A man named Walter Finch has just been to see me. He says he is a literary agent. He says that last year my brother wrote a novel.
I stopped to consider. Mrs. Potter was reading a letter, with her teeth clamped on her lower lip. Well, I thought, I can put it in, and it will be easy enough to take it out if we have to. I resumed with my pen:
I already knew that because my brother mentioned it once in a letter, but that was all I knew about it. Mr. Finch says he has a copy of the manuscript and its title is "Put Not Your Trust," and my brother put the name of Baird Archer on it as the author, but my brother really wrote it. He says he thinks that he can sell it to the movies for $50,000.00, and he says since my brother left everything to me I am the legal owner of it and he wants me to sign a paper that he is my agent and I will pay him 10 per cent of what he gets for it from the movies.
I am writing to you air mail because it is a big sum of money and I know you will give me good advice. I don't know any lawyer here that I know I can trust. I want to know if the 10 per cent is all right and should I sign the paper. Another thing I want to know is that I haven't seen the manuscript except just the envelope he has it in and he won't leave it with me, and it seems to me I ought to see it and read it if I am going to sell it because I ought to know what I am selling.
Please answer by air mail because Mr. Finch says it is urgent and we must act quick. Thanking you very much.
Sincerely yours,
It didn't come out that way all at once. I did a lot of crossing out and changing, and the preceding was the final result, of which I made a clear copy. I read it over and passed it. There was the one sentence that might have to come out, but I hoped to God it wouldn't.
My accomplice was reading steadily, and I had kept an eye on her progress. There were four envelopes in a little stack at her right, finished, and if she had started with March and he had written one a month, she was up to July. My fingers itched to reach for the next one. I sat and controlled them until she finished another one and began folding it for return to the envelope, and then got up to take a walk. She was reading so damn slow. I crossed to the glass doors at the far end of the room and looked out. In the rain a newly planted tree about twice my height was slanting to one side, and I decided to worry about that but couldn't get my mind on it. I got stubborn and determined that I damn well was going to worry about that tree, and was fighting it out when suddenly her voice came.
"I knew there was something! Here it is. Listen!"
I wheeled and strode. She read it out.
"Here is something just for you, Peggy dear. So many things have been just for you all my life. I wasn't going to tell even you about this, but now it's finished and I have to. I have written a novel! Its title is "Put Not Your Trust." For a certain reason it can't be published under my name and I have to use a nom de plume, but that won't matter much if you know, so I'm telling you. I have every confidence that it will be published, since I am by no means a duffer when it comes to using the English language. But this is strictly for you alone. You mustn't even tell your husband about it."
Mrs. Potter looked up at me, at her elbow. "There! I had forgotten that he mentioned the title, but I knew - no! What are you -"
She made a quick grab, but not quick enough. I had finally pounced. With my left hand I had snatched the letter from her fingers, and with my right the envelope from the table, and then backed off out of reach.
"Take it easy," I told her. "I'd go through fire for you and I've already gone through water, but this letter goes home with me. It's the only evidence on earth that your brother wrote that novel. I'd rather have this letter than one from Elizabeth Taylor begging me to let her hold my hand. If there's anything in it that you don't want read in a courtroom that part won't be read, but I need it all, including the envelope. If I had to I would knock you down and walk on you to get out of here with it. You'd better take another look at my ears."
She was indignant. "You didn't have to grab it like that."
"Okay, I was impulsive and I apologize. I'll give it back, and you can hand it to me, with the understanding that if you refuse I'll take it by force."
Her eyes twinkled, and she knew it, and flushed a little. She extended a hand. I folded the letter, put it in the envelope, and handed it to her. She looked at it, glanced at me, held it out, and I took it.
"I'm doing this," she said gravely, "because I think my brother would want me to. Poor Len. You think he was killed because he wrote that novel?"
"Yes. Now I know it. It's up to you whether we get the guy that killed him." I got out my notebook, tore out a sheet, and handed it to her. "All you have to do is write that letter on your own paper. Maybe not quite all. I'll tell you the rest."
She started to read it. I sat down. She looked beautiful. The phony logs in the phony fireplace looked beautiful. Even the pouring rain - but no, I won't overdo it.
15
I PHONED Wolfe at 3:23 from a booth in a dragsters somewhere in Glendale. It is always a pleasure to hear him say "Satisfactory" when I have reported on an errand. This time he did better. When I had given him all of it that he needed, including the letter written by Dykes that I had in my pocket and the one written by Mrs. Potter that I had just put an air-mail stamp on and dropped in the slot at the Glendale Post Office, there was a five-second silence and then an emphatic "Very satisfactory." After another five bucks' worth of discussion of plans for the future, covering contingencies as well as possible, I dove through the rain to my waiting taxi and gave the driver an address in downtown Los Angeles. It rained all the way. At an intersection we missed colliding with a truck by an eighth of an inch, and the driver apologized, saying he wasn't used to driving in the rain. I said he soon would be, and he resented it.
The office of the Southwest Agency was on the ninth floor of a dingy old building with elevators that groaned and creaked. It occupied half the floor. I had been there once before, years back, and, having phoned that morning from the hotel that I would probably be dropping in, I was more or less expected. In a corner room a guy named Ferdinand Dolman, with two chins, and fourteen long brown hairs deployed across a bald top, arose to shake hands and exclaim heartily, "Well, well! Nice to see you again! How's the old fatty?"
Few people know Nero Wolfe well enough to call him the old fatty, and this Dolman was not one of them, but it wasn't worth the trouble to try to teach him manners, so I skipped it. I exchanged words with him enough to make it sociable and then told him what I wanted.
"I've got just the man for you," he declared. "He happens to be here right now, just finished a very difficult job. This is a break for you, it really is." He picked up a phone and told it, "Send Gibson in."
In a minute the door opened and a man entered and approached. I gave him one look, and one was enough. He had a cauliflower ear, and his eyes were trying to penetrate a haze that was too thick for them.
Dolman started to speak, but I beat him to it. "No," I said emphatically, "not the type. Not a chance."
Gibson grinned. Dolman told him he could go, and he did so. When the door had closed behind him I got candid. "You've got a nerve, trotting in that self-made ape. If he just did a difficult job I'd hate to see who does your easy ones. I want a man who is educated or can talk like it, not too young and not too old, sharp and quick, able to take on a bushel of new facts and have them ready for use."