Might as Well Be Dead

by Rex Stout

  And so on and so forth. It didn’t look very promising. Evidence of some sort of dedication, such as a love for animals that hop or a determination to be President of the United States, might have helped a little, but it wasn’t there. If his father had really known him, which I doubted, he had been just an ordinary kid who had had a rotten piece of luck, and now it was anybody’s guess what he had turned into. I decided that I didn’t appreciate the plug Lieutenant Murphy of the Missing Persons Bureau had given me, along with Saul Panzer. Any member of the NYPD, from Commissioner Skinner on down, would have given a day’s pay, after taxes, to see Nero Wolfe stub his toe, and it seemed likely that Murphy, after spending a month on it, had figured that this was a fine prospect. I went to the kitchen and told Fritz we had taken on a job that would last two years and would be a washout.

  Fritz smiled and shook his head. “No washouts in this house,” he said positively. “Not with Mr. Wolfe and you both here.” He got a plastic container from the refrigerator, took it to the table, and removed the lid.

  “Hey,” I protested, “we had shad roe for lunch! Again for dinner?”

  “My dear Archie.” He was superior, to me, only about food. “They were merely saute, with a simple little sauce, only chives and chervil. These will be en casserole , with anchovy butter made by me. The sheets of larding will be rubbed with five herbs. With the cream to cover will be an onion and three other herbs, to be removed before serving. The roe season is short, and Mr. Wolfe could enjoy it three times a day. You can go to Al’s place on Tenth Avenue and enjoy a ham on rye with coleslaw.” He shuddered.

  It developed into an argument, but I avoided getting out on a limb, not wanting to have to drop off into Al’s place. We were still at it when, at six o’clock, I heard the elevator bringing Wolfe down from the plant rooms, and after winding it up with no hard feelings I left Fritz to his sheets of larding and went back to the office.

  Wolfe was standing over by the bookshelves, looking at the globe, which was even bigger around than he was, checking to make sure that Omaha, Nebraska, was where it always had been. That done, he crossed over to his desk, and around it, and lowered his colossal corpus into his custom-made chair.

  He cocked his head to survey the Feraghan, which covered all the central expanse, 14 x 26. “It’s April,” he said, “and that rug’s dirty. I must remind Fritz to send it to be cleaned and put the others down.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, looking down at him. “But for a topic for discussion that won’t last long. If you want to avoid discussing Paul Herold start something with some body to it, like the Middle East.”

  He grunted. “I don’t have to avoid it. According to Lieutenant Murphy, that’s for you and Saul. Have you reached Saul?”

  “Yes. We’re going to disguise ourselves as recruiting officers for the Salvation Army. He starts at the Battery and works north, and I start at Van Cortlandt Park and work south. We’ll meet at Grant’s Tomb on Christmas Eve and compare notes, and then start in on Brooklyn. Have you anything better to suggest?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He sighed, deep. “It may be hopeless. Has that Lieutenant Murphy any special reason to bear me a grudge?”

  “It doesn’t have to be special. He’s a cop, that’s enough.”

  “I suppose so.” He shut his eyes, and in a moment opened them again. “I should have declined the job. Almost certainly he has never been known in New York as Paul Herold. That picture is eleven years old. What does he look like now? It’s highly probable that he doesn’t want to be found and, if so, he has been put on the alert by the advertisements. The police are well qualified for the task of locating a missing person, and if after a full month they-Get Lieutenant Murphy on the phone.”

  I went to my desk and dialed CA 6-2000, finally persuaded a sergeant that only Murphy would do, and, when I had him, signaled to Wolfe. I stayed on.

  “Lieutenant Murphy? This is Nero Wolfe. A man named James R. Herold, of Omaha, Nebraska, called on me this afternoon to engage me to find his son Paul. He said you had given him my name. He also said your bureau has been conducting a search for his son for about a month. Is that correct?”

  “That’s correct. Did you take the job?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Good luck, Mr. Wolfe.”

  “Thank you. May I ask, did you make any progress?”

  “None whatever. All we got was dead ends.”

  “Did your search go beyond your set routine?”

  “That depends on what you call routine. It was a clear-cut case and the boy had had a rough deal, and you could say we made a special effort. I’ve still got a good man on it. If you want to send Goodwin down with a letter from Herold we’ll be glad to show him the reports.”

  “Thank you. You have no suggestions?”

  “I’m afraid not. Good luck.”

  Wolfe didn’t thank him again. We hung up.

  “Swell,” I said. “He thinks he’s handed you a gazookis. The hell of it is, he’s probably right. So where do we start?”

  “Not at the Battery,” Wolfe growled.

  “Okay, but where? It may even be worse than we think. What if Paul framed himself for the theft of the twenty-six grand so as to have an excuse to get away from father? Having met father, I would buy that. And seeing the ad asking him to communicate with father-not mentioning mother or sisters, just father-and saying a mistake was made, what does he do? He either beats it to Peru or the Middle East-there’s the Middle East again-or he goes and buys himself a set of whiskers. That’s an idea; we can check on all sales of whiskers in the last month, and if we find-”

  “Shut up. It is an idea.”

