What I was after, I said, was a document that we had reason to believe Alice Porter had left in somebody’s care. Did members deposit important documents with the NAAD for safe-keeping? No, the association had no facilities for that kind of service. Did she have any idea with whom or where Alice Porter might leave something very important-for instance, an envelope to be opened if and when she died?
She had started a loaded fork to her mouth but stopped it. “I see,” she said. “That might be pretty smart, if- What’s in the envelope?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know there is one. Detectives spend most of their time looking for things that don’t exist. Mr Wolfe thought it was possible she had left it with you.”
“She didn’t. If we started doing things like that for members we’d have to have a vault. But I might have some ideas. Let’s see… Alice Porter.” She opened her mouth for the forkload.
She had six ideas:
Alice Porter’s safe-deposit box. If she had one.
Mr Arnold Green of Best and Green, who had published her book. He was one of the few publishers who liked to do favours for authors, even one whose book had been a flop.
Her father and mother, who lived somewhere on the West Coast, Miss Ballard thought in Oregon.
Her agent, if she still had one. Lyle Bascomb had taken her on after her book had been published, but he might have dropped her by now.
The woman who ran Collander House on West 82nd Street, the hive-home for girls and women who couldn’t afford anything fancy, where Alice Porter had lived for several years. Her name was Garvin, Mrs Something Garvin. One of the girls in the NAAD office was living there now. She was the kind of woman anybody would trust with anything.
The lawyer who handled her suit against Ellen Sturdevant. Cora Ballard couldn’t remember his name, but I did, from the pile of paper I had waded through at the office.
Over the years I have chased a lot of wild geese, but that was about the wildest, asking a bunch of strangers about something that maybe didn’t exist, and if it did maybe they had never heard of it, and if one of them had it why should he tell me? So I spent five hours at it. I tackled Lyle Bascomb, the agent, first, because his office was only a short walk from Rusterman’s. He was out to lunch and would be back any minute. So I waited fifty minutes. He returned from lunch at three-thirty-three, and his eyes were having a little trouble focusing. He had to think a minute before he could remember who Alice Porter was. Oh yes, that one. He had taken her on when she had a book published, but had dropped her when she made that plagiarism claim. I gathered from his tone that anyone who made a plagiarism claim was a louse.
At the lawyer’s office I had to wait only thirty minutes, which was an improvement. He would be glad to help. When a lawyer says he will be glad to help he means that he will be glad to relieve you of any information you may have that he could ever possibly use, and at the same time will carefully refrain from burdening you with any information that you don’t already have. That one wasn’t even going to admit that he had ever heard of a woman named Alice Porter until I told him I had read three letters signed by him referring to her as his client. I finally pried it out of him that he hadn’t seen her or communicated with her for some time. Two years? Three? He couldn’t say definitely, but an extended period. As for the information he relieved me of, I will only say that I put him under no obligation.
It was after five o’clock when I arrived at the office of Best and Green, so it was a tossup whether I would catch him, but I did. The receptionist halted a lipstick operation long enough to tell me that Mr Green was in conference, and I was asking her if she had any idea how long the conference would last, when a man appeared from within and headed for the door, and she called to him, “Mr Green, someone to see you,” and I went for him, pronouncing my name, and he said, “I’m making a train,” and loped out. So, as I say, I caught him.
I had used up half of Cora Ballard’s ideas. Of those left, two weren’t very promising. There are about a thousand banks with safe-deposit vaults in New York, and anyway I didn’t have keys to all the boxes, and besides, it was after hours. Taking a plane to the West Coast to look up Alice Porter’s parents seemed a little headlong. Finding an empty taxi in midtown Manhattan at that time of day was almost as hopeless, but I finally grabbed one and gave the driver the address on West 82nd Street.
Collander House could have been worse. The girl in the neat little office had a vase of daisies on her desk, and the room across the hall, which she called the lounge, where she sent me to wait for Mrs Garvin, had two vases of daisies, comfortable chairs, and rugs on the floor. Another thirty-minute wait. When Mrs Garvin finally appeared, one straight look from her sharp gray eyes confirmed Cora Ballard’s statement that anyone would trust her with anything. Certainly she remembered Alice Porter, who had lived there from August 1951 until May 1956. She had the dates in her head because she had looked them up at the request of a city detective last week, and had recalled them that morning because a woman had come and asked about Alice Porter. She hadn’t seen Alice Porter for three years and was keeping nothing for her. Not even some little thing like an envelope? No. Which didn’t mean a thing. She was a busy woman, and it was quicker to say no than to explain that it was none of my business and have me trying to persuade her that it was. A lie isn’t a lie if it is in reply to a question that the questioner has no right to ask.
All in all, a hell of an afternoon. Not one little crumb. And the immediate future was as bleak as the immediate past: another meatless dinner for Wolfe, after a beerless day. More gloom. He would be there at his desk, glaring into space, wallowing in it. As I climbed out of the taxi in front of the old brownstone I had a notion to go to Bert’s diner around the corner and eat hamburgers and slaw and discuss the world situation for an hour or so, but, deciding it wouldn’t be fair to deprive him of an audience, I mounted the stoop and used my key on the door; and, with one foot inside and one out, stopped and stared. Wolfe was emerging from the kitchen, carrying a large tray loaded with glasses. He turned in at the office. I brought my other foot in, shut the door, and proceeded.
I stood and looked it over. One of the yellow chairs was at the end of my desk. Six of them were in two rows facing Wolfe’s desk. Five more of them were grouped over by the big globe. The table at the far wall was covered with a yellow cloth, and on it was an assortment of bottles. Wolfe was there, transferring the glasses from the tray to the table.
I spoke. “Can I help?”
“No. It’s done.”
“A big party, apparently.”
“Yes. At nine o’clock.”
