Plot It Yourself

Chapter 2

At eleven-twenty the next morning, Tuesday, Wolfe, seated at his desk, sent his eyes from left to right and back again, rested them on Philip Harvey, and inquired, “You’re the spokesman, Mr Harvey?”

Since Harvey had made the appointment and was chairman of the committee, I had put him in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk. He was a middle-aged shorty with a round face, round shoulders, and a round belly. The other five were in an arc on yellow chairs that I had had ready for them. Their names, supplied by Harvey, were in my notebook. The one nearest me, the big blond guy in a brown suit with tan stripes, was Gerald Knapp, president of Knapp and Bowen. The one next to him, the wiry-looking bantam with big ears and slick black hair, was Reuben Imhof of the Victory Press. The female about my age who might have been easy to look at if her nose would stop twitching was Amy Wynn. I had seen a couple of reviews of her novel. Knock at My Door, but it wasn’t on Wolfe’s shelves. The tall gray-haired one with a long bony face was Thomas Dexter of Title House. The one at the far end of the arc, with thick lips and deep-set dark eyes, slouching in his chair with his left ankle on his right knee, was Mortimer Oshin. He had written the play, A Barrel of Love, which I had seen last evening. He had lit three cigarettes in eight minutes, and with two of the matches he had missed the ashtray on a stand at his elbow and they had landed on the rug.

Philip Harvey cleared his throat. “You’ll need all the details,” he said, “but first I’ll outline it. You said you know nothing about plagiarism, but I assume you know what it is. Of course a charge of plagiarism against a book or a play is dealt with by the author and publisher, or the playwright and producer, but a situation has developed that needs something more than defending individual cases. That’s why the NAAD and the BPA have set up this joint committee. I may say that we, the NAAD, appreciate the co-operation of the BPA. In a plagiarism suit it’s the author that gets stuck, not the publisher. In all book contracts the author agrees to indemnify the publisher for any liabilities, losses, damages, expenses-”

Reuben Imhof cut in. “Now wait a minute. What is agreed and what actually happens are two different things. Actually, in a majority of cases, the publisher suffers-”

“The suffering publisher!” Amy Wynn cried, her nose twitching. Mortimer Oshin had a comment too, and four of them were speaking at once. I didn’t try to sort it out for my notebook.

Wolfe raised his voice. “If you pleasel You started it, Mr Harvey. If the interests of author and publisher are in conflict, why a joint committee?”

“Oh, they’re not always in conflict.” Harvey was smiling, not apologetically. “The interests of slave and master often jibe; they do in this situation. I merely mentioned en passant that the author gets stuck. We deeply appreciate the co-operation of the BPA. It’s damned generous of them.”

“You were going to outline the situation.”

“Yes. In the past four years there have been five major charges of plagiarism.” Harvey took papers from his pocket, unfolded them, and glanced at the top sheet. “In February 1955, McMurray and Company published The Colour of Passion, a novel by Ellen Sturdevant. By the middle of April it was at the top of the fiction best-seller list. In June the publishers received a letter from a woman named Alice Porter, claiming that the novel’s plot and characters, and all important details of the plot development, with only the setting and names changed, had been stolen from a story written by her, never published, entitled ‘There Is Only Love.’ She said she had sent the story, twenty-four typewritten pages, to Ellen Sturdevant in November 1952, with a note asking for suggestions for its improvement. It had never been acknowledged or returned. Ellen Sturdevant denied that she had ever seen any such story. One day in August, when she was at her summer home in Vermont, a local woman in her employ came to her with something she said she had found in a bureau drawer. It was twenty-four typewritten sheets, and the top one was headed, ‘There Is Only Love, by Alice Porter.’ Its plot and characters and many details were the same as those of Ellen Sturdevant’s novel, though in much shorter form. The woman, named Billings, admitted that she had been persuaded by Alice Porter to search the house for the typescript-persuaded by the offer of a hundred dollars if she found it. But, having found it, she had a pang of conscience and brought it to her employer. Mrs Sturdevant has told me that her first impulse was to bum it, but on second thought she realized that that wouldn’t do, since Mrs Billings couldn’t be expected to perjure herself on a witness stand, and she phoned her attorney in New York.”

Harvey upturned a palm. “That’s the meat of it. I may say that I am convinced, and so is everyone who knows her, that Ellen Sturdevant had never seen that typescript before. It was a plant. The case never went to trial. It was settled out of court. Mrs Sturdevant paid Alice Porter eighty-five thousand dollars.”

