Rachel Abrams got out of the window?'
'Homicide.'
'By flipping a coin?'
'No. Finger marks on her throat. Preliminary, the M.E. says she was choked. He thinks not enough to kill her, but we won't know until they're through at the laboratory.'
'And I missed him by three minutes.'
Purley cocked his head. 'Did you?'
I uttered a colorful word. 'One Rowcliff on the squad is enough,' I told him and beat it. Out in the anteroom I went to a phone booth, dialed, got Wolfe, and reported, 'Excuse me for interrupting your dinner, but I need instructions. I'm at Homicide on Twentieth Street, without cuffs, after an hour with Rowcliff and a word with Purley. From marks on her throat the dope is that she was choked and tossed out the window. I told you so. I divided the three names Mrs. Abrams gave me among the help, and told them to get more and carry on. There should be another call on the family either tonight or tomorrow, but not by me. Mrs. Abrams might open up for Saul, but not for me, after today. So I need instructions.'
'Have you had dinner?'
'No.'
'Come home.'
I went to Tenth Avenue and flagged a taxi. It was still drizzling.
6
WOLFE does not like conferences with clients. Many's the time he has told me not to let a client in. So when, that evening, following instructions, I phoned Wellman at his hotel and asked him to call at the office the next morning at eleven, I knew it looked as bad to Wolfe as it did to me.
Eight days had passed since we had seen our client, though we had had plenty of phone calls from him, some local and some from Peoria. Apparently the eight days hadn't done him any good. Either he was wearing the same gray suit or he had two of them, but at least the tie and shirt were different. His face was pasty. As I hung his coat on the rack I remarked that he had lost some weight. When he didn't reply I thought he hadn't heard me, but after we had entered the office and he and Wolfe had exchanged greetings and he was in the red leather chair, he apologized.
'Excuse me, what did you say about my weight?'
'I said you had lost some.'
'I guess so. I haven't been eating much and I don't seem to sleep. I go back home and go to the office or the warehouse, but I'm no darned good, and I take a train back here, and I'm no good here either.' He went to Wolfe. 'He told me on the phone you didn't have any real news but you wanted to see me.'
Wolfe nodded. 'I didn't want to, I had to. I must put a question to you. In eight days I have spent- how much, Archie?'
'Around eighteen hundred bucks.'
'Nearly two thousand dollars of your money. You said you were going through with this even if it pauperized you. A man should not be held to a position taken under stress. I like my clients to pay my bills without immoderate pangs. How do you feel now?'
Wellman looked uncomfortable. He swallowed. 'I just said I don't eat much.'
'I heard you. A man should eat.' Wolfe gestured. 'Perhaps I should first describe the situation. As you know, I regard it as
established that your daughter was murdered by the man who, calling himself Baird Archer, phoned for an appointment with her. Also that he killed her because she had read the manuscript she told about in her letter to you. The police agree.'
'I know they do.' Wellman was concentrating. 'That's something. You did that.'
'I did more. Most of your money has been spent in an effort to find someone who could tell us something about either the manuscript or Baird Archer, or both. It missed success by a – narrow margin. Yesterday afternoon a young woman named r Rachel Abrams was murdered by being pushed from a window of her office. Mr. Goodwin entered her office three minutes later. This next detail is being withheld by the police and is not for publication. In a notebook in her desk Mr. Goodwin found entries showing that last September a Baird Archer paid her ninety-eight dollars and forty cents for typing a manuscript. Of course that clinches it that your daughter was killed because of her knowledge of the manuscript, but I was already acting on that assumption, so it doesn't help any. We are-'
'It proves that Baird Archer did it!' Wellman was excited. 'It proves that he's still in New York! Surely the police can find him!' He came up out of the chair. 'I'm going-'
'Please, Mr. Wellman.' Wolfe patted the air with a palm. 'It proves that the murderer was in that building yesterday afternoon, and that's all. Baird Archer is still nothing but a name, a will-o'-the-wisp. Having missed Rachel Abrams by the merest tick, we still have no one alive who has ever seen or heard him. As for finding his trail from yesterday, that's for the police and they do it well; we may be sure that the building employees and tenants and passers-by are being efficiently badgered. Sit down, sir.'
'I'm going up there. To that building.'
'When I have finished. Sit down, please?'
Wellman lowered himself, and nearly kept going to the floor when his fanny barely caught the edge of the leather. He recovered and slid back a few inches.
'I must make it plain,' Wolfe said, 'that the chance of success is now minute. I have three men interviewing Miss Abrams' family and friends, to learn if she spoke to any of them about Baird Archer or his
