was unfinished when I left, and they give me errands to do. So it is to my interest for the firm to prosper. I offer that as
my reason for coming here with them. If you don't like it either, I have still another alternative. Would you like to hear it?'
'If it isn't too fanciful.'
'It's not fanciful at all. I am embittered against my former associates because they let me down. I think it quite possible that one of them killed Dykes and the two women, though I have no idea why, and that you're going to hang on until you get it, and I want to see it happen. Do you like that better?'
'It has attractions.'
'Or here's another. I myself killed Dykes and the women, though again I have no idea why, and I think you're more dangerous than the police and want to keep an eye on you.' O'Malley picked up his glass. 'That's four, that should be enough.'
'It'll do for the time being,' Wolfe concurred. 'Of course they're mutually exclusive. In one your associates helped you fight and in another they let you down. Which was it actually?'
'They fought like tigers to save me.'
'Goddam it, Con,' Phelps exploded, 'we did! We let everything else go! We did our damnedest!'
O'Malley was unmoved. 'Then you'd better take that one,' he told Wolfe. 'Number Two. It has corroboration, which is always a help.'
'I prefer it anyway.' Wolfe glanced up at the clock on the wall. 'I want all you can tell me about Dykes, gentlemen, but it's my dinnertime. As I said, I'm sorry we're not prepared for guests.'
They left their chairs. Corrigan asked, 'What time do you want us back?'
Wolfe made a face. He hated the prospect of work during digestion. 'Nine o'clock?' he suggested. 'Will that suit?'
They said it would.
12
WHEN, an hour after midnight, Wolfe finally called it a day and let them go, it looked as if I would be seeing a lot of the girls. Not that they had balked at answering questions. We had at least four thousand facts, an average of a
thousand an hour, but if anyone had offered me a dime for the lot it would have been a deal. We were full of information to the gills, but not a glimmer of Baird Archer or fiction writing or anything pertaining thereto. Wolfe had even sunk so low as to ask where and how they had spent the evening of February second and the afternoon of February twenty-sixth, though the cops had of course covered that and double-checked it.
Especially we knew enough about Leonard Dykes to write his biography, either straight or in novel form. Having started in as office boy, by industry, application, loyalty, and a satisfactory amount of intelligence, he had worked up to office manager and confidential clerk. He was not married. He had smoked a pipe, and had once got pickled on two glasses of punch at an office party, proving that he was not a drinker. He had had no known interest in anything outside his work except baseball in summer and professional hockey games in winter. And so forth and so on. None of the five had any notion about who had killed him or why.
They kept getting into squabbles about anything and everything. For instance, when Wolfe was asking about Dykes's reaction to the disbarment of O'Malley, and was told by Corrigan that Dykes had written him a letter of resignation, Wolfe wanted to know when. Sometime in the summer, Corrigan said, he didn't remember exactly, probably in July. Wolfe asked what the letter had said.
* 'I forget how he put it,' Corrigan replied, 'but he was just being scrupulous. He said he had heard that there was talk among the staff that he was responsible for O'Malley's trouble, that it was baseless, but that we might feel it would be harmful to the firm for him to continue. He also said that it was under O'Malley as senior that he had been made office manager, and that the new regime might want to make a change, and that therefore he was offering his resignation.'
Wolfe grunted. 'Was it accepted?'
'Certainly not. I called him in and told him that we were completely satisfied with him, and that he should ignore the office gossip.'
'I'd like to see his letter. You have it?'
'I suppose it was filed-' Corrigan stopped. 'No, it wasn't I sent it to Con O'Malley. He may have it.'
'I returned it to you,' O'Malley asserted.
'If you did I don't remember it.'
'He must have it,' Phelps declared, 'because when you
showed it to me-no, that was another letter. When you showed me Dykes's resignation you said you were going to send it to Con.'
'He did,' O'Malley said. 'And I returned it-wait a minute, I'm wrong. I returned it to Fred, in person. I stopped in at the office, and Jim wasn't there, and I gave it to Fred.'
Briggs was blinking at him. 'That,' he said stiffly, 'is absolutely false. Emmett showed me that letter.' He bunked around. 'I resent it, but I'm not surprised. We all know that Con is irresponsible and a liar.'
'Goddam it, Fred,' Phelps objected, 'why should he lie about a thing like that? He didn't say he showed it to you, he said he gave it to you.'
