Plot It Yourself

“Yeah.” I considered. “Offhand I would vote no. One will get you ten that he isn’t. From the general impression I got of him. Especially I doubt if he would monkey around with accomplices. A specific point: There is no evidence that he had any connection with writing or writers until he took a shot at television in 1955, so how did he get on to Alice Porter and Jacobs and Jane Ogilvy? Another one: If he used them on the first three, splitting the take with them, because he didn’t want to do it himself, why did he do it himself for the fourth and then go back to Alice Porter for the fifth?”

Wolfe nodded. “I agree. We are caught in our own noose. By discovering that those three stories were written by the same person we thought we had simplified the problem. It now appears that we have complicated it. If those four were merely cat’s-paws, where is the monkey? He is presumably a United States citizen. There are a hundred and seventy million of them.”

“It’s not that bad,” I averred. “He’s probably in the metropolitan area. Fifteen million. Not counting children, illiterates, millionaires, people in jail-”

Fritz had appeared at the door. “Lunch is ready, sir.”

“I have no appetite,” Wolfe growled.

It was off a little. He only ate four Creole fritters with cheese sauce instead of the usual five.

Chapter 5

So he pulled a mutiny, the first one in three years. His mutinies are like other people’s. Other people mutiny against the Army or Navy or some other authority, but he mutinies against himself. It was his house and his office, and he had taken the job, but now he turned his back on it. His discovery that the three stories had all been written by one person, which I admit was fairly neat, had backfired on him, and he quit. Of course business is never mentioned at the table, but from his mood I knew he was smoldering, so when we returned to the office after lunch I asked politely whether there would be instructions then or later.

“Now,” he said. “You will see, at your convenience and theirs, Miss Porter, Miss Ogilvy, Mr Jacobs, and Mr Rennert. In whatever order you prefer. Make their acquaintance.”

I stayed polite. “It will be a pleasure to meet them. What are we to talk about?”

“Whatever occurs to you. I have never known you to be short of words.”

“How about bringing them, one at a time, to make your acquaintance?”

“No.”