Might as Well Be Dead (3 page)

“What kind of a gag is this?”

“No gag. I wouldn’t dare to trifle with an officer of the law. Call Murphy. If he doesn’t satisfy you come and have lunch with us. Peruvian melon, kidney pie, endive with Martinique dressing—”

It clicked and he was gone. I turned and told Wolfe it would be nice if we could always get Stebbins off our neck as easy as that. He frowned a while at the London
Observer
and then raised his head.

“Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That trial, that Peter Hays, started about two weeks ago.”

“Right.”

“The
Times
had his picture. Get it.”

I grinned at him. “Wouldn’t that be something? It popped into my head too, the possibility, when Lon phoned, but I remembered the pictures of him—the
Gazette
and
Daily News
, all of them, and I crossed it off. But it won’t hurt to look.”

One of my sixteen thousand duties is keeping a five-week file of the
Times
in a cupboard below the bookshelves. I went and slid the door open and squatted, and before long I had it, on the seventeenth page of the issue of March 27. I gave it a look and went and handed it to Wolfe, and from a drawer of my desk got the picture of Paul Herold in mortarboard and gown, and handed him that too. He held them side by side and scowled at them, and I circled around to his elbow to help. The newspaper shot wasn’t any too good, but even so, if they were the same P.H. he had changed a lot in eleven years. His round cheeks had caved in, his nose had shrunk, his lips were thinner, and his chin had bulged.

“No,” Wolfe said. “Well?”

“Unanimous,” I agreed. “That would have been a hell of a spot to find him. Is it worth going to the courtroom for a look?”

“I doubt it. Anyway, not today. You’re needed here.”

But that only postponed the agony for a few hours. That afternoon, after various journalists had been dealt with, and some of the P.H.’s, and Saul had been sent to keep the appointments, we had a visitor. Just three minutes after Wolfe had left the office for his daily four-to-six conference with the orchids, the doorbell rang and I answered it. On the stoop was a middle-aged guy who would need a shave by sundown, in a sloppy charcoal topcoat and a classy new black homburg. He could have been a P.H., but not a journalist. He said he would like a word with Mr. Nero Wolfe. I said Mr. Wolfe was engaged, told him my name and station, and asked if I could be of any service. He said he didn’t know.

He looked at his wristwatch. “I haven’t much time,” he said, looking harassed. “My name is Albert Freyer, counselor-at-law.” He took a leather case from his pocket, got a card from it, and handed it to me. “I am attorney for Peter Hays, who is on trial for first-degree murder. I’m keeping my cab waiting because the jury is out and I must be at hand. Do you know anything about the advertisement Nero Wolfe put in today’s papers, ‘To. P.H.’?”

“Yes, I know all about it.”

“I didn’t see it until an hour ago. I didn’t want to phone about it. I want to ask Nero Wolfe a question. It is being assumed that the advertisement was addressed to my client, Peter Hays. I want to ask him straight, was it?”

“I can answer that. It wasn’t. Mr. Wolfe had never heard of Peter Hays, except in the newspaper accounts of his trial.”

“You will vouch for that?”

“I do vouch for it.”

“Well.” He looked gotten. “I was hoping—No matter. Who is the P.H. the advertisement was addressed to?”

“A man whose initials are known to us but his name is not.”

“What was the injustice mentioned in the ad? The wrong to be righted?”

“A theft that took place eleven years ago.”

“I see.” He looked at his wrist. “I have no time. I would like to give you a message for Mr. Wolfe. I admit the possibility of coincidence, but it is not unreasonable to suspect that it may be a publicity stunt. If so, it may work damage to my client, and it may be actionable. I’ll want to look into the matter further when time permits. Will you tell him that?”

“Sure. If you can spare twenty seconds more, tell me something. Where was Peter Hays born, where did he spend his boyhood, and where did he go to college?”

Having half-turned, he swiveled his head to me. “Why do you want to know?”

“I can stand it not to. Call it curiosity. I read the papers. I answered six questions for you, why not answer three for me?”

“Because I can’t. I don’t know.” He was turning to go.

I persisted. “Do you mean that? You’re defending him on a murder charge, and you don’t know that much about him?” He was starting down the seven steps of the stoop. I asked his back, “Where’s his family?”

