six would do if you wish to come.'
'Six would be all right, but it would be better to make it
here. There will be four of us-perhaps five. Six o'clock here?'
'No, sir. If at all, here.'
'Hold the wire a minute.'
It was more like three minutes. Then he was on again. 'Sorry to keep you waiting. All right, we'll be there at six or a little after.'
Wolfe cradled his phone, and I did likewise.
'Well,' I remarked, 'at least we touched a sore spot somewhere. That's the first cheep we've got out of anybody in ten days.'
Wolfe picked up bis book.
11
THAT was the biggest array of legal talent ever gathered in the office. Four counselors-at-law in good standing and one disbarred.
James A. Corrigan (secretary, Charlotte Adams) was about titie same age as his secretary, or maybe a little younger. He had the jaw of a prizefighter and the frame of a retired jockey and the hungriest pair of eyes I ever saw-not hungry the way a dog looks at a bone you're holding up but the way a cat looks at a bird in a cage.
Emmett Phelps (secretary, Sue Dondero) was a surprise to me. Sue had told me that he was the firm's encyclopedia, the guy who knew all the precedents and references and could turn to them with his eyes shut, but he didn't look it. Something over fifty, and a couple of inches over six feet, broad-shouldered and long- armed, on him a general's or admiral's uniform would have looked fine.
Louis Kustin (secretary, Eleanor Gruber) was the youngster of the bunch, about my age. Instead of hungry eyes he had sleepy ones, very dark, but that must have been a cover because Sue had told me that he was their trial man, and hot, having taken over the tougher courtroom assignments when O'Malley had been disbarred. He looked smaller than he was on account of the way he slumped.
Frederick Briggs, Helen Troy's Uncle Fred, had white hair
and a long bony face. If he had a secretary I hadn't met her. From the way he blinked like a half-wit at everyone who spoke, it seemed a wonder he had been made a partner even in his seventh decade-or it could have been his eighth-but it takes all kinds to make a law firm. I wouldn't have hired him to change blotters.
Conroy O'Malley, who had been the senior partner and the courtroom wizard until he got bounced off the bar for bribing a juror, looked as bitter as you would expect, with a sidewise twist to his mouth that seemed to be permanent. With his mouth straightened and the sag out of his cheeks and a flash in his eye, it wouldn't have been hard to imagine him dominating a courtroom, but as he was then he couldn't have dominated a phone booth with him alone in it.
I had allotted the red leather chair to Corrigan, the senior partner, with the others in an irregular arc facing Wolfe's desk. Usually, when there are visitors, I don't get out my notebook and pen until Wolfe says to, but there was no law against my trying an experiment, so I had them ready and when Corrigan opened up I began scribbling. The reaction was instantaneous and unanimous. They all yapped at once, absolutely horrified and outraged. I looked astonished.
Wolfe, who knows me fairly well, thought he was going to slip me a caustic remark, but he had to chuckle. The idea of getting the goats of four lawyers and one ex-lawyer at one crack appealed to him too.
'I don't think,' he told me mildly, 'we'll need a record of this.'
I put the notebook on my desk in easy reach. They didn't like it there so handy. Throughout the conference they took turns darting glances at me to make sure I wasn't sneaking in some symbols.
'This is a confidential private conversation,' Corrigan stated.
'Yes, sir,' Wolfe conceded. 'But not privileged. I am not your client.'
'Quite right.' Corrigan smiled, but his eyes stayed hungry. 'We wouldn't mind if you were. We are not a hijacking firm, Mr. Wolfe, but I don't need to say that if you ever need our services it would be a pleasure and an honor.'
Wolfe inclined his head an eighth of an inch. I raised a brow the same distance. So they had brought butter along.
'I'll come straight to the point,' Corrigan declared. 'Last evening you got more than half of our office staff down here and tried to seduce them.'
'Seduction in its statutory sense, Mr. Corrigan?'
'No, no, of course not. Orchids, liquors, exotic foods- not to tempt their chastity but their discretion. Administered by your Mr. Goodwin.'
'I take the responsibility for Mr. Goodwin's actions on my premises as my agent. Are you charging me with a malum? In se or prohibitum?'
'Not at all. Neither. Perhaps I started badly. I'll describe the situation as we see it, and you correct me if I'm wrong. A man named Wellman has engaged you to investigate the death of his daughter. You have decided that there is a connection between her death and two others, those of Leonard Dykes and Rachel Abrams. In-'
'Not decided. Assumed as a working hypothesis.'
