22
THEY NEEDED seventeen chairs if they all came, and a phone call from Stebbins around four o'clock informed me that they would. With four from the front room, one from the hall, two from my room, and two from Fritz's room, Fritz and I got them collected and arranged in the office. We had an argument. Fritz insisted there should be a table of liquid refreshments, that Wolfe regarded that as a minimum of hospitality for invited guests, and I fought it. Not so much on account of the basic situation, since more than one murderer had been served a highball or other mixture in that room. The trouble was the females, particularly Helen Troy and Blanche Duke. I did not want the former, at some ticklish spot where everything might hang on a word and a tone, to jump up and call out, "Oyez, oyeth!" And if the latter, whose inhibitions were totally unreliable, got a shaker full of her formula mixed and worked on it, she might do or say anything. So I was firm.
Fritz couldn't appeal to Wolfe because he wasn't accessible. He was there at his desk, but not for us. Five minutes after Cramer left he had leaned back, closed his eyes, and started pushing his lips in and out, which meant he was working, and hard. He kept at it until lunch, took only half of his customary hour for the meal, returned to the office, and started in again. He left for the plant rooms at four o'clock as usual, but when I went up there on an errand he was standing in a corner of the intermediate room frowning at a Cochlioda hybrid that had nothing whatever wrong with it, and he wasn't even aware that I was passing through. A little later he phoned down to tell me to send Saul up to him when he came. So I wasn't present at their conference. Nor did I get any kind of an instruction for the evening. If he was planning a charade, apparently it was going to be a solo.
Wolfe did speak to me once, shortly after lunch; he asked me to bring him the letter from Phelps enclosing the material from Dykes, and the envelope it had come in. I did so, and, after he had inspected them with a magnifying glass, he kept them. And I took one step on my own. Wellman was still in town, and I phoned and invited him to attend because I thought he had certainly paid for a ticket. I didn't phone Mrs. Abrams because I knew she wouldn't care for it no matter what happened.
At dinnertime I took another step. As Wolfe sat behind his desk staring at nothing, pulling at his lip with a thumb and forefinger, I saw that he was in no shape to entertain a guest and went and told Fritz that Saul and I would eat in the kitchen with him. Then I returned to the office and announced it to Wolfe. He put his eyes on me without seeing me, let out a low growl, and muttered, "All right, but it won't help any."
"Can I do anything?" I asked.
"Yes. Shut up."
I had spoken not more than twenty words to him since Cramer had left, seven hours ago.
At ten after nine they had all arrived, but Wolfe was still in the dining room, with the door closed. Leaving the front door and the hall to Saul, I had stayed in the office to supervise the seating. I kept the red leather chair for Cramer and put the lawyers in the front row, including O'Malley. Wellman was off in the corner near the globe. Sergeant Purley Stebbins was against the wall, back of Cramer. For Saul Panzer I had put a chair at the end of my desk. My intention had been to group the ten females at the rear of their employers, and I had so placed the chairs, but they had ideas of their own, at least some of them. For about half a minute I stood talking to Cramer with my back to them, and, when I turned, four of them had moved to the couch. From my chair at my desk I couldn't take in the couch without swiveling or twisting my neck ninety degrees, but I decided to skip it. If Wolfe wanted his audience more compact he could say so.
At twelve after nine I sent Saul to tell Wolfe they were all present, and a moment later Wolfe entered. He went straight to his desk, with no halt for a greeting, not even for Cramer, and sat. The murmurs and mutterings stopped. Wolfe got himself settled, taking his time, moved his head slowly over the arc from left to right, and back again. Then his eyes darted left, and he spoke.
"Do you want to say anything, Mr. Cramer?"
Cramer cleared his throat. "No. They understand that there's nothing official about this and I'm here as an observer."
"You told us to come," Louis Kustin said aggressively.
"I invited you. You all know the way out."
"May I make a statement?" O'Malley asked.
"What about?"
"I want to congratulate Mr. Wolfe, and thank him. He has found the answer to a question I've been trying to find for a year and couldn't. We're all in his debt and we ought to say so."
"We are not!" It was Briggs, blinking furiously. "I would like to make a statement! In my opinion, what Wolfe has done is actionable. I say this after full consideration. I came here because I am convinced -"
"Shut up!" Wolfe roared.
They gazed at him, astonished.
He gazed back, moving his head to include the lot. "I do not intend," he said coldly, "to let you degrade this to gibberish. We are concerned with death and a dealer of death. I do this work to earn a living, but I am conscious of its dignities and obligations. I hope and believe that in the next two or three hours, here together, we are going to learn the truth about the deaths of four people, and, in doing so, get a start on preparations for the death of one of you. That's what we're here for. I can't do it alone, but I'll have to guide it."
He closed his eyes, tight, and opened them again. "All of you knew Mr. Corrigan, who died Friday evening. You know of a document, ostensibly written by him, in which he confessed that he had betrayed his former partner and had murdered three people." He opened a drawer and took out papers. "This is a copy of that confession. It was shrewdly conceived and brilliantly executed, but it wasn't good enough for me. It has one fatal defect. The writer couldn't possibly avoid including it, because in that detail the facts were known to others, and the incident was an essential part of the story. When Corrigan -"
"Are you impeaching it?" Kustin demanded. "Are you saying that Corrigan didn't write it?"
"I am."
There were noises, including audible words. Wolfe ignored them, waited, and continued.
"When Corrigan was in California his every move was known and reported, so this confession had to accept that record. But that is the fatal defect. According to this confession, Corrigan knew what was in the manuscript written by Leonard Dykes - he had read it through twice. But in Los Angeles all his efforts were focused on one objective: to get a look at the manuscript. That is emphasized by the fact that he left Mrs. Potter's house, with Finch there, to hurry to Finch's hotel room to search for the manuscript. If he already knew what was in it that was senseless. What good would it do him to find it? If you say that he wanted to destroy it, that too would have been senseless, since Finch had read it. According to this confession, he had already killed two women for the sole reason that they had read the manuscript. If he found and destroyed Finch's copy, Finch would be on guard and after him."
Wolfe shook his head. "No. Corrigan's objective, plainly and unmistakably, was to see the manuscript. He wanted to know what it contained. Mr. Goodwin was there and saw him and heard him. Do you agree, Archie?"
I nodded. "I do."
"Then he had never seen the manuscript, certainly he hadn't read it, and this confession is spurious. There is a corroborative point." Wolfe tapped the paper. "It says here that Dykes told him that all copies of the manuscript had been destroyed, there were no others, and that he believed it. Indeed he must have believed it fully, for otherwise he would hardly have undertaken the murders of the two women; but certainly, when the letter came from Mrs. Potter, saying that a literary agent had a copy of the manuscript, he would have suspected a snare and would have proceeded quite differently."