Wolfe grunted. “There’s nothing I could do about it now.”

“We know you can’t. We don’t expect you to. But that’s only the beginning.” Harvey looked at the second sheet of paper. “In January 1956, Title House published Hold Fast to All I Give You, a novel by Richard Echols. Will you tell him about it, Mr Dexter? Briefly?”

Thomas Dexter passed a hand over his gray hair. “I’ll make it as brief as I can,” he said. “It’s a long story. The publication date was January 19th. Within a month we were shipping five thousand a week. By the end of April nine thousand a week. On May 6th we got a letter from a man named Simon Jacobs. It stated that in February 1954 he had sent the manuscript of a novelette he had written, entitled “What’s Mine Is Yours,’ to the literary agency of Norris and Baum. Norris and Baum had been Echols’s agent for years. Jacob enclosed a photostat of a letter he had received from Norris and Baum, dated March 26th, 1954, returning the manuscript and saying that they couldn’t take on any new clients. The letter mentioned the title of the manuscript, ‘What’s Mine Is Yours.’ It was bona fide; there was a copy of it in Norris and Baum’s files; but no one there could remember anything about it. More than two years had passed, and they get a great many unsolicited manuscripts.”

Dexter took a breath. “Jacobs claimed that the plot of his novelette was original and unique, also the characters, and that the plot and characters of Hold Fast to All I Give You, Echols’s novel, were obviously a steal. He said he would be glad to let us inspect his manuscript-that’s how he put it-and would give us a copy if we wanted one. His presumption was that someone at Norris and Baum had either told Echols about it or had let him read it. Everyone at Norris and Baum denied it, and so did Echols, and we at Title House believe them. Utterly. But a plagiarism suit is a tricky thing. There is something about the idea of a successful author stealing his material from an unsuccessful author that seems to appeal to ordinary people, and juries are made up of ordinary people. It dragged along for nearly a year. The final decision was left to Echols and his attorney, but we at Title House approved of it. They decided not to risk a trial. Jacobs was paid ninety thousand dollars for a general release. Though we were not obligated by contract. Title House contributed one-fourth of it, twenty-one thousand, five hundred.”

“It should have been half,” Harvey said, not arguing, just stating a fact.

Wolfe asked, “Did you get a copy of Jacobs’s manuscript?”

Dexter nodded. “Certainly. It supported his claim. The plot and characters were practically identical.”

“Indeed. Again, Mr Harvey, it seems to be too late.”

“We’re getting hotter,” Harvey said. “Wait till you hear the rest of it. Next: In November 1956, Nahm and Son published Sacred or Profane, a novel by Marjorie Lippin. Like all of her previous books, it had a big sale; the first printing was forty thousand.” He consulted his papers. “On March 21st, 1957, Marjorie Lippin died of a heart attack. On April 9th Nahm and Son received a letter from a woman named Jane Ogilvy. Her claim was almost identical with the one Alice Porter had made on The Colour of Passion-that in June 1955 she had sent the manuscript of a twenty-page story, entitled “On Earth but Not in Heaven,” to Marjorie Lippin, with a letter asking for her opinion of it, that it had never been acknowledged or returned, and that the plot and characters of Sacred or Profane had been taken from it. Since Mrs Lippin was dead she couldn’t answer to the charge, and on April 14th, only five days after Nahm and Son got the letter, the executor of Mrs Lippin’s estate, an officer of a bank, found the manuscript of the story, as described by Jane Ogilvy, in a trunk in the attic of Mrs Lippin’s home. He considered it his duty to produce it, and he did so. With Mrs Lippin dead, a successful challenge of the claim seemed hopeless, but her heirs, her son and daughter, were too stubborn to see it, and they wanted to clear her name of the stain. They even had her body exhumed for an autopsy, but it confirmed her death from a natural cause, a heart attack. The case finally went to trial last October, and a jury awarded Jane Ogilvy one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. It was-paid by the estate. Nahm and Son didn’t see fit to contribute.”

“Why the hell should they?” Gerald Knapp demanded.

Harvey smiled at him. “The NAAD appreciates your co-operation, Mr Knapp. I’m merely giving the record.”

Dexter told Knapp, “Oh, skip it. It’s common knowledge that Phil Harvey has an ulcer. That’s why the gods laugh.”

