Plot It Yourself

In bed at three and out of it at ten Wednesday morning, I was an hour short of my regular requirement of eight hours’ sleep, but with Wolfe working his lips and giving up on Alice Porter and arranging a before-breakfast session with the hired hands, all five of them, it looked as if we were getting set for a showdown, and in that case I should be willing to make a major personal sacrifice, so I rolled out at ten. Also I made it snappy showering and dressing and eating breakfast, and got to the office at eleven-fifteen, only a quarter of an hour after Wolfe got down from the plant rooms. He was at his desk with the morning mail. I went and sat and watched him slit envelopes. His hands are quick and accurate, and he would be good at manual labour provided he could do it sitting down. I asked if he wanted help and he said no. I asked if there were any instructions.

“Perhaps.” He quit slitting and looked up. “After we discuss a matter.”

“Good. I guess I’m awake enough to discuss if it’s not too complicated. First I’ll report my conversation with Alice Porter during our drive to Carmel. At one point she said, ‘I never drive at night on account of my eyes. It gives me a headache.’ That’s the crop. Not another word. I made no advances because after the way you suddenly quit on her I had no idea where to poke. Next, it wouldn’t hurt if I had some notion of what Saul and Fred and Orrie and Dol Bonner and Sally Corbett are up to. So that when they call in I’ll know what they’re talking about.”

“They’ll report to me.”

“I see. Like that again. What I don’t know won’t hurt you.”

“What you don’t know will make no demands on your powers of dissimulation.” He put the letter-opener down. It was a knife with a horn handle that had been thrown at him in 1954, in the cellar of an old border fort in Alabama, by a man named Bua. The Marley.38 with which I had short Bua was in a drawer of my desk. He continued, “Besides, you won’t be here. I have made an assumption which was prompted by the question, why is Alice Porter alive? Why did X remove the other three so expeditiously and make no attempt to remove her? And why is she so cocksure that she is in no danger? Alone in that secluded house, with no companion but a dog that dotes on strangers, she shows no trepidation whatever, though X could be lurking at her door or behind a bush by day or by night. Why?”