Murder by the Book

by Rex Stout

  The bribed juror was a shoe salesman named Anderson. Saul had had two sessions with him and his wife. The wife's position stood on four legs: one, she had not written the letter; r two, she had not known that her husband had taken a bribe; three, if she had known he had taken a bribe she certainly wouldn't have told on him; and four, she didn't know how to typewrite. Apparently her husband believed her. That didn't prove anything, since the talent of some husbands for believing their wives is unbounded, but when Saul too voted for her that was enough for Wolfe and me. Saul can smell a liar through a concrete wall. He offered to bring the Andersons in for Wolfe

  to judge for himself, but Wolfe said no. Saul was told to join Fred and Orrie in the check of Dykes's friends and acquaintances outside the office.

  Saturday morning a large envelope arrived by messenger. Inside was a note from Emmett Phelps, the six-foot scholar who was indifferent to murder, typed on the firm's letterhead:

  Dear Mr. Wolfe:

  I am sending herewith, as you requested, some material written by Leonard Dykes.

  Included is his letter of resignation dated July 19, 1950, which you said you would like to see. Evidently Mr. O'Malley's statement that he had returned the letter to Mr. Briggs was correct, since it was here in our files. Mr. O'Malley was in the office yesterday and I told him the letter had been found.

  Kindly return the material when you have finished with it.

  Sincerely, Emmett Phelps

  Dykes's letter of resignation was a full page, single-spaced, but all it said was what Corrigan had told us-that on account of the staff gossip that he had informed on O'Malley and so damaged the firm's reputation, and, further, because the new regime might want to make a change, he respectfully submitted his resignation. He had used three times as many words as he needed. As for the rest of the material-memoranda, reports, and copies of letters-it may have shown Wolfe how Dykes used words, but aside from that it was as irrelevant as last year's box score. Wolfe waded through it, passing each item to me as he finished, and I read every word, not wanting to leave an opening for another remark about my powers of observation like the time I had muffed the name of Baird Archer. When I had finished I handed the lot back to him, with some casual comment, and got at my typewriter to do some letters he had dictated.

  I was banging away when he suddenly demanded, "What does this stand for?"

  I got up to go and look. In his hand was Dykes's letter of resignation. He slid it across to me. "That notation in pencil in the corner. What is it?"

  I looked at it, a pencil scribble like this:

  I nodded. "Yeah, I noticed it. Search me. Public School 146, Third Grade?"

  "The S is lower case."

  "So it is. Am I supposed to pop it out?"

  "No. It's probably frivolous, but its oddity stirs curiosity. Does it suggest anything to you?"

  I pursed my lips to look thoughtful. "Not offhand. Does it to you?"

  He reached for it and frowned at it. "It invites speculation. With a capital P and a small S, it is presumably not initials. I know of only one word or name in the language for which 'Ps' is commonly used as an abbreviation. The figures following the 'Ps' increase the likelihood. Still no suggestion?"

  "Well, 'Ps' stands for postscript, and the figures-"

  "No. Get the Bible."

  I crossed to the bookshelves, got it, and returned.

  "Turn to Psalm One-forty-six and read the third verse."

  I admit I had to use the index. Having done so, I turned the pages, found it, and gave it a glance.

  "I'll be damned," I muttered.

  "Read it!" Wolfe bellowed.

  I read aloud. " 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.'"

  "Ah," Wolfe said, and sighed clear to his middle.

  "Okay," I conceded. " 'Put Not Your Trust' was the title of Baird Archer's novel. At last you've got a man on base, but by a fluke. I hereby enter it for the record in coincidences that the item you specially requested had that notation on it and you spotted it. If that's how-"

  "Pfui," Wolfe snorted. "There was nothing coincidental about it, and any lummox could have interpreted that notation."

  "I'm a superlummox."

  "No." He was so pleased he felt magnanimous. "You got it for us. You got those women here and scared them. You scared them so badly that one or more of them felt it necessary to

  concede a connection between Baird Archer and someone in that office."

