Plot It Yourself

But Thomas Dexter and Mortimer Oshin couldn’t see it, and neither could Reuben Imhof. They were all emphatic that Wolfe should be told to go ahead, though for different reasons. Imhofs point was that there was no telling how long it would take the police to find the plagiarist, if they ever did, and their messing around and the publicity would be bad for both publishers and authors. Oshin’s point was more personal. He had put up ten thousand dollars in cash in the hope that it would help to stop Kenneth Rennert, and he wanted Wolfe to go ahead and use it for that purpose, with or without the concurrence of the committee. Thomas Dexter’s point was even more personal, as you saw from the speech he made to Harvey. He regarded himself as guilty of incitation to murder. Apparently he had an old-fashioned conscience. He went on to say that he couldn’t shift his responsibility to the police, he wanted Wolfe to go ahead and spare no pains or expense, and he would contribute any sum that might be required. He didn’t even say “within reason.”

He ended by making a motion, and the chairman asked for hands. Three went up at once-Dexter’s, Imhofs, and Oshin’s. Then Amy Wynn’s, not with enthusiasm. Cora Ballard remarked that she wasn’t a committee member and couldn’t vote. Gerald Knapp asked her to record him as voting nay.

“Even if the chairman could vote,” Harvey said, “it would be four to two.” He turned to Wolfe. “So you go ahead. The last time you went ahead you got a man killed. What next?”

“That’s pretty raw,” Oshin said. “It was my idea, and the vote was unanimous.”

Harvey ignored him. He repeated to Wolfe, “What next?”

Wolfe cleared his throat. “I am twice a jackass,” he said.

They stared. He nodded. “First, I should never have accepted a committee as a client. That was egregious. Second, I should not have consented to act as a mere conveyor of bait. That was fatuous. It dulled my faculties. Having become a party to a procedure which made an obvious target of a man, which put a man in imminent danger, and aware that all of you knew of it and others soon would, I was an ass not to take precautions. I should have seen to it that he was not harmed. It was even quite possible that one of you was the wretch I had engaged to expose.”

“Sure,” Harvey said. “Now you’re getting hot.”