He turned his head to say, “He has no family,” and went. He climbed into the waiting taxi and banged the door, and the taxi rolled away from the curb. I went back in, to the office, and buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone.

“Yes?” Wolfe hates to be disturbed up there.

“We had company. A lawyer named Albert Freyer. He’s Peter Hays’s attorney, and he doesn’t know where Hays was born and brought up or what college he went to, and he says Hays has no family. I’m switching my vote. I think it’s worth a trip, and the client will pay the cab fare. I’m leaving now.”

“No.”

“That’s just a reflex. Yes.”

“Very well. Tell Fritz.”

The gook. I always did tell Fritz. I went to the kitchen and did so, returned to the office and put things away and locked the safe, fixed the phone to ring in the kitchen, and got my hat and coat from the rack in the hall. Fritz was there to put the chain bolt on the door.

After habits get automatic you’re no longer aware of them. One day years ago a tail had picked me up when I left the house on an errand, without my knowing it, and what he learned from my movements during the next hour had cost us an extra week, and our client an extra several thousand dollars, solving a big and important case. For a couple of months after that experience I never went out on a business errand without making a point of checking my rear, and by that time it had become automatic, and I’ve done it ever since without thinking of it. That Tuesday afternoon, heading for Ninth Avenue, I suppose I glanced back when I had gone about fifty paces, since that’s the routine, but if so I saw nothing. But in another fifty paces, when I glanced back again automatically, something clicked and shot to the upper level and I was aware of it. What had caused the click was the sight of a guy some forty yards behind, headed my way, who hadn’t been there before. I stopped, turned, and stood, facing him. He hesitated, took a piece of paper from his pocket, peered at it, and started studying the fronts of houses to his right and left. Almost anything would have been better than that, even tying his shoestring, since his sudden appearance had to mean either that he had popped out of an areaway to follow me or that he had emerged from one of the houses on his own affairs; and if the latter, why stop to glom the numbers of the houses next door?

So I had a tail. But if I tackled him on the spot, with nothing but logic to go on, he would merely tell me to go soak my head. I could lead him into a situation where I would have more than logic, but that would take time, and Freyer had said the jury was out, and I was in a hurry. I decided I could spare a couple of minutes and stood and looked at him. He was middle-sized, in a tan raglan and a brown snap-brim, with a thin, narrow face and a pointed nose. At the end of the first minute he got embarrassed and mounted the stoop of the nearest house, which was the residence and office of Doc Vollmer, and pushed the button. The door was opened by Helen Grant, Doc’s secretary. He exchanged a few words with her, turned away without touching his hat, descended to the sidewalk, mounted the stoop of the house next door, and pushed the button. My two minutes were up, and anyway that was enough, so I beat it to Ninth Avenue without bothering to look back, flagged a taxi, and told the driver Centre and Pearl Streets.

At that time of day the courthouse corridors were full of lawyers, clients, witnesses, jurors, friends, enemies, relatives, fixers, bloodsuckers, politicians, and citizens. Having consulted a city employee below, I left the elevator at the third floor and dodged my way down the hall and around a corner to Part XIX, expecting no difficulty about getting in, since the Hays case was no headliner, merely run-of-the-mill.

There certainly was no difficulty. The courtroom was practically empty—no judge, no jury, and even no clerk or stenographer. And no Peter Hays. Eight or nine people altogether were scattered around on the benches. I went and consulted the officer at the door, and was told that the jury was still out and he had no idea when it would be in. I found a phone booth and made two calls: one to Fritz, to tell him I might be home for dinner and I might not, and one to Doc Vollmer’s number. Helen Grant answered.

“Listen, little blessing,” I asked her, “do you love me?”

“No. And I never will.”

“Good. I’m afraid to ask favors of girls who love me, and I want one from you. Fifty minutes ago a man in a tan coat rang your bell and you opened the door. What did he want?”

“My lord!” She was indignant. “Next thing you’ll be tapping our phone! If you think you’re going to drag me into one of your messes!”

“No mess and no dragging. Did he try to sell you some heroin?”

“He did not. He asked if a man named Arthur Holcomb lived here, and I said no, and he asked if I knew where he lived, and I said no again. That was all. What is this, Archie?”

