Might as Well Be Dead

believe the ad wasn’t aimed at him. By the time I got rid of him and returned to the dining room Wolfe had cleaned up the kidney pie and I got no second helping.

The phone calls were more complicated, since I couldn’t see the callers. I eliminated three of them through appropriate and prolonged conversation, but the other three had to have a look, so I made appointments to see them; and since I had to stick around I phoned Saul Panzer, who came and got one of the pictures father had left and went to keep the appointments. It was an insult to Saul to give him such a kindergarten assignment, considering that he is the best operative alive and rates sixty bucks a day, but the client had asked for him and it was the client’s dough.

The complication of a P.H.’s being on trial for murder was as big a nuisance as I expected, and then some. All the papers phoned, including the Times, and two of them sent journalists to the door, where I chatted with them on the threshold. Around noon there was a phone call from Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide. He wanted to speak to Wolfe, and I said Mr. Wolfe was engaged, which he was. He was working on a crossword puzzle by Ximenes in the London Observer. I asked Purley if I could help him.

“You never have yet,” he rumbled. “But neither has Wolfe. But when he runs a display ad telling a man on trial for murder that he knows he’s innocent and he wants to expose the true culprit, we want to know what he’s trying to pull and we’re going to. If he won’t tell me on the phone I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be glad to save you the trip,” I assured him. “Tell you what. You wouldn’t believe me anyway, so call Lieutenant Murphy at the Missing Persons Bureau. He’ll tell you all about it.”

“What kind of a gag is this?”

“No gag. I wouldn’t dare to trifle with an officer of the law. Call Murphy. If he doesn’t satisfy you come and have lunch with us. Peruvian melon, kidney pie, endive with Martinique dressing-”

It clicked and he was gone. I turned and told Wolfe it would be nice if we could always get Stebbins off our neck as easy as that. He frowned a while at the London Observer and then raised his head.

“Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That trial, that Peter Hays, started about two weeks ago.”

“Right.”

“The Times had his picture. Get it.”

I grinned at him. “Wouldn’t that be something? It popped into my head too, the possibility, when Lon phoned, but I remembered the pictures of him-the Gazette and Daily News, all of them, and I crossed it off. But it won’t hurt to look.”

One of my sixteen thousand duties is keeping a five-week file of the Times in a cupboard below the bookshelves. I went and slid the door open and squatted, and before long I had it, on the seventeenth page of the issue of March 27. I gave it a look and went and handed it to Wolfe, and from a drawer of my desk got the picture of Paul Herold in mortarboard and gown, and handed him that too. He held them side by side and scowled at them, and I circled around to his elbow to help. The newspaper shot wasn’t any too good, but even so, if they were the same P.H. he had changed a lot in eleven years. His round cheeks had caved in, his nose had shrunk, his lips were thinner, and his chin had bulged.

“No,” Wolfe said. “Well?”

“Unanimous,” I agreed. “That would have been a hell of a spot to find him. Is it worth going to the courtroom for a look?”

“I doubt it. Anyway, not today. You’re needed here.”

But that only postponed the agony for a few hours. That afternoon, after various journalists had been dealt with, and some of the P.H.’s, and Saul had been sent to keep the appointments, we had a visitor. Just three minutes after Wolfe had left the office for his daily four-to-six conference with the orchids, the doorbell rang and I answered it. On the stoop was a middle-aged guy who would need a shave by sundown, in a sloppy charcoal topcoat and a classy new black homburg. He could have been a P.H., but not a journalist. He said he would like a word with Mr. Nero Wolfe. I said Mr. Wolfe was engaged, told him my name and station, and asked if I could be of any service. He said he didn’t know.

He looked at his wristwatch. “I haven’t much time,” he said, looking harassed. “My name is Albert Freyer, counselor-at-law.” He took a leather case from his pocket, got a card from it, and handed it to me. “I am attorney for Peter Hays, who is on trial for first-degree murder. I’m keeping my cab waiting because the jury is out and I must be at hand. Do you know anything about the advertisement Nero Wolfe put in today’s papers, ‘To. P.H.’?”

“Yes, I know all about it.”

“I didn’t see it until an hour ago. I didn’t want to phone about it. I want to ask Nero Wolfe a question. It is being assumed that the advertisement was addressed to my client, Peter Hays. I want to ask him straight, was it?”

“I can answer that. It wasn’t. Mr. Wolfe had never heard of Peter Hays, except in the newspaper accounts of his trial.”

“You will vouch for that?”

“I do vouch for it.”

“Well.” He looked gotten. “I was hoping-No matter. Who is the P.H. the advertisement was addressed to?”

“A man whose initials are known to us but his name is not.”