Harvey transferred the smile from Knapp and Bowen to Title House. “Many thanks for the plug, Mr Dexter. At all bookstores-maybe.” He returned to Wolfe. “The next one wasn’t a novel; it was a play-A Barrel of Love, by Mortimer Oshin. You tell it, Mr Oshin.”

The dramatist squashed a cigarette in the tray, his fifth or sixth-I had lost count. “Very painful, this is,” he said. He was a tenor. “Nauseous. We opened on Broadway February 25th last year, and when I say we had a smash hit I’m merely giving the record like Mr Harvey. Around the middle of May the producer, Al Friend, got a letter from a man named Kenneth Rennert. The mixture as before. It said he had sent me an outline for a play in August 1956, entitled ‘A Bushel of Love,’ with a letter asking me to collaborate with him on writing it. He demanded a million dollars, which was a compliment. Friend turned the letter over to me, and my lawyer answered it, telling Rennert he was a liar, which he already knew. But my lawyer knew about the three cases you have just heard described, and he had me take precautions. He and I made a thorough search of my apartment on Sixty-fifth Street, every inch of it, and also my house in the country at Silvermine, Connecticut, and I made arrangements that would have made it tough for anybody trying to plant something at either place.”

Oshin lit a cigarette and missed the ashtray with the match. “That was wasted effort. As you may know, a playwright must have an agent. I had had one named Jack Sandier that I couldn’t get along with, and a month after A Barrel of Love opened I had quit him and got another one. One weekend in July, Sandier phoned me in the country and said he had found something in his office and would drive over from his place near Danbury to show it to me. He did. It was a typewritten six-page outline of a play in three acts by Kenneth Rennert, entitled ‘A Bushel of Love.’ Sandier said it had been found by his secretary when she was cleaning out an old file.”

He ditched the cigarette. “As I said, nauseous. Sandier said he would burn it in my presence if I said the word, but I wouldn’t trust the bastard. He said he and his secretary would sign affidavits that they had never seen the outline before and it must have been sneaked into the file by somebody, but what the hell, I was somebody. I took it to my lawyer, and he had a talk with Sandier, whom he knew pretty well, and the secretary. He didn’t think that either of them had a hand in the plant, and I agreed with him. But also he didn’t think we could count on Sandier not to get word to Rennert that the outline had been found, and I agreed with that too. And that’s what the bastard did, because in September Rennert brought an action for damages, and he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t known he could get evidence about the outline. A million dollars. My lawyer has entered a countersuit, and I paid a detective agency six thousand dollars in three months trying to get support for it, with no luck. My lawyer thinks we’ll have to settle.”

“I dislike covering ground that has already been trampled,” Wolfe said. “You omitted a detail. The outline resembled your play?”

“It didn’t resemble it, it was my play, without the dialogue.”

Wolfe’s eyes went to Harvey. “That makes four. You said five?”

Harvey nodded. “The last one is fresher, but one member of the cast is the same as in the first one. Alice Porter. The woman who got eighty-five thousand dollars out of Ellen Sturdevant. She’s coming back for more.”

“Indeed.”

“Yes. Three months ago the Victory Press published Knock at My Door, a novel by Amy Wynn. Amy?”

Amy Wynn’s nose twitched. “I’m not very good…” She stopped and turned to Imhof, at her left. “You tell it, Reuben.”

Imhof gave her shoulder a little pat. “You’re plenty good, Amy,” he assured her. He focused on Wolfe. “This one is fresh all right. We published Miss Wynn’s book on February 4th, and we ordered the sixth printing, twenty thousand, yesterday. That will make the total a hundred and thirty thousand. Ten days ago we received a letter signed Alice Porter, dated May 7th, saving that Knock at My Door was taken from an unpublished story she wrote three years ago, with the title ‘Opportunity Knocks.’ That she sent the story to Amy Wynn in June of 1957, with a letter asking for comment and criticism, and it has never been acknowledged or returned. According to pattern. Of course we showed the letter to Miss Wynn. She assured us that she had never received any such story or letter, and we accepted her assurance without reservation. Not having a lawyer or an agent, she asked us what she should do. We told her to make sure without delay that no such manuscript was concealed in her home, or any other premises where she could be supposed to have put it, such as the home of a close relative, and to take all possible steps to guard against an attempt to plant the manuscript. Our attorney wrote a brief letter to Alice Porter, rejecting her claim, and upon investigation he learned that she is the Alice Porter who made the claim against Ellen Sturdevant in 1955. I telephoned the executive secretary of the National Association of Authors and Dramatists to suggest that it might be desirable to make Miss Wynn a member of the Joint Committee on Plagiarism, which had been formed only a month previously, and that was done the next day. I was myself already a member. That’s how it stands. No further communication has been received from Alice Porter.”