  "One of whom? The women?"

  "I think not. I prefer a man, and it was the men I asked for material written by Dykes. You scared a man or men. I want to know which one or ones. You have an engagement for this evening?"

  "Yes. With a blond switchboard operator. Three shades of blond on one head."

  "Very well. Find out who made that notation on Dykes's letter in that square distinctive hand. I hope to heaven it wasn't Dykes himself." Wolfe frowned and shook his head. "I must correct myself. All I expect you to learn is whose hand that notation resembles. It would be better not to show the letter and the notation itself."

  "Sure. Make it as tough as you can."

  But it wasn't as tough as it sounded because the handwriting was so easy to imitate. During the afternoon I practiced it plenty before I prepared my bait. When I left for my date at 6:40 I had with me, in the breast pocket of my newest lightweight blue suit, one of the items that had been sent us- a typewritten memorandum from Leonard Dykes-with a penciled notation in the margin made by me:

  13

  BLANCHE DUKE surprised me that evening. She had two shots of her special formula-gin, vermouth, grenadine, and Pernod-before dinner, and then quit. No more. Also she wore a nice simple blue dress and went easy with cosmetics. Also, most important, she could dance much better than Sue Dondero. On the whole, while she was not something for the Bobolink to stare at, she certainly needed no excuses, and she made the Bobolink band seem even better than it was. By ten o'clock I would have been perfectly willing to split the check with our client. But I was there on business.

  When we went back to our table after I had fancied up a samba all I could and she had kept with me as though we had done it a hundred times, and I insisted that with dinner only a memory it was time for a drink, she refused.

  "Look," I objected, "this isn't going right. All I'm getting out of it is a good time, when I'm supposed to be working. The idea was to get you lit enough to loosen up, and you're drinking water. How can I get you babbling if you won't drink?"

  "I like to dance," she stated.

  "No wonder, the way you do it. So do I, but I've got a problem. I've got to quit enjoying myself and drag something out of you."

  She shook her head. "I don't drink when I'm dancing because I like to dance. Try me tomorrow afternoon while I'm washing my hair. I hate washing my damn hair. What makes you think there's something in me to drag out?"

  Our waiter was hovering, and I appeased him with an order for something.

  "Well," I told her, "there ought to be, since you think O'Malley killed Dykes. You must have some reason-"

  "I don't think that."

  "You said you did Wednesday evening."

  She waved a hand. "It gets Eleanor Gruber's goat. She's crazy about O'Malley. I don't think that at all. I think Len Dykes committed suicide."

  "Oh. Whose goat does that get?"

  "Nobody's. It might get Sue's, but I like her, so I don't say it, I just think it."

  "Sue Dondero? Why her?"

  "Well-" Blanche frowned. "Of course you didn't know Len Dykes."

  "No."

  "He was a funny duck. He was a nice guy in a way, but he was funny. He had inhibitions about women, but he carried a picture of one in his wallet, and who do you think it was? His sister, for God's sake! Then one day I saw him-"

  She stopped abruptly. The band had struck up a conga. Her shoulders moved to the beat. There was only one thing to do. I stood up and extended a hand, and she came, and we edged thr
ough to the floor. A quarter of an hour later we returned to the table, sat, and exchanged glances of unqualified approval.

  "Let's get the dragging over with," I suggested, "and then we can do some serious dancing. You were saying that one day you saw Dykes-doing what?"

  She looked blank a moment, then nodded. "Oh, yes. Do we really have to go on with this?"

  "I do."

  "Okay. I saw him looking at Sue. Brother, that was a look! I kidded him about it, which was a mistake, because it made him decide to pick me to tell about it. It was the first time-"

  "When was this?"

