Might as Well Be Dead

They agreed with Saul and me that the odds were big that the car that had hit enough of him to kill him had been not careless but careful. They hadn’t had much love for him, but they had worked a lot with him. As Fred Durkin said, “Lots of worse guys are still walking around.” Orrie Cather said, “Yes, and one of them has got something coming.” No one mentioned that until he got it they had better keep an eye out when crossing a street, but they were all thinking it.

They were given errands. Saul was to go to Parker’s office to be at hand. Orrie, armed with Selma Molloy’s keys, was to go to her apartment and inspect the contents of the three cartons. Fred, supplied by Mrs. Molloy with descriptions of Jerome Arkoff and Tom Irwin, was to go to the Longacre Theatre and the bar across the street and see if he could find someone who could remember as far back as January 3. Fred was getting the scraps.

When they had gone Wolfe tackled Mrs. Molloy again, to get the lowdown on her friends. Using the telephone in the kitchen while he was busy with the staff, she had asked them to come to Wolfe’s office at six o’clock. I don’t know what she had told them,, since she couldn’t very well say that Wolfe wanted to find out which one of them had killed Mike Molloy, but anyhow they had said they would come. I had suggested that she could tell them that Wolfe was working with Freyer and was trying to find some grounds for an appeal, and probably she did.

Of course Wolfe had her cornered. If there were any chance of springing her P.H. she was all for it, but friends are friends, for people who are entitled to have any, until shown to be otherwise. If you want to take the word of one bewitched, she handled it very nicely. She stuck strictly to facts. For instance, she did not say that Fanny Irwin and Pat Degan were snatching a snuggle; she merely said that Rita Arkoff thought they were.