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 through 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?"