Chapter Twenty

I have to admit that for me the toss to Elinor Vance was a passed ball. It went by me away out of reach. I half-way expected that now at last we would get some hired help, but when I asked Wolfe if I should line up Saul and Fred and Orrie he merely grunted. I wasn't much surprised, since it was in accordance with our new policy of letting the cops do it. It was a cinch that Cramer's first move on returning to his headquarters would be to start a pack sniffing for anonymous letters about Elinor Vance.

After lunch I disposed of a minor personal problem by getting Wolfe's permission to pay a debt, though that wasn't the way I put it. I told him that I would like to call Lon Cohen and give him the dope on how subscriptions to Track Almanac and What to Expect had been procured, of course without any hint of a patient ruthless master mind who didn't exist, and naming no names. My arguments were (a) that Wolfe had fished it up himself and therefore Cramer had no copyright, (b) that it was desirable to have a newspaper under an obligation, (c) that it would serve them right for the vicious editorial they had run, and (d) that it might possibly start a fire somewhere that would give us a smoke signal. Wolfe nodded, but I waited until he had gone up to the plant rooms to phone Lon to pay up. If I had done it in his hearing he's so damn' suspicious that some word, or a shade of a tone, might have started him asking questions.

Another proposal I made later on didn't do so well. He turned it down flat.

Since it was to be assumed that I had forgotten the name Arnold Zeck, I used Duncan instead. I reminded Wolfe that he had told Cramer that it was likely that an employee of Duncan's had seen the killer of Beula Poole, and could even name him. What I proposed was to call the Midland number and leave a message for Duncan to phone Wolfe. If and when he did so Wolfe would make an offer: if Duncan would come through on the killer, not for quotation of course, Wolfe would agree to forget that he had ever heard tell of anyone whose name began with Z-pardon me, D.

All I got was my head snapped off. First, Wolfe would make no such bargain with a criminal, especially a dysgenic one; and second, there would be no further communication between him and that nameless buzzard unless the buzzard started it. That seemed shortsighted to me. If he didn't intend to square off with the bird unless he had to, why not take what he could get? After dinner that evening I tried to bring it up again, but he wouldn't discuss it.

The following morning, Friday, we had a pair of visitors that we hadn't seen for quite a while: Walter B. Anderson, the Starlite president, and Fred Owen, the director of public relations. When the doorbell rang a little before noon and I went to the front and saw them on the stoop, my attitude was quite different from what it had been the first time. They had no photographers along, and they were clients in good standing entitled to one hell of a beef if they only knew it, and there was a faint chance that they had a concealed weapon, maybe a hatpin, to stick into Wolfe. So without going to the office to check I welcomed them across the threshold.

Wolfe greeted them without any visible signs of rapture, but at least he didn't grump. He even asked them how they did. While they were getting seated he shifted in his chair so he could give his eyes to either one without excessive exertion for his neck muscles. He actually apologized: “It isn't astonishing if you gentlemen are getting a little impatient. But if you are exasperated, so am I. I had no idea it would drag on like this. No murderer likes to be caught, naturally; but this one seems to have an extraordinary aversion to it. Would you like me to describe what has been accomplished?”

“We know pretty well,” Owen stated. He was wearing a dark brown double-breasted pin-stripe that must have taken at least five fittings to get it the way it looked.

We know too well,” the president corrected him. Usually I am tolerant of the red-faced, plump type, but every time that geezer opened his mouth I wanted to shut it and not by talking.

Wolfe frowned. “I've admitted your right to exasperation. You needn't insist on it.”

“We're not exasperated with you, Mr Wolfe,” Owen declared.

“I am,” the president corrected him again. “With the whole damn' thing and everything and every one connected with it. For a while I've been willing to string along with the idea that there can't be any argument against a Hooper in the high twenties, but I've thought I might be wrong and now I know I was. My God, blackmail! Were you responsible for that piece in the Gazette this morning?”

“Well…” Wolfe was being judicious. “I would say that the responsibility rests with the man who conceived the scheme. I discovered and disclosed it-”

“It doesn't matter.” Anderson waved it aside. “What does matter is that my company and my product cannot and will not be connected in the public mind with blackmail. That's dirty. That makes people gag.”

“I absolutely agree,” Owen asserted.

“Murder is moderately dirty too,” Wolfe objected.

“No,” Anderson said flatly. “Murder is sensational and exciting, but it's not like blackmail and anonymous letters. I'm through. I've had enough of it.”

He got his hand in his breast pocket and pulled out an envelope, from which he extracted an oblong strip of blue paper. “Here's a cheque for your fee, the total amount. I can collect from the others-or not. I'll see. Send me a bill for expenses to date. You understand, I'm calling it off.”

Owen had got up to take the cheque and hand it to Wolfe. Wolfe took a squint at it and let it drop to the desk.

“Indeed.” Wolfe picked up the cheque, gave it another look, and dropped it again. “Have you consulted the other parties to our arrangement?”

“No, and I don't intend to. What do you care? That's the full amount, isn't it?”

“Yes, the amount's all right. But why this headlong retreat? What has suddenly scared you so?”

“Nothing has scared me.” Anderson came forward in his chair. “Look, Wolfe. I came down here myself to make sure there's no slip-up on this. The deal is off, beginning right now. If you listened to the Fraser programme this morning you didn't hear my product mentioned. I'm paying that off too, and clearing out. If you think I'm scared you don't know me. I don't scare. But I know how to take action when the circumstances require it, and that's what I'm doing.”

He left his chair, leaned over Wolfe's desk, stretched a short fat arm, and tapped the cheque with a short stubby forefinger. “I'm no welcher! I'll pay your expenses just like I'm paying this! I'm not blaming you, to hell with that, but from this minute-you-are-not-working-for-me!”

With the last six words the finger jabbed the desk, at the rate of about three jabs to a word.

“Come on, Fred,” the president commanded, and the pair tramped out to the hall.

I moseyed over as far as the office door to see that they didn't make off with my new twenty-dollar grey spring hat, and, when they were definitely gone, returned to my desk, sat, and commented to Wolfe: “He seems to be upset.”

“Take a letter to him.”

I got my notebook and pen. Wolfe cleared his throat.

“Not dear Mr Anderson, dear sir. Regarding our conversation at my office this morning, I am engaged with others as well as you, and, since my fee is contingent upon a performance, I am obliged to continue until the performance is completed. The cheque you gave me will be held in my safe until that time.”

I looked up. “Sincerely?”

“I suppose so. There's nothing insincere about it. When you go out to mail it go first to the bank and have the cheque certified.”