Plot It Yourself

Chapter 5

So he pulled a mutiny, the first one in three years. His mutinies are like other people’s. Other people mutiny against the Army or Navy or some other authority, but he mutinies against himself. It was his house and his office, and he had taken the job, but now he turned his back on it. His discovery that the three stories had all been written by one person, which I admit was fairly neat, had backfired on him, and he quit. Of course business is never mentioned at the table, but from his mood I knew he was smoldering, so when we returned to the office after lunch I asked politely whether there would be instructions then or later.

“Now,” he said. “You will see, at your convenience and theirs, Miss Porter, Miss Ogilvy, Mr Jacobs, and Mr Rennert. In whatever order you prefer. Make their acquaintance.”

I stayed polite. “It will be a pleasure to meet them. What are we to talk about?”

“Whatever occurs to you. I have never known you to be short of words.”

“How about bringing them, one at a time, to make your acquaintance?”

“No.”

“I see.” I stood and looked down at him. That annoys him because he has to tilt his head to look up. “It must be wonderful to be a genius. Like that singer, Doria Ricco, whenever anything goes wrong she just walks out. Then she has a press conference. Shall I set one up for six o’clock? You could tell them that a great artist like you can’t be expected to take a setback which any ordinary detective would only-”

“You will please keep your remarks to yourself.”

So it was a mutiny, not just a passing peeve. If he had merely barked at me “Shut up!” as he does two or three times a week, I would have known he would snap out of it in an hour or so and go to work, but that was bad. It would take time, no telling how much. And he left his chair, crossed to the bookshelves, took a volume of Shakespeare from the set, returned to his seat, leaned back, and opened the book. Bowing out not only from the case, but from the country and the century. I went. Leaving the room and the house, I walked to Ninth Avenue and flagged a taxi and told the driver 632 West 21st Street.

That building was a tenement not only as defined in the New York Tenement House Act, but also as what people usually mean when they say “tenement.” It was a dump. Having decided in the taxi how to start a conversation with Simon Jacobs, I found his name in the row, next to the top, and pressed the button. When the click sounded I pushed the door open, entered, and went to the stairs and started up, smelling garlic. The smell of garlic in Spanish sauce as Fritz makes it is a come-on, but in a tenement hall where it has been seeping into the plaster for fifty years it’s a pinch-nose. The best way is to pull in a long deep breath of it immediately and then your insides know it’s hopeless.

Three flights up a woman was standing at an open door near the front of the hall, with a boy, nine or ten, at her elbow. As I approached, the boy said, “Oh, it’s not Tommy,” and disappeared. I asked the woman, “Mrs Jacobs?”

She nodded. She was a surprise. Simon Jacobs, now sixty-two, had been fifty-one when he had married in 1948, but she was no crone. There wasn’t a wrinkle showing, and there was no sign of gray in her soft brown hair. When I told her my name and I would like to speak with her husband, and she said he didn’t like to be disturbed when he was working and would I please tell her what I wanted, and I said I wasn’t selling anything, it was a business matter and might be to his advantage, she turned and went, leaving the door open. After a long moment he appeared, a good likeness to the photograph-thin and scrawny, with enough wrinkles for two, and, as Title House’s lawyer had said, hair like Mark Twain’s.

“Well, sir?” A thin high voice would have fitted him, but his was deep and full.

“My name’s Goodwin, Mr Jacobs.”

“So my wife said.”

“I’m on the staff of a magazine with national circulation. I won’t name it until I find out if you’re interested in an idea we are considering. May I come in?”

“That depends. I’m right in the middle of a story. I don’t want to be rude, but what’s the idea?”

“Well-we thought we might ask you to do an article for us. About how it feels to have a story you have written stolen by another author and turned into a best-seller. We thought Tlot It Yourself might be a good title for it. I’d like to tell you how we think it might be handled, and we can discuss-”

He shut the door in my face. You may think I’m not much of a detective, that an experienced snoop should have had sense enough to have it blocked with his foot, but in the first place it was totally unexpected, and in the second place you don’t block a door unless you’re on the offensive. So I merely put my thumb to my nose and wiggled my fingers, turned, and made for the stairs. When I got to the sidewalk I took a long, deep breath to let my insides know they could relax. Then I walked to Tenth Avenue, stopped a taxi, and told the driver 37th and Lexington.