Wolfe’s eyes moved. “You have taken the steps suggested, Miss Wynn?”

“Of course.” She wasn’t bad-looking when her nose stayed put. “Mr Imhof had his secretary help me look. We didn’t find it-anything.”

“Where do you live?”

“I have a little apartment in the Village-Arbor Street.”

“Does anyone live with you?”

“No.” She flushed a little, which made her almost pretty. “I have never married.”

“How long have you lived there?”

“A little more than a year. I moved there in March last year-fourteen months.”

“Where had you lived?”

“On Perry Street. I shared an apartment with two other girls.”

“How long had you lived there?”

“About three years.” Her nose twitched. “I don’t quite see how that matters.”

“It might. You were living there in June 1957, when Alice Porter claims she sent you the story. That would be a suitable place for the story to be found. Did you and Mr Imhof’s secretary search that apartment?”

“No,” Her eyes had widened. “Of course. Good heavens! Of course I’ll do it right away.”

“But you can’t guard against the future.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “I offer a suggestion. Arrange immediately to have that apartment and the one you now occupy searched throughout by two reliable persons, preferably a man and a woman, who have no connection with you or the Victory Press. You should not be present. Tell them that they must be so thorough that when they are through they must be prepared to testify under oath that no such manuscript was on the premises-unless, of course, they find it. If you don’t know how to go about getting someone for the job, Mr Imholf will, or his attorney-or I could. Will you do that?”

She looked at Imhof. He spoke. “It certainly should be done. Obviously. I should have thought of it myself. Will you get the man and woman?”

“If desired, yes. They should also search any other premises with which Miss Wynn has had close association. You have no agent. Miss Wynn?”

“No.”

“Have you ever had one?”

“No.” Again the little flush. “Knock at My Door is my first novel-my first published one. Before that I had only had a few stories in magazines, and no agent would take me-at least no good one. This has been a big shock, Mr Wolfe-my first book such a big success, and you can imagine I was up riding the clouds, and then all of a sudden this-this awful business.”

Wolfe nodded. “No doubt. Do you own a motor car?”

“Yes. I bought one last month.”

“It must be searched. What else? Do you have a locker at a tennis court?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Do you frequently spend the night away from your home? Fairly frequently?”

I expected that to bring a bigger and better flush, but apparently her mind was purer than mine. She shook her head. “Almost never. I’m not a very social creature, Mr Wolfe. I guess I really have no intimate friends. My only close relatives, my father and mother, live in Montana, and I haven’t been there for ten years. You said they should search any premises with which I have had close association, but there aren’t any.”

Wolfe’s head turned. “As I told you on the phone, Mr Harvey, I know nothing about plagiarism, but I would have supposed that it concerned an infringement of copyright. All five of these claims were based on material that had not been published and so were not protected by copyright. Why were the claims not merely ignored?”

“They couldn’t be,” Harvey said. “It’s not that simple. I’m not a lawyer, and if you want it in legal terms you can get it from the NAAD counsel, but there’s a property right, I believe they call it, in these things even if they haven’t been copyrighted. It was in a court trial before a judge that a jury awarded Jane Ogilvy a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. Do you want me to get our counsel on the phone?”

“That can wait. First I need to know what you want to hire me to do. The first three cases are history, and apparently the fourth, Mr Oshin’s, soon will be. Do you want me to investigate on behalf of Miss Wynn?”

“No. I should say, yes and no. This committee was set up six weeks ago, before the claim on Miss Wynn was made. It had been authorized at a meeting of the NAAD council in March. It seemed fairly obvious to us what had happened. Alice Porter’s putting the squeeze on Ellen Sturdevant, and getting away with it, had started a ball rolling. Her method was copied exactly by Simon Jacobs with Richard Echols, except for one detail, the way he established the priority of his manuscript and the assumption of Echols’s access to it; and he changed that one detail because he actually had sent a novelette to that literary agency, Norris and Baum, and had it returned. He merely took advantage of something that had happened two years back. Of course the manuscript which was the basis of his claim-the one he allowed Title House and Echols to inspect-was not the one he had sent to Norris and Baum in 1954. He had written it after Echols’s novel had been published and gave it the same title as the one he had sent to Norris and Baum-‘What’s Mine Is Yours.’ ”

