Rex Stout: Might as Well Be Dead

He paused because we were both staring and he loves to make people stare.

“With reason?” Freyer demanded. “What reason?”

Satisfied with the stares, he resumed. “When Mr. Goodwin left here yesterday afternoon to go to look at your client, a man followed him. Why? It’s barely possible that it was someone bearing a grudge on account of some former activity of ours, but highly unlikely. It would be puerile for such a person merely to follow Mr. Goodwin when he left the house. He must be somehow connected with a present activity, and we are engaged in none at the moment except Mr. Herold’s job. Was Mr. Herold checking on us? Absurd. The obvious probability is that my advertisement was responsible. Many people — newspapers, the police, you yourself — had assumed that it was directed at Peter Hays, and others might well have done so. One, let us say, named X. X wants to know why I declare Peter Hays to be innocent, but does not come, or phone, to ask me; and he wants to know what I am doing about it. What other devices he may have resorted to, I don’t know; but one of them was to come, or send someone, to stand post near my house.”

Wolfe turned a hand over. “How account for so intense and furtive a curiosity? If the murder for which Peter Hays was on trial was what it appeared to be — a simple and commonplace act of passion — who could be so inquisitive and also so stealthy? Then it wasn’t so simple. You said yesterday that you were convinced that your client was the victim of a diabolical frame-up. If you’re correct, no wonder a man was sent to watch my house when I announced, on the last day of his trial, that he was known to be innocent — as was assumed. And it is with reason that I suspect that there is someone, somewhere, who felt himself threatened by my announcement. That doesn’t convince me that your client is innocent, but it poses a question that needs an answer.”

Freyer turned to me. “Who followed you?”

I told him I didn’t know, and told him why, and described the tail.

He said the description suggested no one to him and went back to Wolfe. “Then you reject A and B for both of us. Is there a C ?”

“I think there is,” Wolfe declared. “You want to appeal. Can you take preliminary steps for an appeal without committing yourself to any substantial outlay for thirty days?”

“Yes. Easily.”

“Very well. You want to appeal and I want to collect my fee. I warned my client that the search might take months. I shall tell him merely that I am working on his problem, as I shall be. You will give me all the information you have, all of it, and I’ll investigate. In thirty days — much less, I hope — I’ll know where we stand. If it is hopeless there will be nothing for it but A or B , and that decision can wait. If it is promising we’ll proceed. If and when we get evidence that will clear your client, my client will be informed and he will foot the bill. Your client may not like it but he’ll have to lump it; and anyway, I doubt if he would really rather die in the electric chair than face his father again, especially since he will be under no burden of guilt, either of theft or of murder. I make this proposal not as a paragon, but only as a procedure less repugnant than either A or B . Well, sir?”

The lawyer was squinting at him. “You say you’ll investigate. Who will pay for that?”

“I will. That’s the rub. I’ll hope to get it back.”

“But if you don’t?”

“Then I don’t.”

“There should be a written agreement.”

“There won’t be. I take the risk of failure; you’ll have to take the risk of my depravity.” Wolfe’s voice suddenly became a bellow. “Confound it, it is your client who has been convicted of murder, not mine!”

Freyer was startled, as well he might be. Wolfe can bellow. “I meant no offense,” he said mildly. “I had no thought of depravity. As you say, the risk is yours. I accept your proposal. Now what?”

Wolfe glanced up at the wall clock and settled back in his chair. A full hour till lunchtime. “Now,” he said, “I want all the facts. I’ve read the newspaper accounts, but I want them from you.”

Peter Hays had been convicted of killing the husband of the woman he loved, on the evening of January 3, by shooting him in the side of the head, above the left ear, with a Marley .38. I might as well account for things as I go along, but I can’t account for the Marley because it had been taken by a burglar from a house in Poughkeepsie in 1947 and hadn’t been seen in public since. The prosecution hadn’t explained how Peter Hays had got hold of it, so you can’t expect me to.

The victim, Michael M. Molloy, forty-three, a real-estate broker, had lived with his wife, no children, in a four-room apartment on the top floor, the fifth, of a remodeled tenement on East 52nd Street. There was no other apartment on the floor. At 9:18 P.M. on January 3 a man had phoned police headquarters and said he had just heard a shot fired on one of the upper floors of the house next door. He gave the address of the house next door, 171 East 52nd Street, but hung up without giving his name, and he had never been located, though of course the adjoining houses had been canvassed. At 9:23 a cop from a prowl car had entered the building. When he got to the top floor, after trying two floors below and drawing blanks, he found the door standing open and entered. Two men were inside, one alive and one dead. The dead one, Molloy, was on the living-room floor. The live one, Peter Hays, with his hat and topcoat on, had apparently been about to leave, and when the cop had stopped him he had tried to tear away and had to be subdued. When he was under control the cop had frisked him and found the Marley .38 in his topcoat pocket.

All that had been in the papers. Also:

Peter Hays was a copywriter. He had been with the same advertising agency, one of the big ones, for eight years, and that was as far back as he went. His record and reputation were clean, with no high or low spots. Unmarried, he had lived for the past three years in an RBK — room, bath, and kitchenette — on West 63rd Street. He played tennis, went to shows and movies, got along all right with people, had a canary in his room, owned five suits of clothes, four pairs of shoes, and three hats, and had no car. A key to the street door of 171 East 52nd Street had been found on his key ring. The remodeled building had a do-it-yourself elevator, and there was no doorman.

The District Attorney’s office, the personnel of Homicide West, all the newspapers, and millions of citizens, were good and sore at Peter Hays because he wasn’t playing the game. The DA and cops couldn’t check his version of what had happened, and the papers couldn’t have it analyzed by experts, and the citizens couldn’t get into arguments about it, because he supplied no version. From the time he had been arrested until the verdict came, he had refused to supply anything at all. He had finally, urged by his lawyer, answered one question put by the DA in a private interview: had he shot Molloy? No. But why and when had he gone to the apartment? What were his relations with Molloy and with his wife? Why was a key to that building on his key ring? Why did he have the Marley .38 in his pocket? No reply. Nor to a thousand other questions.

Other people had been more chatty, some of them on the witness stand. The Molloy’s daily maid had seen Mrs. Molloy and the defendant in close embrace on three different occasions during the past six months, but she had not told Mr. Molloy because she liked Mrs. Molloy and it was none of her business. Even so, Mr. Molloy must have been told something by somebody, or seen or heard something, because the maid had heard him telling her off and had seen him twisting her arm until she collapsed. A private detective, hired by Molloy late in November, had seen Mrs. Molloy and Peter Hays meet at a restaurant for lunch four times, but nothing juicer. There were others, but those were the outstanding items.