That building, between Lexington and Third, was a house of a different colour. It may have been nearly as old as the 21st Street tenement, but it had used make-up. Its brick front was painted silver-gray with bright blue trim, the doorframe was aluminum, and there were evergreens in boxes. There were eight names on the panel in the vestibule, two tenants to a floor, with a grill to talk through and a receiver on a hook. I pushed the button opposite Rennert and put the receiver to my ear, and in a moment had a crackle and then a voice.

“Who is it?”

“You don’t know me. My name’s Goodwin. Nothing to sell. I may want to buy something.”

“Bill Goodwin?”

“No. Archie Goodwin.”

“Archie? Not by any chance Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin?”

“In person.”

“Well, well! I often wonder what detectives buy one-half so precious as the goods they sell. Come on up and tell mel Top floor.”

I hung up and turned, and when the buzz sounded opened the door and entered. More aluminum, framing the self-service elevator. I stepped in and pushed the “4” button and was lifted. When it stopped and the door opened he was there in the little hall, shirt sleeves rolled up and no tie, virile, muscular, handsome, looking younger than thirty-four. I took his offered hand and returned his manly grip and was ushered through a door and was in the nice big room. It was even nicer and bigger than the report had led me to expect. He had me take a nice big chair and asked, “Scotch, rye, bourbon, gin?”

I declined with thanks, and he sat on a nice big couch which probably doubled as a bed. “This is a pleasure,” he said, “unless you want my fingerprints to compare them with the ones you found on the dagger that was sticking in the back of the corpse. I swear I didn’t do it. I always stab people in front. I like that suit. Matthew Jonas?”

I told him no, Peter Darrell. “Fingerprints wouldn’t help,” I said. “There were none on the dagger. It was one of those old Arabian antiques with a fancy handle. What I told you was straight. I may want to buy something-or rather, a client of Nero Wolfe’s may. He’s a guy with money who wants more. He gets ideas. He has the idea that he might like to buy your claim against Mortimer Oshin and Al Friend for stealing your play outline, ‘A Bushel of Love,’ and turning it into A Barrel of Love. He might pay ten thousand cash for an assignment of the claim and your affidavit supporting it, and another ten thousand if and when Oshin and Friend pay up. Of course he would expect you to testify without a subpoena if it goes to trial.”

“Well, well.” He stretched a leg on the couch. “Who is this fairy godfather?”

“A client of Mr Wolfe’s. We handled a problem for him once, not this kind. If we agree on a deal you’ll meet him. The ten thousand is ready in bills.”

“What if they never pay up?”

“That’s his risk. He would be out ten grand.”

“Nuts. They’ll pay. They’ll pay ten times ten. At least.”

“Possibly,” I conceded. “Some day. If it goes to trial, there’ll be lawyers’ fees and other expenses.”

“Well.” He put his other leg up. “Tell him I might be interested. I’m willing to meet him and discuss it with him.”

I shook my head. “I’m here to discuss it. The reason he got Mr Wolfe to handle it, there are a couple of little details to arrange. For one, he would like to have some evidence in his possession that that’s not the only dramatic plot you ever hatched. That should be easy. I suppose you have copies of some of your television scripts.”

“Sure. All of them.”

“Fine. That would settle that. The other one, if it gets to court, it would help a lot to have some backing for your testimony that you wrote the outline with your name on it that was found in Jack Sandler’s office files, and the best backing would be to produce the typewriter that you wrote it on. Our client would want it. Of course he would pay you for it.”

“That would be sweet of him.”

“He’s not sweet. Between you and me, I don’t like him.”

“Neither do I. He stole my play.” His legs swung around and he was on his feet. “All right, Hawkshaw. Beat it.”

I stayed put. “Now listen, Mr Rennert. I can understand how you-”

“I said beat it.” He took a step. “Do you want help?”

I arose and took two steps, and was facing him at arm’s length. “Would you like to try?”