  "A year ago, maybe more. It was the first time he had ever put an eye on a woman, at his age! And he had fallen for her so hard he might as well have had an ulcer. He kept it covered all right, except with me, but I certainly got it. He tried to date her, but nothing doing. He asked me what to do, and I had to tell him something, so I told him Sue was the kind of girl who was looking for glamour, and he ought to get famous somehow, like getting elected senator or pitching for the Yankees or writing a book. So he wrote a book, and the publishers wouldn't take it, and he killed himself."

  I showed no excitement. "He told you he wrote a book?"

  "No, he never mentioned it. Along about then he stopped talking about her, and I never brought it up because I didn't want to get him started again. But it was one of the things I suggested, and there's all this racket about a book that got rejected, so why can't I put two and two together?"

  I could have objected that suicide by Dykes in December wouldn't help to explain the murder of Joan Wellman and Rachel Abrams in February, but I wanted to get to the point before the band started up again. I took a sip of my drink.

  I smiled at her to keep it friendly. "Even if you're right about the suicide, what if you're shifting the cast? What if it was you instead of Sue he put his eye on?"

  She snorted. "Me? If you mean that for a compliment, try.. again."

  "I don't." My hand went to my breast pocket and came out with a folded paper. "This is a memorandum on office expenses prepared by Dykes, dated last May." I unfolded it. "I was going to ask you why he scribbled your home phone number on it, but now you can just say it was while he was telling you about Sue and asking your advice, so what's the use." I started to refold it.

  "My phone number?" she demanded.

  "Yep. Columbus three, four-six-two-oh."

  "Let me see it."

  I handed it to her, and she took a look. She held it to her right to get more light and looked again. "Len didn't write that," she declared.

  "Why not?"

  "It's not his writing."

  "Whose is it? Yours?"

  "No. It's Corrigan's. He writes square like that." She was frowning at me. "What is this, anyhow? Why should Corrigan be putting my phone number on this old memo?"

  "Oh, forget it." I reached and took the paper from her fingers. "I thought maybe Dykes had written it and just thought I'd ask. Corrigan may have wanted to phone you about something after office hours." A rattle came from the drum, and the band slid into a trot. I put the memo in my pocket and stood up. "Skip it. Let's see how we like this."

  We liked it fine.

  When I got home, around two, Wolfe had gone up to bed. I slid the bolts on the front and back doors, twirled the knob of the safe, and drank a glass of milk before ascending. People are never satisfied. What was on my mind as I pulled the covers up was the contrariness of life. Why couldn't it have been Sue who danced like that instead of Blanche? If a man could figure out some way of combining…

  The Sunday schedule at Wolfe's house was different since Marko Vukcic, his closest friend and the owner of Ruster-man's Restaurant, had talked him into installing a pool table in the basement. It was now routine for Wolfe to spend Sunday morning in the kitchen with Fritz, preparing something special. At one-thirty Marko would arrive to help appreciate it, after which they would go to the basement for a five-hour session with the cues. I rarely took part, even when I was around, because it made Wolfe grumpy when I got lucky and piled up a big run.

  That Sunday I fully expected to upset the schedule when Wolfe, having breakfasted in his room, entered the kitchen and I told him, "That notation on that letter is in the handwriting of James A. Corrigan, the senior partner."

  He scowled at me a moment, then turned to Fritz. "I have decided," he said aggressively, "not to use the goose fat."

  I raised my voice. "That notation on that let-"

  "I heard you! Take the letter to Mr. Cramer and tell him about it."

  It would have done no good to scream, not when he used that tone, so I controlled myself. "You have trained me," I said stiffly, "to remember conversations verbatim, including yours. Yesterday you said you wanted to know who we had scared and whose hand that notation resembles. I spent a whole evening and a wad of Wellman's dough finding out. To hand it to Cramer, for God's sake? What if it is Sunday? If they're scared they'll come. May I use the phone?"

  His lips had tightened. "What else did you get?"

  "Nothing. That's what you asked for."

  "Very well. Satisfactory. Fritz and I are going to do a guinea hen, and there is barely time. If you get Mr. Corrigan down here, or even all of them, what will happen? I will show him that notation and he will deny all knowledge of it. I will ask where that letter has been, and will be told that it has been easily accessible to all of them. That will take perhaps five minutes. Then what?"

