Before Midnight

I obliged. "Last Wednesday I went to the safe deposit vault with Buff, O'Garro, and Heery. They got the box and opened it. I cut the two envelopes open, one with the verses and one with the answers, and made copies on four sheets from my notebook. The originals were returned to the envelopes, and the envelopes to the box, and the box to the vault. I came straight home with my copies and put them in the safe as soon as I got here, and they've been there ever since and are there now."

"I want to see them," Purley rasped.

Wolfe answered him. "No, sir. It would serve no purpose unless you handled and inspected them, and if you got hold of them you wouldn't let go. It would be meaningless anyway. Since Mr. Buff decided to tell about them we knew you would be coming, and if anything had happened to them Mr. Goodwin could have made duplicates and put them in the safe. No. We tell you they are there."

"They've been there all the time since Goodwin put them there last Wednesday?"

"Yes. Continuously."

"You haven't had them out once?"

"No."

Purley turned his big weathered face to me. "Have you?"

"Nope.--Wait a minute, I have too. An hour ago. Buff was on the phone and asked where they were, and Mr. Wolfe told me to take a look to make sure. I took them out and glanced over them, and put them right back. That was the only time I've had them out of the safe since I put them in."

His head jerked back to Wolfe and he barked, "Then what the hell did you get 'em for?"

Wolfe nodded. "That's a good question. To answer it adequately I would have to go back to that day and recall all of my impressions and surmises and tentative designs, and I'm busy and haven't time. So I'll only say that I had certain vague notions which never ripened. That will have to do you."

Parley's jaw was working. "What I think," he said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, what I think. So does the Inspector. He wanted to come, but he was late for an appointment with the Commissioner, so he sent me. We think you sent the copies of the answers to the contestants." He clamped the jaw. He released it. "Or we think you might have, and we want to know. I don't have to tell you what it means to this murder investigation, whether you did it or not-- hell, I don't have to tell you anything. I ask you a straight question: did you send copies of those answers to the contestants?"

"No, sir."

"Do you know who did?"

"No, sir."

Purley came to me. "Did you. send them?"

"No."

"Do you know who did?"

"No."