I was hoping he would. Wolfe’s mutiny had put me in a humour that would have made it a pleasure to take a swing at somebody, and this character was the right size and build to make it not only a pleasure but good exercise. He didn’t oblige me. His eyes stayed with mine, but he backed up a foot.

“I don’t want to get blood on the rug,” he said.

I turned and went. As I was opening the door he called to my back, “Tell Mortimer Oshin this is like one of his lousy plots!” The elevator was still there, and I stepped in and pushed the button.

On the sidewalk I looked at my wrist: four-five. Carmel was only a ninety-minute drive, and it would be good for my nerves, but I would phone first. What was Alice Porter’s number? I stood at the kerb and closed my eyes and concentrated, and dug it out of the cell that had filed it. Around the corner on Lexington Avenue I found a booth, dialed, counted fourteen rings, and hung up. No answer. I settled for a shorter drive. I hoofed it crosstown to Tenth Avenue and a block south to the garage, got the Heron sedan, which was Wolfe’s by purchase but mine by mandate, and headed for the West Side Highway.

It was now twenty to one in my book, or maybe thirty to one, that Kenneth Rennert was not it. Whoever had planned and handled the campaign, writing the stories and picking the accomplices and taking advantage of the different circumstances for planting the manuscripts, was no tumbler, but Rennert was. Having suspected, or decided, that Mortimer Oshin was Wolfe’s client and I was trying to slip one over, which had not required any strain on the brain, if he had been half smart he would have played me along instead of bouncing me. He was just one of the chorus, not the star. I had filed him away by the time I left the Henry Hudson Parkway at Exit Eleven.

Riverdale, whose streets were planned by someone who couldn’t stand the idea of a straight line, is a jungle for a stranger, but I had a good map and only had to turn around twice on my way to 78 Haddon Place. Rolling to the kerb in front, I gave it a look. There was too much bigger stuff, everything from tulip beds up to full-grown trees, to leave much room for lawns, but what grass there was would have been fine for putting practice. The house was stone up to your chin and then dark brown wood with the boards running up and down instead of horizontal. Very classy. I got out and started up the walk.

Hearing music as I neared the entrance, I stopped and cocked an ear. Not from inside; from the left. I took to the grass, rounded a corner of the house, passed a row of windows, turned another corner, and stepped onto a flagged terrace. The music, coming from a portable radio on a chair, had an audience of one: Jane Ogilvy. She was stretched out on a mat, on her back, with none of her skin covered except minimum areas at the two vital spots. Her eyes were closed. The deduction I had made from the photographs, in which she had been dressed, that she had a nice little figure, was confirmed. She even had good knees.

I was deciding whether to retreat around the corner and make another approach with sound effects, or stay put and cough, when her eyes suddenly opened and her head turned. She squinted at me five seconds and spoke. “I knew someone had come. The felt presence though not perceived. You’re real, I suppose?”

It was strange. It wasn’t like a hunch; it was more as if I had asked a question and she had answered it. When Wolfe had eliminated her because of her testimony at the trial and the three poems she had read, I had had my doubts, but those few words from her settled it. If Rennert was now thirty to one, she was a thousand to one.

“Don’t speak,” she said, “even if you’re real. There’s nothing you could say that would be worthy of the moment when I felt you here. You may think I heard you, but I didn’t. My ears were filled with the music, all of me was, when I felt you. If it were the Eve of Saint Agnes-but it isn’t, and I am not supperless, and I’m not in bed… But what if your name were Porphyro? Is it-no, don’t speak! Are you going to come closer?”

I agreed with her absolutely. There was nothing I could say that would be worthy of the occasion. Besides, my name wasn’t Porphyro. But I didn’t want to turn and go with no response at all, so I reached to the trellis beside me and picked a red rose, pressed it to my lips, and tossed it to her. Then I went.

At a phone booth in a drugstore a few blocks away I dialed Alice Porter’s number in Carmel, and again there was no answer. That left me with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Of course Wolfe’s idea in telling me to go and make the acquaintance of the quartet had been simply to get rid of me, since he knew that if I stuck around I would ride him; and even if I didn’t ride him I would look at him. So I dialed another number, got an answer, made a suggestion about ways of passing the time for the next eight or nine hours, and had it accepted. Then I dialed the number I knew best and told Fritz I wouldn’t be home for dinner. It was well after midnight when I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone on West 35th Street and used my key. There was no note for me on my desk. I left one in the kitchen for Fritz, telling him not to expect me for breakfast until ten o’clock. I can always use eight hours’ sleep, and if Wolfe snapped out of it during the night he knew where to find me.

