Plot It Yourself

“That depends on what you mean by ‘money,’ ” I told him. “A ten-spot or a grand or half a million?”

“Something in between. Here’s my idea, and I like it. We make one of them an offer. Nero Wolfe makes it for us. Say ten thousand dollars. What the hell, I’d be willing to kick in that much myself. My lawyer thinks I may have to pay Rennert between fifty and a hundred thousand, and if this works Rennert will be done. And you’re in the same position, Miss Wynn, with Alice Porter. She’s going to nick you-”

“Not the same,” Reuben Imhof objected. “There’s no evidence. Alice Porter has claimed that Miss Wynn plagiarized a story she wrote, but the story hasn’t been produced.”

“It will be. Miss Wynn, wouldn’t you be willing to pay ten thousand dollars to have Alice Porter stopped? Stopped for good?”

Amy Wynn looked at Imhof. He patted her on the shoulder. “Stopped how?” he asked Oshin. “What’s your idea?”

“Very simple. Brilliant but simple. We offer him, or her, twenty thousand dollars to spill it. Who wrote the story he based his claim on, how the manuscript was planted-everything. With evidence to back it up; that should be easy. We also offer to guarantee that he won’t be prosecuted and he won’t be asked to return his share of the loot. You’ve seen all four of them, Mr Goodwin. Which one would you pick?”

“Simon Jacobs,” I said.

“Why him?”

“Very simple. Not even brilliant. Rennert is going to collect a lot more than twenty grand from you, or thinks he is. The same goes for Alice Porter; she has just made her claim on Amy Wynn. As for Jane Ogilvy, God only knows. She testified in court that she wrote that story, ‘On Earth but Not in Heaven,’ because she was suffocating under the blanket of her father’s bounty and her mother’s devotion and sought another market for her soul, end of quotation. I suppose meaning that she wanted to get hold of some cash, and presumably this operator knew that and obliged her. When she got it she kicked loose and went to Europe, but in a month she came back to the blanket. She might grab at the twenty grand, or she might spurn it. Just talking about her I use words like‘spurn.’ ”

“Then that leaves Jacobs.”