“Nothing. Cross it off. I’ll tell you when I see you if you still want to know. As for not loving me, you’re just whistling in the dark. Tell me good-by.”

“Good-by forever!”

So he had been a tail. A man looking for Arthur Holcomb wouldn’t need to pop or slink suddenly from an areaway. There was no profit in guessing, but as I went back down the corridor naturally I wondered whether and how and why he was connected with P.H., and if so, which one.

As I approached the door of Part XIX I saw activity. People were going in. I got to the elbow of the officer and asked him if the jury was coming, and he said, “Don’t ask me, mister. Word gets around fast here, but not to me. Move along.” I entered the courtroom and stepped aside to be out of the traffic lane, and was surveying the scene when a voice at my shoulder pronounced my name. I turned, and there was Albert Freyer. His expression was not cordial.

“So you never heard of Peter Hays,” he said through his teeth. “Well, you’re going to hear of me.”

My having no reply really didn’t matter, for he didn’t wait for one. He walked down the center aisle with a companion, passed through the gate, and took a seat at the counselors’ table. I followed and chose a spot in the third row on the left, the side where the defendant would enter. The clerk and stenographer were at their desks, and Assistant District Attorney Mandelbaum, who had once been given a bigger dose by Wolfe than he could swallow, was at another table in the enclosure, with his briefcase in front of him and a junior at his side. People were straggling down the aisle, and I had my neck twisted for a look at them, with a vague idea of seeing the man in the tan coat who wanted to find Arthur Holcomb, when there was a sudden murmur and faces turned left, and so did mine. The defendant was being escorted in.

I have good eyes and I used them as he crossed to a chair directly behind Albert Freyer. I only had about four seconds, for when he was seated, with his back to me, my eyes were of no use, since the picture of Paul Herold, in mortarboard and gown, had given nothing to go by but the face. So I shut my eyes to concentrate. He was and he wasn’t. He could be, but. Looking at the two pictures side by side with Wolfe, I would have made it thirty to one that he wasn’t. Now two to one, or maybe even money, and I would take either end. I had to press down with my fanny to keep from bobbing up and marching through the gate for a full-face close-up.

The jury was filing in, but I hardly noticed. The courtroom preliminaries leading up to the moment when a jury is going to tell a man where he stands on the big one will give any spectator either a tingle in the spine or a lump of lead in his stomach, but not that time for me. My mind was occupied, and I was staring at the back of the defendant’s head, trying to make him turn around. When the officer gave the order to rise for the entrance of the judge, the others were all on their feet before I came to. The judge sat and told us to do likewise, and we obeyed. I could tell you what the clerk said, and the question the judge asked the foreman, since that is court routine, but I didn’t actually hear it. I was back on my target.

The first words I actually heard came from the foreman. “We find the defendant guilty as charged, of murder in the first degree.”

A noise went around, a mixture of gasps and murmurs, and a woman behind me tittered, or it sounded like it. I kept on my target, and it was well that I did. He rose and turned square around, all in one quick movement, and sent his eyes around the courtroom—searching, defiant eyes—and they flashed across me. Then the guard had his elbow and he was pulled around and down, and Albert Freyer got up to ask that the jury be polled.

At such a moment the audience is supposed to keep their seats and make no disturbance, but I had a call. Lowering my head and pressing my palm to my mouth as if I might or might not manage to hold it in. I got up and sidestepped to the aisle, and double-quicked to the rear and on out. Waiting for one of the slow-motion elevators didn’t fit my mood, so I took to the stairs. Out on the sidewalk there were several citizens strung along on the lookout for taxis, so I went south a block, soon got one, climbed in, and gave the hackie the address.

The timing was close to perfect. It was 5:58 when, in response to my ring, Fritz came and released the chain bolt and let me in. In two minutes Wolfe would be down from the plant rooms. Fritz followed me to the office to report, the chief item being that Saul had phoned to say that he had seen the three P.H.’s and none of them was it. Wolfe entered, went to his desk, and sat, and Fritz left.

Wolfe looked up at me. “Well?”

“No, sir,” I said emphatically. “I am not well. I am under the impression that Paul Herold, alias Peter Hays, has just been convicted of first-degree murder.”