Might as Well Be Dead

At 3:10 P.M. I used the phone there in the apartment and told Wolfe the bad news, including the empty drawers. Orrie said to tell him that never had so many searched so long for so little, but it didn’t appeal to me. Wolfe told me to tell Fred and Orrie that was all for the day and to bring Saul in with me. After making a tour to verify that we were leaving things as we had found them, we moved out. Down on the sidewalk we parted, Fred and Orrie heading for the corner to get a drink to drown the disappointment, and Saul and I, with the kit of tools, flagging a taxi. It wasn’t a cheerful ride. If the best the genius could do was start us combing the metropolitan area, including Jersey and Long Island, for a relic that might not exist, the future wasn’t very bright.

But he had something a little more specific. We had barely crossed the sill to the office when he blurted at me, “About that Delia Brandt. About Molloy’s proposal to her of a trip to South America. You said last Wednesday that she told you she had put him off, but you thought she lied. Why did you think she lied?”

I stood. “The way she said it, the way she looked, the way she answered questions about it. And just her. I had formed an opinion of her.”

“Have you changed your opinion? Since she is going to marry William Lesser?”

“Hell no. She couldn’t go to South America with a dead man, and evidently, from Fred’s reports, she was playing Lesser all the time on an option. If Lesser found out what the score was and decided to take-”

“That’s not my target. If Molloy was preparing to decamp and take that girl with him, and if she had agreed to go, he might have entrusted certain objects to her care-for example, some of the objects he removed from the empty drawers you found. Is it fantastic to assume that he left them in her apartment for safekeeping pending departure?”

“No, not fantastic. I wouldn’t trust her with a subway token, but apparently his opinion of her wasn’t the same flavor as mine. It’s quite possible.”

“Then you and Saul will go and search her apartment. Now.”

When Wolfe gets desperate he is absolutely fearless. He will expose me to the risk of a five-year stretch up the river without batting an eye. That’s okay, since I am old enough to vote and can always say no, but that time he was inviting another party too, so I turned to look at Saul. He merely asked, “Will she be there?”