Wolfe grunted. “You may omit the obvious. You are assuming, I take it, that that was the procedure in all five cases: plagiarism upside down. The manuscript supporting the claim was written after the book was published or the play produced and had achieved success,”

“Certainly,” Harvey agreed. “That was the pattern. The third one, Jane Ogilvy, followed it exactly, the only difference being that she had a stroke of luck. Whatever plan she had for discovery of the manuscript in Marjorie Lippin’s home, she didn’t have to use it, for Mrs Lippin conveniently died. Again, with Kenneth Rennert, the only difference was the way the manuscript was found.”

He stopped to cover his mouth with his palm, and a noise came, too feeble to be called a belch. “Sausage for breakfast,” he said, for the record. “I shouldn’t. That’s how it stood when this committee had its first meeting. At the NAAD council meeting a prominent novelist had said that he had a new book scheduled for early fall and he hoped to God it would be a flop, and nobody laughed. At the first meeting of this committee Gerald Knapp, president of Knapp and Bowen- How did you put it, Mr Knapp?”

Knapp passed his tongue over his lips. “I said that it hasn’t hit us yet, but we have three novels on the bestseller list, and we hate to open our mail.”

“So that’s the situation,” Harvey told Wolfe. “And now Alice Porter is repeating. Something has to be done. It has to be stopped. About a dozen lawyers have been consulted, authors’ and publishers’ lawyers, and none of them has an idea that is worth a damn. Except one maybe-the one who suggested that we put it up to you. Can you stop it?”

Wolfe shook his head. “You don’t mean that, Mr Harvey.”

“I don’t mean what?”

“That question. If you expect me to say no, you wouldn’t have come. If you expect me to say yes, you must think me a swaggerer, and again you wouldn’t have come. I certainly wouldn’t undertake to make it impossible for anyone ever again to extort money from an author by the stratagem you have described.”

“We wouldn’t expect you to.”

“Then what would you expect?”

“We would expect you to do something about this situation that would make us pay your bill not only because we had to but also because we felt that you had earned it and we had got our money’s worth.”

Wolfe nodded. “That’s more like it. That was phrased as might be expected from the author of Why the Gods Laugh, which I have just read. I had been thinking that you write better than you talk, but you put that well because you had been challenged. Do you want to hire me on those terms?”

Harvey looked at Gerald Knapp, and then at Dexter. They looked at each other. Reuben Imhof asked Wolfe, “Could you give us some idea of how you would go about it and what your fee would be?”

“No, sir,” Wolfe told him.

“What the hell,” Mortimer Oshin said, squashing a cigarette, “he couldn’t guarantee anything anyway, could he?”

“I would vote for proceeding on those terms,” Gerald Knapp said, “providing it is understood that we can terminate the arrangement at any time.”

“That sounds like a clause in a book contract,” Harvey said. “Will you accept it, Mr Wolfe?”

“Certainly.”

“Then you’re in favour, Mr Knapp?”

“Yes. It was our attorney who suggested coming to Nero Wolfe.”

“Miss Wynn?”

“Yes, if the others are. That was a good idea, having my apartment searched, and the one on Perry Street.”

“Mr Oshin?”

“Sure.”

“Mr Dexter?”

“With the understanding that we can terminate at will, yes.”

“Mr Imhof?”

Imhof had his head cocked. “I’m willing to go along, but I’d like to mention a couple of points. Mr Wolfe says he can’t give us any idea of how he’ll go about it, and naturally we can’t expect him to pull a rabbit out of a hat here and now, but, as he said himself, the first three cases are history and the fourth one soon will be. But Miss Wyim’s isn’t. It’s hot. The claim has just been made, and it was made by Alice Porter, the woman who started it. So I think he should concentrate on that. My second point is this, if he does concentrate on Alice Porter, and if he gets her, if he makes her withdraw the claim, I think Miss Wynn might feel that it would be fair and proper for her to pay part of Mr Wolfe’s fee. Don’t you think so, Amy?”

“Why-yes.” Her nose twitched. “Of course.”

“It might also,” Harvey put in, “be fair and proper for the Victory Press to pay part. Don’t you think so?”

