Might as Well Be Dead

by Rex Stout

  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. Words 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.”

  His lips tightened. He released them. “How strong an impression? Sit down. You know I don’t like to stretch my neck.”

  I went to my chair and swiveled to face him. “I was breaking it gently. It’s not an impression, it’s a fact. Do you want details?”

  “Relevant ones, yes.”

  “Then the first one first. When I left here a tail picked me up. Also a fact, not an impression. I didn’t have time to tease him along and corner him, so I passed it. He didn’t follow me downtown-not that that matters.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Next.”

  “When I got to the courtroom the jury was still out, but they soon came in. I was up front, in the third row. When the defendant was brought in he passed within twenty feet of me and I had a good look, but it was brief and it was mostly three-quarters and profile. I wasn’t sure. I would have settl
ed for tossing a coin. When he sat, his back was to me. But when the foreman announced the verdict he stood up and turned around to survey the audience, and what he was doing, or wanting to do, was to tell somebody to go to hell. I got his full face, and for that instant there was something in it, a kind of cocky something, that made it absolutely the face of that kid in the picture. Put a flattop and a kimono on him and take eleven years off, and he was Paul Herold. I got up and left. And by the way, another detail. That lawyer, Albert Freyer, I told him in effect that we weren’t interested in Peter Hays and he saw me in the courtroom and snarled at me and said we’d hear from him.”

  Wolfe sat and regarded me. He heaved a sigh. “Confound it. But our only engagement was to find him. Can we inform Mr. Herold that we have done so?”

  “No. I’m sure, but not that sure. We tell him his son has been convicted of murder, and he comes from Omaha to take a look at him through the bars, and says no. That would be nice. Lieutenant Murphy expected to get a grin out of this, but that wouldn’t be a grin, it would be a horse laugh. Not to mention what I would get from you. Nothing doing.”

  “Are you suggesting that we’re stalemated?”

  “Not at all. The best thing would be for you to see him and talk with him and decide it yourself, but since you refuse to run errands outside the house, and since he is in no condition to drop in for a chat, I suppose it’s up to me-I mean the errand. Getting me in to him is your part.”

  He was frowning. “You have your gifts, Archie. I have always admired your resourcefulness when faced by barriers.”

  “Yeah, so have I. But I have my limitations, and this is it. I was considering it in the taxi on the way home. Cramer or Stebbins or Mandelbaum, or anyone else on the public payroll, would have to know what for, and they would tell Murphy and he would take over, and if he is Paul Herold, who would have found him? Murphy. It calls for better gifts than mine. Yours.”

  He grunted. He rang for beer. “Full report, please. All you saw and heard in the courtroom.”

  I obliged. That didn’t take long. When I finished, with my emergency exit as the clerk was polling the jury, he asked for the Times’s report of the trial, and I went to the cupboard and got it-all issues from March 27 to date. He started at the beginning, and since I thought I might as well bone up on it myself, I started at the end and went backward. He had reached April 2, and I had worked back to April 4, and there would soon have been a collision but for an interruption. The doorbell rang. I went to the hall, and seeing, through the one-way glass panel of the front door, a sloppy charcoal topcoat and a black homburg that I had already seen twice that day, I recrossed the sill of the office and told Wolfe, “He kept his word. Albert Freyer.”

  His brows went up. “Let him in,” he growled.

  Chapter 3

  THE COUNSELOR-AT-LAW hadn’t had a shave, but it must be admitted that the circumstances called for allowances. I suppose he thought he was flattening somebody when, convoyed to the office and introduced, he didn’t extend a hand, but if so he was wrong. Wolfe is not a hand-shaker.

  When Freyer had got lowered into the red leather chair Wolfe swiveled to face him and said affably, “Mr. Goodwin has told me about you, and about the adverse verdict on your client. Regrettable.”

  “Did he tell you you would hear from me?”

  “Yes, he mentioned that.”

  “All right, here I am.” Freyer wasn’t appreciating the big, comfortable chair; he was using only the front half of it, his palms on his knees. “Goodwin told me your ad in today’s papers had no connection with my client, Peter Hays. He said you had never heard of him. I didn’t believe him. And less than an hour later he appears in the courtroom where my client was on trial. That certainly calls for an explanation, and I want it. I am convinced that my client is innocent. I am convinced that he is the victim of a diabolical frame-up. I don’t say that your ad was a part of the plot, I admit I don’t see how it could have been since it appeared on the day the case went to the jury, but I intend to-”

  “Mr. Freyer.” Wolfe was showing him a palm. “If you please. I can simplify this for you.”

