I nodded. 'I do.'
'Then he had never seen the manuscript, certainly he hadn't read it, and this confession is spurious. There is a corroborative point.' Wolfe tapped the paper. 'It says here that Dykes told him that all copies of the manuscript had been destroyed, there were no others, and that he believed it. Indeed he must have believed it fully, for otherwise he would hardly have undertaken the murders of the two women; but certainly, when the letter came from Mrs. Potter, saying that a literary agent had a copy of the manuscript, he would have suspected a snare and would have proceeded quite differently.'
Wolfe turned a palm up. 'Well?'
'I would have understood this this morning,' Cramer rasped.
'Are you challenging the whole confession?' Phelps inquired.
'Are you saying,' O'Malley demanded, 'that Corrigan didn't squeal on me?'
'No. To both of you. But a purported confession shown to be clearly false in so important a detail loses all claim to validity, both as to content and as ft* authorship. It can be credited only in those parts that are corroborated. For instance, Mr. Cramer has verified it that the anonymous letter to the court was typed on a machine at the Travelers Club, that Corrigan had access to it and used it, and that none of the others did. Therefore I accept that detail as established, and also the account of Corrigan's visit to California, but nothing else, and certainly not the authorship. Of course Corrigan didn't write it.'
'Why not?' It came from two of the women in unison. It was the first cheep out of them.
'If he didn't know what was in the manuscript, and he didn't, why did he kill people? There is no discernible reason. If he didn't kill people, why does he confess to it? No, he didn't write this.'
'Did he kill himself?' Mrs. Adams blurted. She looked ten years older, and she was already old enough.
'I shouldn't think so. If he did, it was he who got me on the phone to hear the shot and told me he had mailed me a letter, meaning this-'
'What's that?' Cramer demanded. 'He said he had mailed you a letter?'
'Yes. I left that out of my report to you because I don't want my mail intercepted. He said that. Mr. Goodwin heard it. Archie?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And since he didn't write this thing he would hardly tell me he had mailed it to me. No, madam, he didn't kill himself. We might as well deal with that next-unless someone wants to maintain that Corrigan wrote the confession?'
No one did.
Wolfe took them in. 'For this a new character is required, and we'll call him X. This will have to be a hodgepodge party, partly what he must have done and partly what he could have done. Certainly he spent some hours yesterday between noon and ten in the evening at Corrigan's apartment, composing and typing this document. Certainly Corrigan was there too. He had been hit on the head, and was either unconscious from the blow or had been tied and gagged. I prefer it that he was conscious, knowing something of X as I do, and that X, as he typed the confession-which may have been composed beforehand and merely had to be copied-read it aloud to Corrigan. He wore gloves, and, when he was through, he pressed Corri-gan's fingertips to the paper and envelope here and there, certainly on the postage stamp.
'I don't know whether his schedule was left to exigency or was designed, but I would guess the latter, for X is fond of alibis, and we'll probably find that he has one ready for last evening from nine-thirty to ten- thirty. Anyway, at ten o'clock he turned on the radio, if he hadn't already done so, hit Corrigan on the head again, at the same spot as before, with something heavy and hard enough to stun but not kill, put him on the floor near the telephone, and dialed my number. While talking to me, making the voice unrecognizable with huskiness and agitation, he pressed the muzzle of Corrigan's own revolver against his head and, at the proper moment, pulled the trigger and dropped the gun and the phone on the floor. He may also have fallen heavily to the floor himself; I think he would have. If he did he didn't stay there long. I said he was wearing gloves. He made Corrigan's dead hand grip the gun, put the gun on the floor, and left, perhaps twenty seconds after the shot had been fired. I haven't even inquired if the door had to be locked from the outside with a key; if it did, X had had ample opportunity to procure one. He dropped the letter to me, this confession, into the nearest mailbox. I lose him at the mailbox. We'll hear of his next move when we are confronted with his alibi.'
Wolfe's eyes moved. 'I invite comment.'
Three lawyers spoke at once. Cramer outspoke them. 'How much of it can you prove?'
'Nothing. Not a word.'
'Then what does it get us?'
'It clears away the rubbish. The rubbish was the assumption that Corrigan wrote that confession and killed himself. I have shown that one is false and the other is not invulnerable. Depriving you of a suicide was simple. Giving you a murder, and a murderer, is harder. May I proceed?'
'If you've got something better than guesses, yes.'
'I've got a question,' Kustin put in. 'Is this a buildup for charging someone in this room with murder?'
'Yes.'
'Then I want to speak with you privately.'
'The devil you do.' Wolfe was indignant. To control his emotions, he closed his eyes and waggled his head. Then he
told Kustin dryly, 'So you're beginning to see something, now that I've cleared away some of the rubbish? And you'd like to point at it? I'll do the pointing, Mr. Kustin.' His eyes moved. 'Before I go on to particulars, another comment. At my first reading of this'-he tapped the paper-'I saw the flaw that told me that Corrigan hadn't