“We will.” Imhof grinned at him. “Well contribute to the BPA’s share. We might even kick in a little extra.” He went to Wolfe. “How about concentrating on Alice Porter?”

“I may do that, sir. Upon consideration.” Wolfe focused on the chairman. “Who is my client? Not this committee.”

“Well…” Harvey looked at Gerald Knapp. Knapp smiled and spoke. “The arrangement, Mr Wolfe, is that the Book Publishers of America and the National Association of Authors and Dramatists will each pay half of any expenses incurred by this committee. They are your clients. You will report to Mr Harvey, the committee chairman, as their agent. I trust that is satisfactory?”

“Yes. This may be a laborious and costly operation, and I must ask for an advance against expenses. Say five thousand dollars?”

Knapp looked at Harvey. Harvey said, “All right. You’ll get it.”

“Very well.” Wolfe straightened up, took a deep breath, and let it out. It looked as if he were going to have to dig in and do a little work, and it takes a lot of oxygen to face a prospect as dismal as that. “Naturally,” he said, “I must have all records and documents pertaining to all of the cases, or copies of them. Everything. Including, for instance, the reports from the detective agency hired by Mr Oshin. I can form no plan until I am fully informed, but it may help to get answers to a few questions now. Mr Harvey. Has any effort been made to discover a connection among Alice Porter, Simon Jacobs, Jane Ogilvy, and Kenneth Rennert, or between any two of them?”

Harvey nodded. “Sure, that’s been tried. By the lawyer representing Marjorie Lippin’s heirs, her son and daughter, and by the detective agency Oshin hired. They didn’t find any.”

“Where are the four manuscripts on which the claims were based? Not copies, the manuscripts themselves. Are they available?”

“We have two of them, Alice Porter’s ‘There Is Only Love’ and Simon Jacobs’ ‘What’s Mine Is Yours.’ Jane Ogilvy’s ‘On Earth but Not in Heaven’ was an exhibit in evidence at the trial, and after she won the case it was returned to her. We have a copy of it-a copy, not a facsimile. Kenneth Rennert’s play outline, ‘A Bushel of Love,’ is in the possession of Oshin’s attorney, and he won’t give us a copy of it. Of course we-”

Mortimer Oshin postponed striking a match to mutter, “He won’t even let me have a copy.”

Harvey finished, “Of course we know nothing about Alice Porter’s ‘Opportunity Knocks,’ the basis of her claim against Amy Wynn. I have a suspicion that you’ll find it when you search the apartment Miss Wynn lived in on Perry Street. If you do, then what?”

“I have no idea.” Wolfe made a face. “Confound it, you have merely shown me the skeleton, and I am not a wizard. I must know what has been done and what has been overlooked, in each case. What of the paper and typing of the manuscripts? Did they offer no grounds for a challenge? What of the records and backgrounds of the claimants? Did Jane Ogilvy testify at the trial, and was she cross-examined competently? How did Alice Porter’s manuscript get into Ellen Sturdevant’s bureau drawer? How did Jane Ogilvy’s manuscript get into the trunk in Marjorie Lippin’s attic? How did Kenneth Rennert’s play outline get into the file of Mr Oshin’s former agent? Was any sort of answer found, even a conjectural one, to any of those questions?”

He spread his hands. “And there is the question, what about your assumption that all of the claims were fraudulent? I can’t swallow it with my eyes shut. I can accept it as a working hypothesis, but I can’t dismiss the possibility that one or more of the supposed victims is a thief and a liar. ‘Most writers steal a good thing when they can’ is doubtless an-”

“Blah!” Mortimer Oshin exploded.

Wolfe’s brows went up. “That was in quotation marks, Mr Oshin. It was said, or written, more than a century ago by Barry Cornwall, the English poet and dramatist. He wrote Mirandola, a tragedy performed at Covent Garden with Macready and Kemble. It is doubtless an exaggeration, but it is not blah. If there had been then in England a National Association of Authors and Dramatists, Barry Cornwall would have been a member. So that question must remain open along with the others.”

His eyes moved. “Miss Wynn. The search of the apartments should not be delayed. Will you arrange it, or shall I?”

Amy Wynn looked at Imhof. He told her, “Let him do it.” She told Wolfe, “You do it.”

“Very well. You will get permission from your former fellow tenants at Perry Street, and you will admit the searchers to your present apartment and then absent yourself. Archie, get Saul Panzer and Miss Bonner.”

I turned to the phone and dialed.