When I went down to breakfast Friday morning I had a packed bag with me, and at a quarter to eleven I took my second cup of coffee to the office, to my desk, and buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone. Wolfe’s voice came. “Yes?”

“Good morning.” I was cheerful. “You may remember that I have accepted an invitation for the weekend.”

“Yes.”

“Should I call it off?”

“No.”

“Then I have a suggestion. I saw three of them yesterday, Jacobs and Rennert and Miss Ogilvy, but not Alice Porter. She didn’t answer her phone. As you know, Miss Rowan’s place, where I’m going, is near Katonah, and it’s less than half an hour from there to Carmel. Miss Rowan expects me at six o’clock. If I leave now I can go to Carmel first and have the afternoon for making the acquaintance of Miss Porter.”

“Is there anything in the mail that requires attention?”

“No. Nothing that can’t wait.”

“Then go.”

“Right. I’ll be back late Sunday evening. Do you want a report on the three I saw before I go?”

“No. If you had anything exigent to report you would have said so.”

“Sure. Miss Rowan’s phone number is on your desk. I’ll give her your regards. Don’t overdo.”

He hung up. The big fat bum. I wrote the phone number on his memo pad, went to the kitchen to tell Fritz good-by, got my bag, and was gone.

There is always traffic on the West Side Highway, twenty-four hours a day, but it thinned out beyond the city limits, and north of Hawthorne Circle I had long stretches to myself. After leaving Route 22 at Croton Falls and meandering through patches of woods and along shores of reservoirs for a few miles, I stopped for an hour at the Green Fence, known to me, where a woman with a double chin fries chicken the way my Aunt Margie did out in Ohio. Fritz does not fry chicken. At two o’clock I was rolling again, with only a couple of miles to go.

There was no point in phoning, since I was there anyway, but I almost had to, to find out where her cottage was. The cop on Main Street had never heard of Alice Porter. The man in the drugstone had, he had put up prescriptions for her, but didn’t know where she lived. The man at the filling station thought her place was out toward Kent Cliffs but wasn’t sure. He advised me to consult Jimmy Murphy, who ran a taxi. Jimmy rattled it off: a mile and a half west on Route 301, right on a blacktop for a mile, right on dirt for half a mile, mailbox on the right.

It checked. The half a mile of dirt was uphill, winding, narrow, and stony. The mailbox was at the mouth of a lane, even narrower, through a gap in a stone fence, no gate. I turned in and eased my way along the ruts to where the lane ended in front of a little house painted blue, one story. There was no car in sight. As I climbed out and shut the door a little bicoloured mutt trotted up and started to growl, but his curiosity to see what I smelled like close up was too much for him, and the growl petered out. I reached down and scratched the back of his neck, and we were pals. He went with me to help knock on the door, and when, after knocking got no response, I tried the knob and found it was locked, he was as disappointed as I was.

With my years of training as a detective, I reached a conclusion. Dogs have to be fed. There was no other house in sight, no nearby neighbour to pinch-feed for Alice Porter. Therefore she would return. A top-drawer detective, say Nero Wolfe, could have found out exactly when she would return by looking at the dog’s teeth and feeling its belly, but I’m not in that class. I looked over the grounds-four young trees and half a dozen shrubs scattered here and there-and then moseyed around to the back. There was a neat little vegetable garden, no weeds, and I pulled some radishes and ate them. Then I went to the car and got a book from my bag, I forget what, but it wasn’t The Moth That Ate Peanuts, sat on one of two garden chairs in the shade of the house, and read. The mutt curled up at my feet and shut his eyes.

She came at five-twenty-eight. A ’58 Ford station wagon came bumping along the ruts and stopped back of the Heron, and she scrambled out and headed for me. The mutt went bounding to meet her, and she halted to give him a pat. I shut my book and stood up.

