Plot It Yourself

“I mean that it no longer seems to be my kind of job. To do it properly and with expedition at least a dozen competent operatives will be needed, with competent supervision. That will cost six hundred dollars a day or more, plus expenses, seven days a week. I would not supervise such an operation. But I should finish my report. As I told Mr Harvey on the phone on Saturday, I sent Mr Goodwin to call on those four people, and he has seen them. Archie?”

I had tossed my notebook over my shoulder onto my desk. It looked as if we weren’t even going to send a bill for expenses, and in that case I was out three dollars, eighty for the fried chicken I had bought at the Green Fence. “Do you want it all?” I asked.

“Not I. They. Miss Ballard is taking notes. If it isn’t too extensive.”

“It isn’t. Two minutes with Simon Jacobs, seven with Kenneth Rennert, one with Jane Ogilvy, and eight with Alice Porter.”

“Then verbatim.”

I obliged. Since I had developed that faculty to a point where I could give Wolfe a full and accurate account of a two-hour conversation with three or four people, this little chore was nothing. As I went along I noticed that Mortimer Oshin was lighting no cigarettes, and I was taking it as a compliment until I realized that, being a dramatist, he was sizing up the dialogue. When I finished he reacted first.

“That Jane Ogilvy speech,” he said. “Of course you’ve dressed it up. Damn good.”

“No dressing,” I told him. “When I report I merely report.”

“And you think Kenneth Rennert is not the-the instigator?” Gerald Knapp asked.

“Right. For the reasons given.”

“It seems to me,” Philip Harvey said, “that this doesn’t alter the situation any. As Mr Wolfe described it.” His head moved to take them in. “So now what?”

They held a committee meeting. What made it a meeting was that when more than three of them talked at once Harvey yelled that he couldn’t hear anybody. After a quarter of an hour the consensus seemed to be that they were in a pickle, and I was thinking that if I were chairman I would ask for a motion to that effect.

Thomas Dexter raised his voice. “I would like to suggest,” he suggested, “that we take twenty-four hours to consider the matter as it now stands, and meet again tomorrow. It is possible that Mr Wolfe-”

“Wait a minute,” Oshin cut in. He had a cigarette going. “I’ve got an idea.” He stretched his neck to see around Gerald Knapp, to look at me. “A question for you. Mr Goodwin. Which one of those four people needs money most?”