Rex Stout - Plot It Yourself

Harvey nodded. “Sure, that’s been tried. By the lawyer representing Marjorie Lippin’s heirs, her son and daughter, and by the detective agency Oshin hired. They didn’t find any.”

“Where are the four manuscripts on which the claims were based? Not copies, the manuscripts themselves. Are they available?”

“We have two of them, Alice Porter’s ‘There Is Only Love’ and Simon Jacobs’ ‘What’s Mine Is Yours.’ Jane Ogilvy’s ‘On Earth but Not in Heaven’s was an exhibit in evidence at the trial, and after she won the case it was returned to her. We have a copy of it — a copy, not a facsimile. Kenneth Rennert’s play outline, ‘A Bushel of Love,’ is in the possession of Oshin’s attorney, and he won’t give us a copy of it. Of course we—”

Mortimer Oshin postponed striking a match to mutter, “He won’t even let me have a copy.”

Harvey finished, “Of course we know nothing about Alice Porter’s ‘Opportunity Knocks,’ the basis of her claim against Amy Wynn. I have a suspicion that you’ll find it when you search the apartment Miss Wynn lived in on Perry Street. If you do, then what?”

“I have no idea.” Wolfe made a face. “Confound it, you have merely shown me the skeleton, and I am not a wizard. I must know what has been done and what has been overlooked, in each case. What of the paper and typing of the manuscripts? Did they offer no grounds for a challenge? What of the records and backgrounds of the claimants? Did Jane Ogilvy testify at the trial, and was she cross-examined competently? How did Alice Porter’s manuscript get into Ellen Sturdevant’s bureau drawer? How did Jane Ogilvy’s manuscript get into the trunk in Marjorie Lippin’s attic? How did Kenneth Rennert’s play outline get into the file of Mr. Oshin’s former agent? Was any sort of answer found, even a conjectural one, to any of those questions?”

He spread his hands. “And there is the question, what about your assumption that all of the claims were fraudulent? I can’t swallow it with my eyes shut. I can accept it as a working hypothesis, but I can’t dismiss the possibility that one or more of the supposed victims is a thief and a liar. ‘Most writers steal a good thing when they can’ is doubtless an—”

“Blah!” Mortimer Oshin exploded.

Wolfe’s brows went up. “That was in quotation marks, Mr. Oshin. It was said, or written, more than a century ago by Barry Cornwall, the English poet and dramatist. He wrote Mirandola , a tragedy performed at Covent Garden with Macready and Kemble. It is doubtless an exaggeration, but it is not blah. If there had been then in England a National Association of Authors and Dramatists, Barry Cornwall would have been a member. So that question must remain open along with the others.”

His eyes moved. “Miss Wynn. The search of the apartments should not be delayed. Will you arrange it, or shall I?”

Amy Wynn looked at Imhof. He told her, “Let him do it.” She told Wolfe, “You do it.”

“Very well. You will get permission from your former fellow tenants at Perry Street, and you will admit the searchers to your present apartment and then absent yourself. Archie, get Saul Panzer and Miss Bonner.”

I turned to the phone and dialed.

Thirty-four hours later, at eleven o’clock Wednesday evening, Wolfe straightened up in his chair and spoke. “Archie.”

My fingers, on the typewriter keys, stopped. “Yes, sir?”

“Another question has been answered.”

“Good. Which one?”

“About the candor of the victims. Their bona fides is established. They were swindled. Look here.”

I got up and crossed to his desk. To get there I had to detour around a table that had been brought from the front room to hold about half a ton of paper. There were correspondence folders, newspaper clippings, photographs, mimeographed reports, transcripts of telephone conversations, photostats, books, tear sheets, lists of names and addresses, affidavits, and miscellaneous items. With time out only for meals and sleep and his two daily sessions in the plant rooms on the roof, Wolfe had spent the thirty-four hours working through it, and so had I. We had both read all of it except the four books — The Color of Passion , by Ellen Sturdevant, Hold Fast to All I Give You , by Richard Echols, Sacred or Profane , by Marjorie Lippin, and Knock at My Door , by Amy Wynn. There was no point in wading through them, since it was acknowledged that their plots and characters and action were the same as those in the stories on which the claims had been based.

What I was typing, when he interrupted me, was a statement to be signed by Saul Panzer and Dol Bonner, who had come late that afternoon to report. Tuesday afternoon and evening they had spent seven hours at the apartment on Perry Street, and six hours Wednesday at Amy Wynn’s current apartment on Arbor Street. They were prepared to swear on a stack of best-sellers that in neither place was there a manuscript of a story by Alice Porter entitled “Opportunity Knocks.” At Perry Street there had been no manuscript at all, by anybody. At Arbor Street there had been a drawerful of them — two novels, twenty-eight stories, and nine articles — all by Amy Wynn and all showing signs of the wear and tear that comes from a series of trips through the mails. Saul had made a list of the titles and number of pages, but I had decided it wasn’t necessary to include it in the statement. I had dialed Philip Harvey’s number to report to the chairman, but there was no answer, so I had called Reuben Imhof at Victory Press. He was glad to get the good news and said he would tell Amy Wynn.

Having detoured around the table with its load of paper, I stood at the end of Wolfe’s desk. Ranged before him were three of the items of the collection: the manuscripts of Alice Porter’s “There Is Only Love,” and Simon Jacobs’ “What’s Mine Is Yours,” and the copy of Jane Ogilvy’s “On Earth but Not in Heaven.” In his hand were some sheets from his scratch pad. His elbow was on the chair arm with his forearm perpendicular. It takes energy to hold a forearm straight up, and he only does it when he is especially pleased with himself.

“I’m looking,” I said. “What is it? Fingerprints?”

“Better than fingerprints. These three stories were all written by the same person.”

“Yeah? Not on the same typewriter. I compared them with a glass.”

“So did I.” He rattled the sheets. “Better than a typewriter. A typewriter can change hands.” He glanced at the top sheet. “In Alice Porter’s story a character avers something six times. In Simon Jacobs’ story, eight times. In Jane Ogilvy’s story, seven times. You know, of course, that nearly every writer of dialogue has his pet substitute, or substitutes, for ‘say.’ Wanting a variation for ‘he said’ or ‘she said,’ they have him declare, state, blurt, spout, cry, pronounce, avow, murmur, mutter, snap — there are dozens of them; and they tend to repeat the same one. Would you accept it as coincidence that this man and those two women have the same favorite, ‘aver’?”

“Maybe with salt. I heard you say once that it is not inconceivable that the fall in temperature when the sun moves south is merely a coincidence.”

“Pfui. That was conversation. This is work. There are other similarities, equally remarkable, in these stories. Two of them are verbal.” He looked at the second sheet. “Alice Porter has this: ‘Not for nothing would he abandon the only person he had ever loved.’ And this: ‘She might lose her self-respect, but not for nothing.’ Simon Jacobs has this. ‘And must he forfeit his honor too? Not for nothing?’ And this: ‘Not for nothing had she suffered tortures that no woman could be expected to survive.’ Jane Ogilvy has a man say in reply to a question, ‘Not for nothing, my dear, not for nothing.’ ”