Plot It Yourself

I didn’t hop. It may be true that, as a friend once told me, I have no more social grace than a conceited tiger, but Amy Wynn, being a member of the committee, was one-sixth of our client and not to be ignored. So before looking at the object Imhof had on his desk I turned to the chair where Amy Wynn was sitting and told her good afternoon. She nodded, just barely. Then I looked at the object.

It was some sheets of paper, eight-and-a-half by eleven inches. The one on top was headed “Opportunity Knocks,” and below that, “by Alice Porter.” In the upper right-hand corner was a date, June 3, 1957. The text that followed was double-spaced. I lifted the edges to the last sheet: twenty-seven pages. There were no creases from folding.

“By God,” Imhof said.

“I doubt it,” I said. “I doubt if He had a hand in it. Probably not by Alice Porter, either. Where was it?”

“In a cabinet in the filing room down the hall. In a folder marked ‘Amy Wynn.’ ”

“Who found it?”

“Miss Frey, my secretary.” He aimed a thumb at the attractive young woman. “Miss Judith Frey.”

“When?”

“About ten minutes before I phoned you. Miss Wynn was here with me. We were discussing the contents of a letter I wrote her last week, and I sent for Miss Frey and asked her to bring the carbon. She brought the whole folder, because, she said, of something that was in it. The ‘something’ was that. She says it wasn’t in the folder last Wednesday, five days ago, the last time she had occasion to go to it. I want to ask you something. Do you remember that this moming Mortimer Oshin said Miss Wynn was in the same position with Alice Porter as he was with Kenneth Rennert, and I said it wasn’t the same because the story hadn’t been produced, and he said, ‘It will be’? Not ‘It may be,’ ‘It will be.’ Remember that?”

“Nuts.” I moved a chair around and sat. “People say things. How much have you handled it?”

“Not much. I glanced through it. So did Miss Wynn.”

“It probably doesn’t matter. Whoever put it there has probably heard of fingerprints. Who has access to that room?”

“Everybody here.”

“How many?”

“In this department, executive and editorial, thirty-two. Altogether, more than a hundred, but people in other departments never go to that room.”

“But they could?”

“Yes.”

“Is there always somebody in that room? Someone stationed there?”

“No one is stationed there, but people are always going and coming.”

“Then an outsider could just walk in?”