Plot It Yourself

“We’re getting hotter,” Harvey said. “Wait till you hear the rest of it. Next: In November 1956, Nahm and Son published Sacred or Profane, a novel by Marjorie Lippin. Like all of her previous books, it had a big sale; the first printing was forty thousand.” He consulted his papers. “On March 21st, 1957, Marjorie Lippin died of a heart attack. On April 9th Nahm and Son received a letter from a woman named Jane Ogilvy. Her claim was almost identical with the one Alice Porter had made on The Colour of Passion-that in June 1955 she had sent the manuscript of a twenty-page story, entitled “On Earth but Not in Heaven,” to Marjorie Lippin, with a letter asking for her opinion of it, that it had never been acknowledged or returned, and that the plot and characters of Sacred or Profane had been taken from it. Since Mrs Lippin was dead she couldn’t answer to the charge, and on April 14th, only five days after Nahm and Son got the letter, the executor of Mrs Lippin’s estate, an officer of a bank, found the manuscript of the story, as described by Jane Ogilvy, in a trunk in the attic of Mrs Lippin’s home. He considered it his duty to produce it, and he did so. With Mrs Lippin dead, a successful challenge of the claim seemed hopeless, but her heirs, her son and daughter, were too stubborn to see it, and they wanted to clear her name of the stain. They even had her body exhumed for an autopsy, but it confirmed her death from a natural cause, a heart attack. The case finally went to trial last October, and a jury awarded Jane Ogilvy one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. It was-paid by the estate. Nahm and Son didn’t see fit to contribute.”

“Why the hell should they?” Gerald Knapp demanded.

Harvey smiled at him. “The NAAD appreciates your co-operation, Mr Knapp. I’m merely giving the record.”

Dexter told Knapp, “Oh, skip it. It’s common knowledge that Phil Harvey has an ulcer. That’s why the gods laugh.”

Harvey transferred the smile from Knapp and Bowen to Title House. “Many thanks for the plug, Mr Dexter. At all bookstores-maybe.” He returned to Wolfe. “The next one wasn’t a novel; it was a play-A Barrel of Love, by Mortimer Oshin. You tell it, Mr Oshin.”