Might as Well Be Dead

“Not at all. The best thing would be for you to see him and talk with him and decide it yourself, but since you refuse to run errands outside the house, and since he is in no condition to drop in for a chat, I suppose it’s up to me-I mean the errand. Getting me in to him is your part.”

He was frowning. “You have your gifts, Archie. I have always admired your resourcefulness when faced by barriers.”

“Yeah, so have I. But I have my limitations, and this is it. I was considering it in the taxi on the way home. Cramer or Stebbins or Mandelbaum, or anyone else on the public payroll, would have to know what for, and they would tell Murphy and he would take over, and if he is Paul Herold, who would have found him? Murphy. It calls for better gifts than mine. Yours.”

He grunted. He rang for beer. “Full report, please. All you saw and heard in the courtroom.”

I obliged. That didn’t take long. When I finished, with my emergency exit as the clerk was polling the jury, he asked for the Times’s report of the trial, and I went to the cupboard and got it-all issues from March 27 to date. He started at the beginning, and since I thought I might as well bone up on it myself, I started at the end and went backward. He had reached April 2, and I had worked back to April 4, and there would soon have been a collision but for an interruption. The doorbell rang. I went to the hall, and seeing, through the one-way glass panel of the front door, a sloppy charcoal topcoat and a black homburg that I had already seen twice that day, I recrossed the sill of the office and told Wolfe, “He kept his word. Albert Freyer.”

His brows went up. “Let him in,” he growled.

Chapter 3

THE COUNSELOR-AT-LAW hadn’t had a shave, but it must be admitted that the circumstances called for allowances. I suppose he thought he was flattening somebody when, convoyed to the office and introduced, he didn’t extend a hand, but if so he was wrong. Wolfe is not a hand-shaker.

When Freyer had got lowered into the red leather chair Wolfe swiveled to face him and said affably, “Mr. Goodwin has told me about you, and about the adverse verdict on your client. Regrettable.”

“Did he tell you you would hear from me?”

“Yes, he mentioned that.”

“All right, here I am.” Freyer wasn’t appreciating the big, comfortable chair; he was using only the front half of it, his palms on his knees. “Goodwin told me your ad in today’s papers had no connection with my client, Peter Hays. He said you had never heard of him. I didn’t believe him. And less than an hour later he appears in the courtroom where my client was on trial. That certainly calls for an explanation, and I want it. I am convinced that my client is innocent. I am convinced that he is the victim of a diabolical frame-up. I don’t say that your ad was a part of the plot, I admit I don’t see how it could have been since it appeared on the day the case went to the jury, but I intend to-”

“Mr. Freyer.” Wolfe was showing him a palm. “If you please. I can simplify this for you.”

“You can’t simplify it until you explain it to my satisfaction.”

“I know that. That’s why I am prepared to do something I have rarely done, and should never do except under compulsion. It is now compelled by extraordinary circumstances. I’m going to tell you what a client of mine has told me. Of course you’re a member of the New York bar?”

“Certainly.”

“And you are attorney-of-record for Peter Hays?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m going to tell you something in confidence.”

Freyer’s eyes narrowed. “I will not be bound in confidence in any matter affecting my client’s interests.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. The only bond will be your respect for another man’s privacy. The interests of your client and my client may or may not intersect. If they do we’ll consider the matter; if they don’t, I shall rely on your discretion. This is the genesis of that advertisement.”

He told him. He didn’t report our long session with James R. Herold verbatim, but neither did he skimp it. When he was through, Freyer had a clear and complete picture of where we stood up to four o’clock that afternoon, when Freyer had rung our doorbell. The lawyer was a good listener and had interrupted only a couple of times, once to get a point straight and once to ask to see the picture of Paul Herold.

“Before I go on,” Wolfe said, “I invite verification. Of course Mr. Goodwin’s corroboration would have no validity for you, but you may inspect his transcription of the notes he made, five typewritten pages. Or you can phone Lieutenant Murphy, provided you don’t tell him who you are. On that, of course, I am at your mercy. At this juncture I don’t want him to start investigating a possible connection between your P.H. and my P.H.”

“Verification can wait,” Freyer conceded. “You would be a fool to invent such a tale, and I’m quite aware that you’re not a fool.” He had backed up in the chair and got more comfortable. “Finish it up.”

“There’s not much more. When you told Mr. Goodwin that your client’s background was unknown to you and that he had no family, he decided he had better have a look at Peter Hays, and he went to the courtroom for that purpose. His first glimpse of him, when he was brought into court, left him uncertain; but when, upon hearing the verdict, your client rose and turned to face the crowd, his face had a quite different expression. It had, or Mr. Goodwin thought it had, an almost conclusive resemblance to the picture of the youthful Paul Herold. When you asked to see the picture, I asked you to wait. Now I ask you to look at it. Archie?”

I got one from the drawer and went and handed it to Freyer. He studied it a while, shut his eyes, opened them again,and studied it some more. “It could be,” he conceded. “It could easily be.” He looked at it some