Rex Stout: Before Midnight

“Yes, but then we will have the thief, and we’ll have arranged to decide the contest in a way agreed to by everybody else concerned. A totally different situation. LBA will be admired and congratulated for dealing with a crisis promptly, boldly, and brilliantly.”

“Not by the police.”

“No. But by the advertising and business world, the press, and the American people.”

“I suppose so.” Wolfe’s head turned. “I would like to make sure of the decision to dodge with the police. You concur in it, Mr. Buff?”

Buff’s big red face had been getting redder, and his brow was moist. “I do,” he said. “Because I have to.”

“Mr. O’Garro?”

“Yes. We had that out before we came to you.”

“Mr. Assa?”

“Yes. You’re wasting time!”

“No. If it were a simple matter of catching a murderer — but it isn’t. This is full of complexities, and I must know things.” Wolfe turned a palm up. “For example. If I were sure that the one who took the wallet actually got the paper with the answers, that would help. But what if he didn’t? What if the paper Dahlmann displayed was something else, and it was in fact a hoax, and the thief got nothing for his pains? That would make my job much more difficult and would require a completely different procedure.”

“Don’t worry,” O’Garro assured him. “It was the answers all right. I was there and saw him. Vern?”

“I would say twenty to one,” Assa declared. “Louis would get a kick out of showing them the paper with the answers, but just faking it, no. What do you think, Oliver?”

“You know quite well what I think.” Buff was grim. “It was strictly in character. At the age of thirty-two Louis Dahlmann was a great creative genius, and in another ten years he would have been a dominant figure in American advertising, another Lasker. That’s what we all thought, didn’t we? But he had that lunatic streak in him. Of course that paper was the answers; there’s not the slightest doubt. After you phoned me last night, Pat, I would have gone down to his place myself, but what was the use? Even if he had destroyed the paper to humor me, after I left he could have sat down and written another one just like it, and he probably would have. But now I wish I had. Right now the future of LBA is in more danger than at any time in the thirty-eight years I’ve been with it. On account of him! If he were here now, alive, I tell you it would be hard for me to—” He tightened his lips and let the sentence hang.

Wolfe went to the lawyer. “Are you also convinced, Mr. Hansen, that it was no hoax?”

“I am.”

“Then I’ll proceed on that assumption until it is disproved. I must first see the five contestants, preferably not together, even though time is pressing.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “They may already be engaged with the police, but we’ll try. One of you will phone and arrange for one of them to be here at twelve-thirty, and arrange also for the others — one at three, one at six, one at—”

“Why six?” Assa demanded. “Good God, you won’t need three hours!”

“I hope not. One should be plenty. But from four to six I’ll be occupied with other matters, and—”

“There are no other matters! That’s preposterous!”

Wolfe eyed him. “Your firm hasn’t hired me by the hour, Mr. Assa. My schedule isn’t subject to direction. I work as I work. One of them at three o’clock, one at six, one at seven, and one at eight. You can tell them that their detention in the city has created certain problems in connection with the contest and that you would like them to confer with me as your firm’s representative. You will of course not mention the paper Mr. Dahlmann displayed last evening. I’ll have dinner at nine o’clock, and any time after ten-thirty you may call on me for a report.”

“I’d like to be present at the interviews,” Hansen said. “But I can’t at twelve-thirty.”

“You can’t at all, sir. They’re going to be ticklish enough as it is, and I may even banish Mr. Goodwin. He will have an errand, by the way. Where is the safe deposit vault in which the answers were placed?”

“The Forty-seventh Street office of the Continental Trust Company.”

“One of you will please meet Mr. Goodwin there at two-thirty, take him to the vault, open the envelopes containing the last five verses and the last five answers, and let him copy them and bring the copies to me. Return the originals to the vault.”

“Impossible,” O’Garro said positively. “Those envelopes must not be opened.”

“Nonsense.” Wolfe was beginning to get touchy, as usual when he was compelled to start things moving in his skull. “Why not? Those verses and answers are done for. No matter what happens, they can’t possibly be the basis for awarding the prizes. They might, if we could get apodictic proof that there was no paper in Dahlmann’s wallet containing the answers, but we can’t. Can any of you describe any circumstances in which those verses and answers can now be used? Try it.”

They exchanged glances. Wolfe waited.

“You’re right,” Buff admitted for the firm.

“Then it can do no harm for me to have them, provided Mr. Goodwin and I keep them to ourselves, and it may do some good. I have an idea for using them which may be worth developing. Will one of you meet him at two-thirty?”

“Yes,” Buff agreed. “Probably two of us. Those envelopes have been untouchable. Mr. Heery will have to know about it. He may want to be present.”

“As you please. By the way, since his firm is as deeply concerned as yours, what about him? Does he know you’re hiring me? Does he approve your strategy?”

“Completely.”

“Then that will do for now. Please use the phone on Mr. Goodwin’s desk. Do you want him to get a number for you?”

They didn’t, which was the best proof yet of how desperate they were. Since those birds were up around the top, the top numbers in one of the three biggest agencies in the country, with corner rooms at least twenty by twenty and incomes in six figures, it had of course been years since any of them had personally dialed a number in an office. To expect them to would be against all reason. But when I vacated my chair O’Garro came and took it, asked me for the number of the Churchill, and went ahead and dialed it as if it were a natural and normal procedure. I thought, There you are, a man with eyes as clever as that can do anything.

It took a while. After the rest of us had sat and listened for some minutes he finally hung up and told us, “Two of them were out. Rollins was just leaving for an appointment at Homicide West. Miss Frazee will be here at twelve-thirty.”

Hansen, on his feet, said, “We must go, we’ll be half an hour late. We’ll get them later.”

But Wolfe kept them for one more thing, information about the five contestants. They only had enough to fill one page of my notebook, which wasn’t much to go on. I went to the hall with them to see that nobody took my topcoat by mistake, let them out, and returned to the office. Wolfe was sitting with his eyes closed and his palms flattened on the desk. I went to my desk and wheeled the machine to me and got out paper, to type the meager dope on the suspects. At the sound of footsteps I turned to see Fritz enter with beer on a tray.

“No,” I said firmly. “Take it back, Fritz.”

“A woman is coming!” Wolfe bellowed.

“That’s only an excuse. The real trouble is that you hate a job with a deadline, especially when you stand about one chance in four thousand. I admit that before midnight April twentieth is one hell of an order, but on January nineteenth at three-twenty-seven p.m. you told me that if you ever rang for beer before lunch I should cancel it and disregard your protests, if any. I don’t blame you for losing control, since we’re almost certainly going to get our noses bumped, but no beer until after lunch. However, we don’t want to embarrass Mr. Brenner.”