Plot It Yourself

He spread his hands. “And there is the question, what about your assumption that all of the claims were fraudulent? I can’t swallow it with my eyes shut. I can accept it as a working hypothesis, but I can’t dismiss the possibility that one or more of the supposed victims is a thief and a liar. ‘Most writers steal a good thing when they can’ is doubtless an-”

“Blah!” Mortimer Oshin exploded.

Wolfe’s brows went up. “That was in quotation marks, Mr Oshin. It was said, or written, more than a century ago by Barry Cornwall, the English poet and dramatist. He wrote Mirandola, a tragedy performed at Covent Garden with Macready and Kemble. It is doubtless an exaggeration, but it is not blah. If there had been then in England a National Association of Authors and Dramatists, Barry Cornwall would have been a member. So that question must remain open along with the others.”

His eyes moved. “Miss Wynn. The search of the apartments should not be delayed. Will you arrange it, or shall I?”

Amy Wynn looked at Imhof. He told her, “Let him do it.” She told Wolfe, “You do it.”

“Very well. You will get permission from your former fellow tenants at Perry Street, and you will admit the searchers to your present apartment and then absent yourself. Archie, get Saul Panzer and Miss Bonner.”

I turned to the phone and dialed.

Chapter 3

Thirty-four hours later, at eleven o’clock Wednesday evening, Wolfe straightened up in his chair and spoke. “Archie.”

My fingers, on the typewriter keys, stopped. “Yes, sir?”

“Another question has been answered.”

“Good. Which one?”

“About the candor of the victims. Their bona fides is established. They were swindled. Look here.”