Plot It Yourself

“Shortly after you called this morning. Orrie is there now. Since four o’clock he has been there in concealment with the house in view. His car is nearby, also in concealment. Miss Corbett, with a rented car, is posted near the junction of the dirt road and the surfaced road. Saul will relieve Orrie at midnight, and Miss Corbett will leave. Fred and Miss Bonner will take over at eight in the morning. Miss Corbett phoned at seven-thirty that Alice Porter was at home and had had no visitors.”

My brows were still up. “I must say that when you consider, you consider. At that rate Oshin’s ten grand won’t last long. I don’t say it’s being wasted, but you may remember that when he asked me which one of the four we should go for I said that Alice Porter has just made her claim on Amy Wynn and is expecting to collect, so she probably wouldn’t be open for a deal. Also you know how she reacted to my approach.”

Wolfe nodded. “But that was before her manuscript had been found and we learned that it had been written by her, not by the person who wrote the others. He may or may not know about that; probably he does. In any case, even if it is likely that she would scorn any inducement we can offer her, he may not think so. He is bold and ruthless, and he is now close to panic. If he thinks her as great a menace as Jane Ogilvy he won’t hesitate. Saul and Fred and Orrie, and Miss Bonner and Miss Corbett, have full instructions. Anyone who approaches Alice Porter is to be suspected. If possible he is to be stopped before he strikes, but of course he can’t be challenged until it is apparent that he intends to strike.”

“Yeah.” I was looking at it. “It’s a problem. Fred or Orrie is there, in broad daylight, and someone drives up to the house and goes in. There’s no decent cover within a hundred yards of the house. He can’t possibly get close enough to see if it’s just a lightning-rod salesman or a friend, without being seen. All he can do is wait until the company goes and then wait for Alice Porter to show, or go to a phone and dial her number and see if she answers. If it’s X, she’s a goner. I admit we’ll have him.”

He grunted. “Can you do better?”

“No, sir. I’m not complaining. What about Kenneth Rennert? If X is in a panic he might do him next.”

“That’s possible, but I doubt it. Rennert may not even know who X is; he may merely have imitated him. He wrote not a story but a play outline, and we haven’t seen it.”

“Okay.” I glanced at the clock: eleven-twenty-three. “I suppose Saul will call when he goes on at midnight, and Orrie will call after he is relieved?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll expect them. What else for me? Have I a program?”

“No.”

“Then I have a suggestion. I don’t like it, but I have it. Across the street from Rennert’s address is a tailor shop with a nice clean window. For five bucks a day the owner would let me use it to look through, with a chair to sit on. After dark I could move across the street, to be closer. I am almost as good as Saul Panzer at remembering faces. When Rennert’s body is discovered and they decide when he was killed, I would know who had been there. If it was someone I recognized, for instance a member of the Joint Committee on Plagiarism, I could even name him. I can start right now. I hate that kind of a job, who doesn’t, but I’ve been sent twice now to see people who were already dead, and that’s enough.”

He shook his head. “Two objections. One, you need sleep. Two, Mr Rennert is not at home. As I said, his operation may have been solely on his own and he may have had no connection with X, but I haven’t ignored him. I rang his number twice this morning and twice this afternoon, and got no answer. At three o’clock Saul went there, and, getting no response to his ring, saw the building superintendent and asked when he had last seen Mr Rennert. Early last evening Mr Rennert told the building superintendent that he would leave today to spend the Memorial Day weekend in the country and would return on Monday. He didn’t say where in the country.”

“If we knew where we could ring him and warn him to keep away from poison ivy. It would be nice to hear his voice.”

“I agree. But we don’t.”

“I could scout around in the morning and probably find out. We have a lot of names of people he has borrowed money from.”

He vetoed it. He said he wanted me at hand, and a call might come at any time of the day or night from Saul Panzer or Fred Durkin or Orrie Cather or Dol Bonner or Sally Corbett that would require immediate action. Also Philip Harvey had phoned twice, and Cora Ballard once, to ask if he could be present at a meeting of the NAAD council on Monday, and they would probably phone again tomorrow, and he didn’t want to listen to them. That settled, he went up to bed. At eleven-forty-two Saul Panzer called, from a booth in Carmel, to say that he was on his way to relieve Orrie Cather. At twelve-eighteen Orrie called, also from Carmel, to report that the light had gone out a little before eleven in Alice Porter’s house, and presumably she was safe in bed. I mounted two flights to mine.

Friday morning I was pulling my pants on when Fred Durkin phoned that he was on his way to relieve Saul, and Dol Bonner was with him, to go on post near the junction of the blacktop and the dirt road. I was in the kitchen, pouring hot maple syrup on a waffle, with the Times propped on the rack, when Saul phoned to say that when he left at eight o’clock Alice Porter had been hoeing in the vegetable garden. I was in the office, re- reading copies of the statements I had given the two assistant DAs, when Cora Ballard phoned to ask if Wolfe would come to the NAAD council meeting, which would be held at the Clover Club on Monday at twelve-thirty. If Wolfe preferred to join them after lunch two o’clock would do, or even two-thirty. When I reminded her that he never left the house on business she said she knew that, but this was an emergency. I said it wasn’t much of an emergency that set a meeting three days off, and she said that with authors and dramatists two or three weeks was the best she could usually do, and anyway it was the Memorial Day weekend, and could she speak with Mr Wolfe. I told her he wasn’t available and it wouldn’t do any good even if he was, and what he would certainly say was that he would send me. If they wanted me, let me know.

I was filing the copies of the statements in the folder marked PLAGIARISM, JOINT COMMITTEE ON when Inspector Cramer phoned to say that he would drop in for a few minutes about a quarter past eleven. I told him he would probably be admitted. I was listening to the ten-o’clock news broadcast when Lon Cohen phoned to say it was high time I loosened up. They had five different pictures of me in the morgue, and they would run the best one, the one that made me look almost human, as the discoverer of Jane Ogilvy’s body, if I would supply some interesting detail like why had two people who had collected damages on plagiarism charges been croaked within forty-eight hours. Any fool knew damn well it wasn’t coincidence, so what was it? I told him I would ask the DA and call him back.

I was tearing yesterday’s page from Wolfe’s desk calendar when the president of the National