  I stared. “My God, it’s not that desperate. I was merely trying to stir your blood up and get your brain started, as usual, and if you-”

  “I said shut up. Is it too late to get an advertisement into tomorrow’s papers?”

  “The Gazette , no. The Times , maybe.”

  “Your notebook.”

  Even if he had suddenly gone batty, I was on his payroll. I went to my desk, got the notebook, turned to a fresh page, and took my pen.

  “Not in the classified columns,” he said. “A display two columns wide and three inches high. Headed ‘To P.H.’ in large boldface, with periods after the P and H. Then this text, in smaller type: ‘Your innocence is known and the injustice done you is regretted.’” He paused. “Change the ‘regretted’ to ‘deplored.’ Resume: ‘Do not let bitterness prevent righting of a wrong.’ “ Pause again. “ ‘No unwelcome contact will be urged upon you, but your help is needed to expose the true culprit. I engage to honor your reluctance to resume any tie you have renounced.’ “

  He pursed his lips a moment, then nodded. “That will do. Followed by my name and address and phone number.”

  “Why not mention mother?” I asked.

  “We don’t know how he feels toward his mother.”

  “He sent her birthday cards.”

  “By what impulsion? Do you know?”

  “No.”

  “Then it would be risky. We can safely assume only two emotions for him: resentment of the wrong done him, and a desire to avenge it. If he lacks those he is less or more than human, and we’ll never find him. I am aware, of course, that this is a random shot at an invisible target and a hit would be a prodigy. Have you other suggestions?”

  I said no and swiveled the typewriter to me.

  Chapter 2

  AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT there are probably 38,437 people in the metropolitan area who have been unjustly accused of something, or think they have, and 66 of them have the initials P.H. One-half of 66, or 33, saw that ad, and one-third of the 33, or 11, answered it-three of them by writing letters, six by phoning, and two by calling in person at the old brownstone house on West 35th Street, Manhattan, which Wolfe owns, inhabits, and dominates except when I decide that he has gone too far.

  The first reaction was not from a P.H. but an L.C.-Lon Cohen of the Gazette . He phoned Tuesday mornin
g and asked what the line was on the Hays case. I said we had no line on any Hays case, and he said nuts.

  He went on. “Wolfe runs an ad telling P.H. he knows he’s innocent, but you have no line? Come on, come on. After all the favors I’ve done you? All I ask is-”

  I cut him off. “Wrong number. But I should have known, and so should Mr. Wolfe. We do read the papers, so we know a guy named Peter Hays is on trial for murder. Not our P.H. But it could be a damn nuisance. I hope to God he doesn’t see the ad.”

  “Okay. You’re sitting on it, and when Wolfe’s sitting on something it’s being sat on good. But when you’re ready to loosen up, think of me. My name is Damon, Pythias.”

  Since there was no use trying to convince him, I skipped it. I didn’t buzz Wolfe, who was up in the plant rooms for his morning exercise, to ride him for not remembering there was a P.H. being tried for murder, because I should have remembered it myself.

  The other P.H.’s kept me busy, off and on, most of the day. One named Phillip Horgan was no problem, because he came in person and one look was enough. He was somewhat older than our client. The other one who came in person, while we were at lunch, was tougher. His name was Perry Hettinger, and he refused to believe the ad wasn’t aimed at him. By the time I got rid of him and returned to the dining room Wolfe had cleaned up the kidney pie and I got no second helping.

  The phone calls were more complicated, since I couldn’t see the callers. I eliminated three of them through appropriate and prolonged conversation, but the other three had to have a look, so I made appointments to see them; and since I had to stick around I phoned Saul Panzer, who came and got one of the pictures father had left and went to keep the appointments. It was an insult to Saul to give him such a kindergarten assignment, considering that he is the best operative alive and rates sixty bucks a day, but the client had asked for him and it was the client’s dough.

  The complication of a P.H.’s being on trial for murder was as big a nuisance as I expected, and then some. All the papers phoned, including the Times , and two of them sent journalists to the door, where I chatted with them on the threshold. Around noon there was a phone call from Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide. He wanted to speak to Wolfe, and I said Mr. Wolfe was engaged, which he was. He was working on a crossword puzzle by Ximenes in the London Observer . I asked Purley if I could help him.

  “You never have yet,” he rumbled. “But neither has Wolfe. But when he runs a display ad telling a man on trial for murder that he knows he’s innocent and he wants to expose the true culprit, we want to know what he’s trying to pull and we’re going to. If he won’t tell me on the phone I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be glad to save you the trip,” I assured him. “Tell you what. You wouldn’t believe me anyway, so call Lieutenant Murphy at the Missing Persons Bureau. He’ll tell you all about it.”

  “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 t
o, 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?