The Second Confesion

“During the following eight years I saw hints here and there that X was active, but I was busy with my own affairs, which did not happen to come into contact with his. Then, early in 1946, while I was engaged on a job for a client, I had a phone call. A voice I had never heard-hard, cold, precise, and finicky with its grammar-advised me to limit my efforts on behalf of my client. I replied that my efforts would be limited only by the requirements of the job I had undertaken to do. The voice insisted, and we talked some more, but only to an impasse. The next day I finished the job to my client's satisfaction, and that ended it.” Wolfe closed his fingers into fists and opened them again. “But for my own satisfaction I felt that I needed some information. The character of the job, and a remark the voice had made during our talk, raised the question whether the voice could have been that of X himself. Not wishing to involve the men I often hire to help me, and certainly not Mr Goodwin, I got men from an agency in another city. Within a month I had all the information I needed for my satisfaction, including of course X's name, and I dismissed the men and destroyed their reports. I hoped that X's affairs and mine would not again touch, but they did. Months later, a little more than a year ago, I was investigating a murder, this time for a client-you may remember it. A man named Orchard poisoned while appearing on a radio programme?” All but Sperling nodded, and Mrs Sperling said she had been listening to the programme the day it happened. Wolfe went on: “I was in the middle of that investigation when the same voice called me on the phone and told me to drop it. He was not so talkative that second time, perhaps because I informed him that I knew his name, which was of course childish of me.

I ignored his fiat. It soon transpired that Mr Orchard and a woman who had also been killed had both been professional blackmailers, using a method which clearly implied a large organization, ingeniously contrived and ably conducted.