“You looking for me?” she asked.

“I am if you’re Miss Alice Porter,” I said.

She knew who I was. It’s easy to make a mistake on a thing like that, I had made plenty in my time, but it was in her eyes that she had recognized me or I had better quit the detective business and take up truck-driving or window-washing. That was nothing startling; it happened now and then. My picture hadn’t been in the papers as often as President Eisenhower’s, but it had once made the front page of the Gazette.

“That’s my name,” she said.

From her photograph I had guessed 150, but she had put on ten pounds. Her round face was bigger and her nose smaller, and her eyes were closer together. There was sweat on her brow.

“Mine’s Archie Goodwin,” I said. “I work for Nero Wolfe, the private detective. Could you give me maybe ten minutes?”

“I can if you’ll wait till I put some stuff in the refrigerator. While I’m doing that you might get your car around back of mine. Take it easy on the grass.”

I did so. The grass was nothing like that at 78 Haddon Place, but no doubt she would see to that after she collected from Amy Wynn. I moved the Heron forward a car length, cramped the wheels and backed, and swung around past the Ford and back into the ruts. She had got an armload of bags from the Ford, declining my offer to help, and entered the house. I returned to the chair, and soon she came out and took the other one.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “If you’re Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe sent you clear out here, it’s not hard to guess what for. Or I should say who for. I might as well come right out with it. The Victory Press has hired him, or Amy Wynn has, to try to find something wrong about my claim for damages. If that’s what it is you’ve wasted a lot of gas. I’m not going to talk about it, not a word. I may not be very bright, but I’m not exactly a fool. Unless you came to make an offer. I’ll listen to that.”

I shook my head. “That’s not a very good guess, Miss Porter. It’s about your claim against Amy Wynn, that much is okay, but she hasn’t hired Mr Wolfe and neither has the Victory Press. I’m here on behalf of a New York newspaper that’s looking for a scoop. Nothing has been published about your claim, so I don’t know how the paper got onto it, but you know how that is, word gets around. What the paper is after, it wants to publish your story, ‘Opportunity Knocks,’ on which you base your claim, with an introductory statement by you. It wants to know how much you will take for what it calls first serial rights, and it’s not breaking any confidence to tell you that you can go pretty high. The reason they got Nero Wolfe to handle it instead of coming to you direct is that they want him to check on certain details. You understand that; it’s sort of tricky.”

“There’s nothing tricky about my claim.”

“I didn’t say there is. But there would be a risk of a libel suit against the paper, whether there is ground for it or not. Of course before the paper makes a definite commitment it would want to see the story. Mr Wolfe thought you might have a carbon copy and would let me take it. Have you got one?”

Her eyes met mine. They had been slanting off, first in one direction and then another, but now they came to me straight. “You’re pretty good,” she said.

“Thanks.” I grinned at her. “I like to think so, but of course I’m biased. Good how?”

“Good with your tongue. I’ll have to think it over. I’ll do that. I’ll think it over. Right now, as I said, I’m not going to talk about it. Not a word.” She arose.

“But that was when you thought Mr Wolfe had been hired by the Victory Press or Amy Wynn.”

“I don’t care who hired him, I’m not talking. You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got things to do.” She headed for the door of the house. The mutt glanced at me and then at her, decided she was the best bet, and trotted after her. I went and got in the car and started the engine. On the stretch of blacktop a man with a bunch of wild columbine in his hand was following a herd of forty-seven cows (actual count; a detective is supposed to observe) who all had the same idea, that they would rather get hit by a Heron sedan than get milked, and it took me five minutes to get through.

Saturday afternoon at Lily Rowan’s place, or it may have been Sunday afternoon, when half a dozen of us were loafing in the sun by the swimming pool, I told them about the incident on the terrace at Riverdale, leaving out the name and address and why I was there, and asked if they thought she was batty. The three women voted no and the two men yes, and of course that proved something but I still haven’t decided what.

At midnight Sunday, full of air and with a sunburned nose, I dropped my bag in the hall of the old brownstone, went to the office, and found a note on my desk:

AG:

Mr Harvey phoned Saturday morning. He with come with his committee Monday at eleven-fifteen. NW