WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG that afternoon right on the dot at three-ten and I left my chair to answer it, I remarked to Wolfe:
“These people are apt to be the kind that you often walk out on or, even worse, tell me to eject. It may be necessary to control yourself. Remember the payroll. There is much at stake. Remember Fritz, Theodore, Charley, and me.”
He didn’t even grunt.
The catch was above expectations, for in the delegation of four we got not one Erskine but two. Father and son. Father was maybe sixty and struck me as not imposing. He was tall and bony and narrow, wearing a dark blue ready-made that didn’t fit, and didn’t have false teeth but talked as if he had. He handled the introductions, first himself and then the others. Son was named Edward Frank and addressed as Ed. The other two, certified as members of the NIA Executive Committee, were Mr. Breslow and Mr. Winterhoff. Breslow looked as if he had been born flushed with anger and would die, when the time came, in character. If it had not been beneath the dignity of a member of the NIA Executive Committee, Winterhoff could have snagged a fee posing as a Man of Distinction for a whisky ad. He even had the little gray mustache.
As for Son, not yet Ed to me, who was about my age, I reserved judgment because he apparently had a hangover and that is no time to file a man away. Unquestionably he had a headache. His suit had cost at least three times as much as Father’s.
When I had got them distributed on chairs, with Father on the red leather number near the end of Wolfe’s desk, at his elbow a small table just the right size for resting a checkbook on while writing in it, Father spoke:
“This may be time wasted for us, Mr. Wolfe. It seemed impossible to get any satisfactory information on the telephone. Have you been engaged by anyone to investigate this matter?”
Wolfe lifted a brow a sixteenth of an inch. “What matter, Mr. Erskine?”
“Uh-this-the death of Cheney Boone.”
Wolfe considered. “Let me put it this way. I have agreed to nothing and accepted no fee. I am committed to no interest.”
“In a case of murder,” Breslow sputtered angrily, “there is only one interest, the interest of justice.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” son Ed growled.
Father’s eyes moved. “If necessary,” he said emphatically, “the rest of you can leave and I’ll do this alone.” He returned to Wolfe. “What opinion have you formed about it?”
“Opinions, from experts, cost money.”
“We’ll pay you for it.”
“A reasonable amount,” Winterhoff put in. His voice was heavy and flat. He couldn’t have been cast as a Man of Distinction with a sound-track.
“It wouldn’t be worth even that,” Wolfe said, “unless it were expert, and it wouldn’t be expert unless I did some work. I haven’t decided whether I shall go that far. I don’t like to work.”
“Who has consulted you?” Father wanted to know.
“Now, sir, really.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “It is indiscreet of you to ask, and I would be a blatherskite to answer. Did you come here with the notion of hiring me?”
“Well-” Erskine hesitated. “That has been discussed as a possibility.”
“For you gentlemen as individuals, or on behalf of the National Industrial Association?”
“It was discussed as an Association matter.”
Wolfe shook his head. “I would advise strongly against it. You might be wasting your money.”
“Why? Aren’t you a good investigator?”
“I am the best. But the situation is obvious. What you are concerned about is the reputation and standing of your Association. In the public mind the trial has already been held and the verdict rendered. Everyone knows that your Association was bitterly hostile to the Bureau of Price Regulation, to Mr. Boone, and to his policies. Nine people out often are confident that they know who murdered Mr. Boone. It was the National Industrial Association.” Wolfe’s eyes came to me. “Archie. What was it the man at the bank said?”
“Oh, just that gag that’s going around. That NIA stands for Not Innocent Atall.”
“But that’s preposterous!”
“Certainly,” Wolfe agreed, “but there it is. The NIA has been convicted and sentence has been pronounced. The only possible way of getting that verdict reversed would be to find the murderer and convict him. Even if it turned out that the murderer was a member of the NIA, the result would be the same; the interest and the odium would be transferred to the individual, if not altogether, at least to a great extent, and nothing else would transfer any of it.”
They looked at one another. Winterhoff nodded gloomily and Breslow kept his lips compressed so as not to explode. Ed Erskine glared at Wolfe as if that was where his headache had come from.
“You say,” Father told Wolfe, “that the public has convicted the NIA. But so have the police. So has the FBI. They are acting exactly like the Gestapo. The members of such an old and respectable organization as the NIA might be supposed to have some rights and privileges. Do you know what the police are doing? In addition to everything else, do you know that they are actually communicating with the police in every city in the United States? Asking them to get a signed statement from local citizens who were in New York at that dinner and have returned home?”
“Indeed,” Wolfe said politely. “But I imagine the local police will furnish paper and ink.”
“What?” Father stared at him.
“What the hell has that got to do with it?” Son wanted to know.
Wolfe skipped it and observed, “The deuce of it is that the probability that the police will catch the murderer seems somewhat thin. Not having studied the case thoroughly, I can’t qualify as an expert on it, but I must say it looks doubtful. Three days and nights have passed. That’s why I advise against your hiring me. I admit it would be worth almost any amount to your Association to have the murderer exposed, even if he proved to be one of you four gentlemen, but I would tackle the job, if at all, only with the greatest reluctance. I’m sorry you had your trip down here for nothing.-Archie?”
The implication being that I should show them what good manners we had by taking them to the front door, I stood up. They didn’t. Instead they exchanged glances.
Winterhoff said to Erskine, “I would go ahead, Frank.”
Breslow demanded, “What else can we do?”
Ed growled, “Oh, God, I wish he was alive again. That was better than this.”
I sat down.
Erskine said, “We are businessmen, Mr. Wolfe. We understand that you can’t guarantee anything. But if we persuade you to undertake this matter, exactly what would you engage to do?”
It took them nearly ten minutes to persuade him, and they all looked relieved, even Ed, when he finally gave in. It was more or less understood that the clinching argument was Breslow’s, that they must not let justice down. Unfortunately, since the NIA had a voucher system, the check-writing table did not get used. As a substitute I typed a letter, dictated by Wolfe, and Erskine signed it. The retainer was to be ten thousand dollars, and the ultimate charge, including expenses, was left open. They certainly were on the ropes.
“Now,” Erskine said, handing me back my fountain pen, “I suppose we had better tell you all we know about it.”