of beer?”

It was a ticklish situation. If Wolfe pushed the button, the beer signal, two shorts and a long, Fritz would get a wrong impression and there would have to be an explanation. He looked at me, and I got up and went to the kitchen, got a tray and a bottle and a glass, telling Fritz it was for a guest, and returned. As I entered Cramer was saying, “… but I never expected to see the day when you would cut down on your beer. What next? Thank you, Goodwin.” He poured. “What I’m here for, I came to apologize. One day last week-Friday, I think it was-I accused you of using Jane Ogilvy for a decoy and bungling it. I may have been wrong. If you or Goodwin told anybody you were going after her he’s not admitting it. And Kenneth Rennert was killed that same night, and you certainly wouldn’t have set them both up. So I owe you an apology.” He picked up the glass and drank.

“It’s welcome,” Wolfe told him. “All the more since you owe me a dozen other apologies that you have never made. Let this one do for all.”

“You’re so goddam impervious.” Cramer put the glass down on the stand. “Instead of coming to apologize, I could have come to tell you to stop interfering with a homicide investigation. You sent Goodwin to Putnam County to coerce a woman into coming to see you, a woman who was under surveillance by officers of the law.”

“Possibly you did.”

“Did what?”

“Come for that purpose. There was no coercion.”

“The hell there wasn’t. She went to the sheriff’s office in Carmel this morning and told him to keep his men away from her place, and she said that Goodwin had told her that Sergeant Stebbins had sicked Putnam County on her because he suspected her of murder, and she had better go with him to see you, and go quick. That’s not coercion?” He looked at me. “Did you tell her that?”

“Sure I did. Why not? Have you crossed her off?”

“No.” He went to Wolfe. “He admits it. I call that interfering in a murder investigation, and so would any judge. And this is once too often. I’m being fair. I have apologized for accusing you of something I can’t prove. But by God, I can prove this.”

Wolfe put his palms on the chair arms. “Mr Cramer. I know, of course, what you’re after. You have no intention or desire to charge me formally with obstructing justice; that would be both troublesome and futile. What you want is to learn whether I got any information that would help you in a case that has you baffled; and if I did, you want to know what it is. I’m willing to oblige you, and to the full. As you know, Mr Goodwin has an extraordinary memory. Archie. Give Mr Cramer our conversation with Miss Porter last evening. In toto. Omit nothing.”

I shut my eyes for a moment to concentrate. Getting it straight with no fumbling would be a little tricky, with all the names and titles and dates, and the way Wolfe had steered it along to the main point. Evidently, for some reason, he wanted Cramer to have it all, and I didn’t want him stopping me to insert something I was leaving out. I started slow, speeded up when I got going, and tripped only once, when I said “extortion” instead of “attempted extortion,” and I caught that and corrected it. Toward the end, knowing that I had it by the tail, I leaned back and crossed my legs just to show that there was really nothing to it for a man of my caliber. Finishing, I yawned. “Sorry,” I said, “but I’m a little short on sleep. Did I skip anything?”

“No,” Wolfe said. “Satisfactory,” His eyes went to Cramer. “So you have it, every word. There was manifestly no attempt to interfere with a homicide investigation; murder was mentioned only incidentally. You are welcome to the information I got from her.”

“Yeah.” Cramer didn’t sound grateful. “I could put it under a fingernail. She didn’t tell you a single solitary thing. And I don’t believe it, and you don’t expect me to. Why did you let her go? You had her. You had her backed into a corner that she couldn’t possibly squirm out of, and you quit and sent her home. Why?”

Wolfe turned a hand over. “Because nothing more was to be expected of her, at the moment. She had identified X for me. More accurately, she had given me a hint, a strong one, and I wanted to confirm it. I have done so. Now that I know him, or her, the rest should be easy.”

Cramer took a cigar from his pocket, stuck it in his mouth, and clamped his teeth on it. I wasn’t as impressed as he was, since the second I had seen Wolte lean back and shut his eyes and start his lips going I had known there would soon be some fireworks, though I hadn’t expected anything quite so showy. Not caring to have Cramer know that this development was as new to me as to him, I yawned again.

Cramer removed the cigar. “You mean that, do you? You know who killed Simon Jacobs and Jane Ogilvy and Kenneth Rennert?”

Wolfe shook his head. “I haven’t said so. I know who wrote those stories and instigated the plagiarism claims. You’re investigating a series of murders; I’m investigating a series of frauds. I have my X and you have yours. True, the two Xs are the same person, but I need only expose a swindler; it will be your job to expose a murderer.”

“You know who he is?”

“Yes.”

“And you got it from what Alice Porter told you last night? And Goodwin has repeated all of it?”

“Yes. I have confirmed the hint she gave me.”

Cramer’s fingers had closed on the cigar, which was probably no longer fit for chewing, let alone smoking. “Okay. That’s not your kind of lie. What was the hint?”

“You have heard it.” Wolfe’s fingertips met at the peak of his middle mound. “No, Mr Cramer. Surely that’s enough. I asked Mr Goodwin to repeat that conversation, and I told you it contained a disclosure of the identity of X, only because I felt I owed you something and I don’t like to be in debt. I know what it cost you to tender me an apology. Even though you did it in desperation, because you’re stumped, and even though you immediately reverted to your customary manner, it took great will power and I appreciate it. So now we’re even. You know everything that I know, and it will be interesting to see whether you get your murderer first, or I my swindler.”

Cramer stuck the cigar in his mouth, learned too late that it was in shreds, jerked it out and threw it at my wastebasket, and missed by two feet.

A while back, when it took me nearly two hours to spot the screw Wolfe was going to use on Alice Porter, I remarked that you had probably seen it and thought me as dumb as they come, and now of course you are thinking that Cramer and I were both dumb, since you have almost certainly caught on to the hint Wolfe had got from Alice Porter and you now know who X was. But you’re reading it, and Cramer and I were in it. If you don’t believe that makes a big difference, try it once. Anyhow, even though you now know X’s name, you may be curious to see how Wolfe nailed him-or her. So I’ll go on.

When Cramer left, some ten minutes later, he wasn’t curious because there wasn’t room enough in him for it. He was too damn sore. When I stepped back into the office after going to the hall to see that he didn’t forget to cross the sill before he shut the door, the phone was ringing and I went and got it. It was Saul Panzer. He asked for Wolfe, and Wolfe, lifting his receiver, told me, “You might catch Miss Ballard before she goes to lunch.”

I may not be much at hints, but I got that one. I departed.