Plot It Yourself

“I had Kenneth Rennert,” Fred said, “and the trouble was there wasn’t any widow or mother or anyone like that. I saw about twenty people, other tenants in the building and the building superintendent, and friends and acquaintances, but none of them recognized the subject from the photograph. From two or three of them I got a steer to a restaurant on Fifty-second Street, the Pot-au-Feu, where Rennert often ate lunch and sometimes dinner, and that was the only place I got anything at all. One of the waiters, the one that had the table where Rennert usually sat, thought the subject had been there twice with Rennert, once for lunch and once for dinner. He was cagey. Of course he knew Rennert had been murdered. He might have opened up more if I had slipped him a twenty, but of course that was out. He thought it had been in the late winter or spring last year. He thought if he saw the subject he could tell better than from a photograph. He had liked Rennert. The only reason he talked at all was because I told him it might help to get the murderer. I think if he was sure of that and if he saw the subject in person-”

Wolfe stopped him. “That will serve, Fred. The ifs are ahead of us. Mr Panzer?” As Fred went back to his chair and Saul came forward, Wolfe told the committee, “I should explain that Mr Panzer’s assignment was of a different nature. It was given to him because it required illegal entry to a private dwelling. Yes, Saul?”

The committee had Saul’s profile because he was turned to face Alice Porter. “Yesterday evening,” he said, “as instructed, I drove to Alice Porter’s home near Carmel, arriving at twelve minutes past ten. I opened the door with a key, one of an assortment I had, and entered, and made a search. On a shelf in a cupboard I found some sheets of paper with typewriting, clipped together, twenty-five pages. The first page was headed ‘Opportunity Knocks,’ and below that it said ‘By Alice Porter.’ It was an original, not a carbon. I have delivered it to Mr Wolfe.”