  “You can’t simplify it until you explain it to my satisfaction.”

  “I know that. That’s why I am prepared to do something I have rarely done, and should never do except under compulsion. It is now compelled by extraordinary circumstances. I’m going to tell you what a client of mine has told me. Of course you’re a member of the New York bar?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And you are attorney-of-record for Peter Hays?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m going to tell you something in confidence.”

  Freyer’s eyes narrowed. “I will not be bound in confidence in any matter affecting my client’s interests.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. The only bond will be your respect for another man’s privacy. The interests of your client and my client may or may not intersect. If they do we’ll consider the matter; if they don’t, I shall rely on your discretion. This is the genesis of that advertisement.”

  He told him. He didn’t report our long session with James R. Herold verbatim, but neither did he skimp it. When he was through, Freyer had a clear and complete picture of where we stood up to four o’clock that afternoon, when Freyer had rung our doorbell. The lawyer was a good listener and had interrupted only a couple of times, once to get a point straight and once to ask to see the picture of Paul Herold.

  “Before I go on,” Wolfe said, “I invite verification. Of course Mr. Goodwin’s corroboration would have no validity for you, but you may inspect his transcription of the notes he made, five typewritten pages. Or you can phone Lieutenant Murphy, provided you don’t tell him who you are. On that, of course, I am at your mercy. At this juncture I don’t want him to start investigating a possible connection between your P.H. and my P.H.”

  “Verification can wait,” Freyer conceded. “You would be a fool to invent such a tale, and I’m quite aware that you’re not a fool.” He had backed up in the chair and got more comfortable. “Finish it up.”

  “There’s not much more. When you told Mr. Goodwin that your client’s background was unknown to you and that he had no family, he decided he had better have a look at Peter Hays, and he went to the courtroom for that purpose. His first glimpse of him, when he was brought into court, left him uncertain; but when, upon hearing the verdict, your client rose and turned to face the crowd, his face had a quite different expression. It had, or Mr. Goodwin thought it had, an almost conclusive resemblance to the picture of the youthful Paul Herold. When you asked to see the picture, I asked you to wait. Now I ask you to look at it. Archie?”

  I got one from the drawer and went and handed it to Freyer. He studied it a while, shut his eyes, opened them again,and studied it some more. “It could be,” he conceded. “It could easily be.” He looked at it some more. “Or it couldn’t.” He looked at me. “What was it about his face when he turned to look at the crowd?”

  “There was life in it. There was-uh-spirit. As I told Mr. Wolfe, he was telling someone to go to hell, or ready to.”

  Freyer shook his head. “I’ve never seen him like that, with any life in him. The first time I saw him he said he might as well be dead. He had nothing but despair, and he never has had.”

  “I take it,” Wolfe said, “that as far as you know he could be Paul Herold. You know nothing of his background or connections that precludes it?”

  “No.” The lawyer considered it. “No, I don’t. He has refused to disclose his background, and he says he has no living relatives. That was one of the things against him with the District Attorney-not evidential, of course, but you know how that is.”

  Wolfe nodded. “Now, do you wish to verify my account?”

  “No. I accept it. As I said, you’re not a fool.”

  “Then let’s consider the situation. I would like to ask two questions.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Is your client in a
position to pay adequately for your services?”

  “No, he isn’t. Adequately, no. That is no secret. I took the case at the request of a friend-the head of the advertising agency he works for-or worked for. All his associates at the agency like him and speak well of him, and so do others-all his friends and acquaintances I have had contact with. I could have had dozens of character witnesses if that would have helped any. But in addition to the prison bars he has erected his own barrier to shut the world out-even his best friends.”

  “Then if he is Paul Herold it seems desirable to establish that fact. My client is a man of substantial means. I am not trying to stir your cupidity, but the laborer is worthy of his hire. If you’re convinced of your client’s innocence you will want to appeal, and that’s expensive. My second question: will you undertake to resolve our doubt? Will you find out, the sooner the better, whether your P.H. is my P.H.?”

  “Well.” Freyer put his elbows on the chair arms and flattened his palms together. “I don’t know. He’s a very difficult man. He wouldn’t take the stand. I wanted him to, but he wouldn’t. I don’t know how I’d go about this. He would resent it, I’m sure of that, after the attitude he has taken to my questions about his background, and it might become impossible for me to continue to represent him.” Abruptly he leaned forward and his eyes gleamed. “And I want to represent him! I’m convinced he was framed, and there’s still a chance of proving it!”

  “Then if you will permit a suggestion”-Wolfe was practically purring-“do you agree that it’s desirable. to learn if he is Paul Herold?”