Might as Well Be Dead

However, though you have no voice you certainly have an interest, and it deserves to be weighed. We’ll look at it first. Those two alternatives, telling my client that his son is found, or telling him that I withdraw from my job, call them A and B. If A, my surmise is that you would be through. He would come to see his son, and survey the situation, and decide whether to finance an appeal. If he decided no, that would end it. If he decided yes, he would probably also decide that you had mishandled the case and he would hire another lawyer. I base that on the impression I got of him. Archie?”

“Right.” I was emphatic.

Wolfe returned to Freyer. “And if B, you’d be left where you are now. How much would an appeal cost?”

“That depends. A lot of investigation would be required. As a minimum, twenty thousand dollars. To fight it through to the end, using every expedient, a lot more.”

“Your client can’t furnish it?”

“No.”

“Can you?”

“No.”

“Then B is no better for you than A. Now what about me? A should be quite simple and satisfactory. I’ve done a job and I collect my fee. But not only must I pay my bills, I must also sustain my self-esteem. That man, your client, has been wounded in his very bowels, and to add insult to his injury as a mere mercenary would be a wanton act. I can’t afford it. Even if I must gainsay Rochefoucauld, who wrote that we should only affect compassion, and carefully avoid having any.”

He picked up his glass, emptied it, and put it down. “Won’t you have some beer? Or something else?”

“No, thank you. I never drink before cocktail time.”

“Coffee? Milk? Water?”

“No, thanks.”

“Very well. As for B, I can’t afford that either. I’ve done what I was hired to do, and I intend to be paid. And I have another reason for rejecting B. It would preclude my taking any further interest in this affair, and I don’t like that. You said yesterday that you are convinced that your client is innocent. I can’t say that I am likewise convinced, but I strongly suspect that you’re right. With reason.”

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?”