Plot It Yourself

most people would prefer a comma or a dash. The other is more subtle but to me the most conclusive. A clever man might successfully disguise every element of his style but one-the paragraphing. Diction and syntax may be determined and controlled by rational processes in full consciousness, but paragraphing-the decision whether to take short hops or long ones, whether to hop in the middle of a thought or action or finish it first-that comes from instinct, from the depths of personality. I will concede the possibility that the verbal similarities, and even the punctuation, could be coincidence, though it is highly improbable; but not the paragraphing. These three stories were paragraphed by the same person.”

“Plot it yourself,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing. The title of a piece I happened to read in the Times Book Review just popped up. It was about the idea that a novelist should just create his characters and let them go ahead and develop the action and the plot. This guy was dead against it. He claimed you should plot it yourself. I was thinking that a detective working on a case can’t plot it himself. It has already been plotted. Look at this. This is now a totally different animal. One thing: with all those similarities, why hasn’t anyone noticed it?”

“Probably because no one has ever had the three manuscripts together and compared them. Until that committee was formed they were in different hands.”

I returned to my desk and sat. “Okay. Congratulations. So I’ll have to rearrange my mind. I suppose you already have.”

“No. I hadn’t even arranged it.”

I glanced up at the clock. “Quarter past eleven. Harvey might be home. Do you want to swagger?”

“No. I’m tired. I want to sleep. There’s no hurry.” He pushed his chair back and got to his feet.

Sometimes he self-propels his seventh of a ton up one flight of stairs to his room, but that night he used the elevator. When he had gone I took the three stories to my desk and spent half an hour studying paragraphing, and though Lily Rowan told me once that I am about as subtle as a sledge hammer-at a moment when her diction was not determined and controlled by rational processes in full consciousness-I saw what Wolfe meant. I put the stories in the safe and then considered the problem of the table-load of paper. The statuses and functions of the inhabitants of that old brownstone on West 35th Street are clearly understood. Wolfe is the owner and the commandant. Fritz Brenner is the chef and housekeeper and is responsible for the condition of the castle with the exception of the plant rooms, the office, and my bedroom. Theodore Horstmann is the orchid-tender, with no responsibilities or business on the lower floors. He eats in the kitchen with Fritz. I eat in the dining room with Wolfe, except when we are not speaking; then I join Fritz and Theodore in the kitchen, or get invited somewhere, or take a friend to a restaurant, or go to Bert’s diner around the corner on Tenth Avenue and eat beans. My status and function are whatever a given situation calls for, and the question who decides what it calls for is what occasionally creates an atmosphere in which Wolfe and I are not speaking. The next sentence is to be, “But the table-load of paper, being in the office, was clearly up to me,” and I have to decide whether to put it here or start a new paragraph with it. You see how subtle it is. Paragraph it yourself.

I stood surveying the stacks of paper. Scattered through them were assorted items of information about the four claimants. Assuming that one of them had written the stories, which was the most likely candidate? I ran over them in my mind.

Alice Porter. In her middle thirties, unmarried. No physical description, but a photograph. Fleshy, say 150 pounds. Round face, small nose, eyes too close together. In 1955 had lived at Collander House on West 82nd Street, a hive-home for girls and women who couldn’t afford anything fancy. Was now living near Carmel, sixty miles north of New York, in a cottage which she had presumably bought with some of the loot she had pried out of Ellen Sturdevant. Between 1949 and 1955 had had fourteen stories for children published in magazines, and one children’s book. The Moth That Ate Peanuts, published by Best and Green in 1954, not a success. Joined the National Association of Authors and Dramatists in 1951, was dropped for nonpayment of dues in 1954, rejoined in 1956.

Simon Jacobs. Description and photograph. Sixty-two years old, thin and scrawny, hair like Mark Twain’s (that item from Title House’s lawyer), stuttered. Married in 1948, therefore at the age of fifty-one. In 1956 was living with his wife and three children in a tenement on West 21st Street, and was still there. Overseas with AEF in First World War, wounded twice. Wrote hundreds of stories for the pulps between 1922 and 1940, using four pen names. Was with the OWI in the Second World War, writing radio scripts in German and Polish. After the-war wrote stories again, but didn’t sell so many, eight or ten a year at three cents a word. In 1947 had a book published by the Owl Press, Barrage at Dawn, of which 35,000 copies were sold, and got married in 1948 and took an apartment in Brooklyn Heights. No more books published. Fewer stories sold. In 1954 moved to the tenement on West 21st Street. Member of the NAAD since 1931, dues always paid promptly, even during the war when he didn’t have to.

Jane Ogilvy. Descriptions from three sources and several photographs. Late twenties or early thirties, depending on the source. Nice little figure, pretty little face, dreamy-eyed. In 1957 was living with her parents in their house in Riverdale, and still was. Went to Europe alone immediately after she collected from Mariorie Lippin’s estate, but only stayed a month. Her father was in wholesale hardware, high financial rating. She had testified in court that she had had seventeen poems published in magazines, and had read three of them on the witness stand at the request of her attorney. No stories or books published. Member of the NAAD since 1955; was behind a year on her dues.

Kenenth Rennert. I could supply several pages on him, from the reports of the detective agency hired by Mortimer Oshin. Thirty-four years old, single. Looked younger. Virile (not my word, the detective’s), muscular, handsome. Piercing brown eyes and so on. Living in a nice big room with bath and kitchenette on East 37th Street; the detective had combed it twice. Had mother and sisters in Ottumwa, Iowa; father dead. Graduated from Princeton in 1950. Got a job with a brokerage house, Orcutt and Company, was discharged in 1954 for cause, exact cause not ascertained, but it was something about diddling customers. No public charges. Began writing for television. So far as could be learned had sold only nine scripts in four years, but no other known source of income. Has borrowed money right and the left; probably owes thirty or forty grand. Never a member of the NAAD; not eligible. Has never submitted a play to an agent or producer.

There they were. My guess, just to sleep on, was Alice Porter. She had worked it first, back in 1955, and was now repeating. She had written a book entitled The Moth That Ate Peanuts, which showed that she would stop at nothing. Her eyes were too close together. My suggestion in the morning, if Wolfe asked for one, as he usually did just to be polite, would be to connect her up with Simon Jacobs in 1956, Jane Ogilvy in 1957, and possibly Kenneth Rennert in 1958. If she had written the stories and they had used them, there had certainly been contacts. Oshin’s detective agency and the lawyer for Mariorie Lippin’s estate hadn’t found any, but whether something is found or not depends on who is looking for it.