He nodded. 'It would be simple. I am
T
sure it will be.'
'What are the three facts?'
'First, to find Mr. Hibbard. His meat and bone; we can do without the vital spark if it has found another errand.
That, however, is more for the satisfaction of our clients and the fulfillment of the terms of our memorandum than for the effect on Mr. Chapin. That sort of fact will not impress him. Second, to find the I typewriter on which he wrote the menacing verses. That I must have, for him. Third – the possibility – to learn if he has ever kissed his wife. That may not be needed. Given the first two, I probably should not wait for it.'
'And with that you can make him confess?'
'I should think so. I see no other way out for him.';
'That's all you need?'
'It seems ample.'
I looked at him. Sometimes I thought I could tell how much he was being fanciful; sometimes I knew I couldn't. I»* grunted. 'Then I might as well phone Fred and Bill and Orrie and the others to come up and check out.'
'By no means. Mr. Chapin himself might lead us to the typewriter or the Hibbard meat and bone.'
'And I've been useful too. According to you. Why did you buy the gasoline I burned up yesterday and today if you decided Sunday night you couldn't get the goods on him? It seems as if I'm like a piece of antique furniture or a pedigreed I dog, I'm in the luxury class. You keep me on for beauty. Do you know what I think? I think that all this is just your delicate way of telling me that on the Dreyer thing you've decided I'm a washout and you think I might try something else. Okay. What?' v Wolfe's cheeks unfolded a little.
'Veritably, Archie, you are overwhelming.
The turbulence of a Carpathian torrent. It would be gratifying if you should discover Mr. Hibbard.'
'I thought so. Forget Dreyer?'
'Let him rest in peace. At least for tomorrow.'
'A thousand dicks and fifteen thousand , cops have been looking for Hibbard for eight days. Where shall I bring him when I find him?'
'If alive, here. If dead, he will care as little as I. But his niece will care, I presume. To her.'
'Do you tell me where to look?'
'Our little globe.'
'Okay.'
I went upstairs. I was riled. We had never had a case, and I suppose never will have, without Wolfe getting cryptic about it sooner or later; I was used to it and expected it, but it always riled me. In the Fairmont- Avery thing he had deliberately waited for twenty-four hours to close in on Pete Avery after he had him completely sewed up, just for the pleasure of watching me and Dick Morley of the D. A.'s office play fox-and-goose with that old fool that couldn't find his ear trumpet. I suppose his awful conceit was one of the wheels that worked the machinery that got his results, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable when I was doing the worrying for both of us.
That Wednesday night I nearly took the enamel off of my teeth with the brush, stabbing with it at Wolfe's conceit.
The next morning, Thursday, I had had my breakfast and was in the office by eight o'clock, taking another good look at the photograph of her uncle which Evelyn Hibbard had given to us. Saul Panzer had phoned and I had told him to meet me in the McAlpin lobby at eight-thirty. After I had soaked in all I could of the photograph I made a couple of phone calls, one to Evelyn Hibbard and one to Inspector Cramer. Cramer was friendly.
He said that on Hibbard he had spread the net pretty wide. If a body of a man was washed up on the sand at Montauk Point, or found in a coal mine at Scranton, or smelled in a trunk in a Village rooming-house, or pulled out of a turnip pit in south Jersey, he would know about it in ten minutes, and would be asking for specifications. That satisfied me that there was no sense in my wasting time or shoe leather looking for a dead Hibbard; I'd better concentrate on the Possibility of a live one.
I went to the McAlpin and talked it over with Saul Panzer. He, with his wrinkled little mug not causing any stranger to suspect how cute he was, and he could be pretty damn cute – he sat on | the edge of a tapestry chair, smoking a big slick light-brown cigar that smelled like something they scatter on lawns in the early spring, and told me about it to date.
It was obvious from the instructions Saul had been following, either that Wolfe had reached the same conclusion that I had, that if Hibbard had been croaked the police routine was the best and quickest way of finding him, or that Wolfe thought Hibbard was still alive. Saul had been digging up every connection Hibbard had had in and around the city for the past five years, every degree of intimacy, man, woman, and child, and calling on them. • Since Hibbard had been an instructor at a I large university, and also a sociable man, Saul hadn't made much more than a start.
I supposed that Wolfe's idea was that there was a possibility that Chapin's third warning was a fake, that Hibbard had just got too scared to breathe and had run off ^ to hide, and that in that case he was practically certain to get in touch with • someone he knew.