  "Nuts. If you insist on playing pool instead of working on Sunday, wait till tomorrow. Why hand it to Cramer?"

  "Because for its one purpose he is as good as I am-even better. It validates for them, if not for me, my assumption that someone in that firm has a guilty connection with the murder of three people. We have already scared him into this; with that letter a police inspector may scare him into something else. Take it to Mr. Cramer and don't bother me. You know quite well that for me pool is not play; it is exercise."

  He strode to the refrigerator.

  I had a notion to spend a couple of hours with the Sunday papers before going downtown, but decided there was no point in my being childish just because Wolfe was. Besides, with him I never knew. It could be that he merely wanted to cook and eat and play pool instead of working, but it could also be that he was pulling something fancy. He often got subtle without letting me in on it, and it wasn't impossible that there was something about that notation, or the way we got it, that made him figure it would be better to turn it over to Cramer than spring it himself. Walking the fifteen blocks to Twentieth Street with a cold March wind whipping at me

  from the right, I considered the matter and concluded that it might either rain or snow.

  Cramer wasn't in, but Sergeant Purley Stebbins was. He gave me the chair at the end of his desk and listened to my tale. I gave it all to him except the detail of how we had learned it was Corrigan's handwriting, seeing no necessity of dragging Blanche into it. I merely told him that we had good reason to believe that it looked like Corrigan's writing. Of course he knew that Baird Archer's novel had been titled "Put Not Your Trust." He looked around for a Bible to check on the third verse of the 146th Psalm, but couldn't find one.

  He was skeptical, but not about that. "You say Wolfe got this letter yesterday?" he demanded.

  "Right."

  "And he's done nothing about it?"

  "Right."

  "He hasn't asked Corrigan about it, or any of the others?"

  "Right."

  "Then what the hell's wrong with it?"

  "Nothing that I know of. We're cooperating."

  Purley snorted. "Nero Wolfe passing us a juicy item like this without first squeezing it for himself? Poop."

  "If you don't like it," I said with dignity, "I'll take it back and see if I can get you something better. Would you accept a signed confession with dates and places?"

  "I'll accept a signed statement from you, telling how you got this."

  "Glad to, if you'll give me a decent typewriter."r />
  What I got was what I expected, an Underwood about my age. I demanded a new ribbon, and they finally dug one up. N Back at home I did a few chores in the office and then got comfortable with the Sunday papers. Wolfe came in now and then for a section to take to the kitchen. Around noon he entered, sat behind bis desk, and requested a full report of my evening with Miss Duke. Evidently the guinea hen was under control. I obliged, thinking he might let me in on the strategy if that was what it was, but all I got was a nod.

  That was all for Sunday, exsept that after dinner I got invited to the pool game and made a run of twenty-nine, and after supper I was instructed to tell Saul and Fred and Orrie to report in at eleven in the morning.

  They were there when Wolfe came down from the plant

  rooms: Saul Panzer, small and wiry, in his old brown suit; Fred Durkin, with his round red face and spreading bald spot, in the red leather chair by right of seniority; and Orrie Gather, with his square jaw and crew cut, looking young enough to still be playing pro football. Wolfe took Fred first, then Orrie, and Saul last.

  Adding what they told us to what we already knew from the police file and the girls and the firm members, including Blanche's little contribution Saturday evening, we were certainly up on Leonard Dykes. I could give you fifty pages on him, but it would leave you just where we were, so what's the use? If anyone who had known him had any idea who had killed him or why, they weren't saying. Saul and Fred and Orrie were three good men, and they hadn't got the faintest glimmer, though they had covered every possible source except Dykes's sister, who was in California. Wolfe kept them till lunchtime and then cut them loose. Saul, who hated to turn in an empty bag even more than I did, offered to spend another day or two at it on his own, but Wolfe said no.