Murder by the Book

Wolfe nodded. "I'll get to that. By that day he knew tfiat I was on the case and was concentrating on Baird Archer and the manuscript, and the possibility that I might find Rachel Abrams certainly did not escape him. He had to deal with her first, and he did-a scant two minutes before Mr. Goodwin reached her. And there he was. The preliminaries were completed. He was ready for what had always been his real objective: the murder of Corrigan. To abandon it was unthinkable, but now it was not so simple. Needing to learn how much I knew, he phoned Corrigan to suggest that all of you should come here and invite my questions, and you came. It may be that my asking to see Dykes's letter of resignation first gave him the idea of putting it all onto Corrigan; that's of no moment; in any case, he contrived to put that notation in Corrigan's hand on the letter before it reached me, as the first step."

Wolfe paused to glance at Wellman, but our client was merely gazing at O'Malley, with no apparent intention of taking part. He went on. "When the police confronted you with the notation, of course O'Malley had to join you in your claim of ignorance and your charge that I must have made the notation myself. Then came the letter from Mrs. Potter, and naturally that suited him admirably. He knew it was a decoy, either mine or Mr. Cramer's, for he was confident that all copies of the manuscript had been destroyed. I have had no report of your conference that day, but I would give odds that he maneuvered with all his dexterity to arrange that Corrigan should be the one to go to California. The result met his highest expectations. On Corrigan's return you came together to see me again and, as it seemed to O'Malley, I played directly into his hand by refusing to say anything except that I was about ready to act That made the threat, to-whoever was its

object, ominous and imminent; that made it most plausible that Corrigan, granting he was the object, would prefer self-destruction and would choose that moment for it; and O'Malley moved swiftly and ruthlessly. It was only ten hours after he left here with you that he dialed my number to let me hear the shot that killed Corrigan."

"You foresaw that?" Kustin demanded.