Plot It Yourself

by Rex Stout

  “I dislike covering ground that has already been trampled,” Wolfe said. “You omitted a detail. The outline resembled your play?”

  “It didn’t resemble it, it was my play, without the dialogue.”

  Wolfe’s eyes went to Harvey. “That makes four. You said five?”

  Harvey nodded. “The last one is fresher, but one member of the cast is the same as in the first one. Alice Porter. The woman who got eighty-five thousand dollars out of Ellen Sturdevant. She’s coming back for more.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Yes. Three months ago the Victory Press published Knock at My Door , a novel by Amy Wynn. Amy?”

  Amy Wynn’s nose twitched. “I’m not very good…” She stopped and turned to Imhof, at her left. “You tell it, Reuben.”

  Imhof gave her shoulder a little pat. “You’re plenty good, Amy,” he assured her. He focused on Wolfe. “This one is fresh all right. We published Miss Wynn’s book on February 4th, and we ordered the sixth printing, twenty thousand, yesterday. That will make the total a hundred and thirty thousand. Ten days ago we received a letter signed Alice Porter, dated May 7th, saving that Knock at My Door was taken from an unpublished story she wrote three years ago, with the title ‘Opportunity Knocks.’ That she sent the story to Amy Wynn in June of 1957, with a letter asking for comment and criticism, and it has never been acknowledged or returned. According to pattern. Of course we showed the letter to Miss Wynn. She assured us that she had never received any such story or letter, and we accepted her assurance without reservation. Not having a lawyer or an agent, she asked us what she should do. We told her to make sure without delay that no such manuscript was concealed in her home, or any other premises where she could be supposed to have put it, such as the home of a close relative, and to take all possible steps to guard against an attempt to plant the manuscript. Our attorney wrote a brief letter to Alice Porter, rejecting her claim, and upon investigation he learned that she is the Alice Porter who made the claim against Ellen Sturdevant in 1955. I telephoned the executive secretary of the National Association of Authors and Dramatists to suggest that it might be desirable to make Miss Wynn a member of the Joint Committee on Plagiarism, which had been formed only a month previously, and that was done the next day. I was myself already a member. That’s how it stands. No further communication has been received from Alice Porter.”

  Wolfe’s eyes moved. “You have taken the steps suggested, Miss Wynn?”

  “Of course.” She wasn’t bad-looking when her nose stayed put. “Mr Imhof had his secretary help me look. We didn’t find it-anything.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I have a little apartment in the Village-Arbor Street.”

  “Does anyone live with you?”

  “No.” She flushed a little, which made her almost pretty. “I have never married.”

  “How long have you lived there?”

  “A little more than a year. I moved there in March last year-fourteen months.”

  “Where had you lived?”

  “On Perry Street. I shared an apartment with two other girls.”

  “How long had you lived there?”

  “About three years.” Her nose twitched. “I don’t quite see how that matters.”

  “It might. You were living there in June 1957, when Alice Porter claims she sent you the story. That would be a suitable place for the story to be found. Did you and Mr Imhof’s secretary search that apartment?”

  “No,” Her eyes had widened. “Of course. Good heavens! Of course I’ll do it right away.”

  “But you can’t guard against the future.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “I offer a suggestion. Arrange immediately to have that apartment and the one you now occupy searched throughout by two reliable persons, preferably a man and a woman, who have no connection with you or the Victory Press. You should not be present. Tell them that they must be so thorough that when they are through they must be prepared to testify under oath that no such manuscript was on the premises-unless, of course, they find it. If you don’t know how to go about getting someone for the job, Mr Imholf will, or his attorney-or I could. Will you do that?”

  She looked at Imhof. He spoke. “It certainly should be done. Obviously. I should have thought of it myself. Will you get the man and woman?”

  “If desired, yes. They should also search any other premises with which Miss Wynn has had close association. You have no agent. Miss Wynn?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever had one?”

  “No.” Again the little flush. “ Knock at My Door is my first novel-my first published one. Before that I had only had a few stories in magazines, and no agent would take me-at least no good one. This has been a big shock, Mr Wolfe-my first book such a big success, and you can imagine I was up riding the clouds, and then all of a sudden this-this awful business.”

  Wolfe nodded. “No doubt. Do you own a motor car?”

  “Yes. I bought one last month.”

  “It must be searched. What else? Do you have a locker at a tennis court?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Do you frequently spend the night away from your home? Fairly frequently?”

  I expected that to bring a bigger and better flush, but apparently her mind was purer than mine. She shook her head. “Almost never. I’m not a very social creature, Mr Wolfe. I guess I really have no intimate friends. My only close relatives, my father and mother, live in Montana, and I haven’t been there for ten years. You said they should search any premises with which I have had close association, but there aren’t any.”

  Wolfe’s head turned. “As I told you on the phone, Mr Harvey, I know nothing about plagiarism, but I would have supposed that it concerned an infringement of copyright. All five of these claims were based on material that had not been published and so were not protected by copyright. Why were the claims not merely ignored?”

  “They couldn’t be,” Harvey said. “It’s not that simple. I’m not a lawyer, and if you want it in legal terms you can get it from the NAAD counsel, but there’s a property right, I believe they call it, in these things even if they haven’t been copyrighted. It was in a court trial before a judge that a jury awarded Jane Ogilvy a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. Do you want me to get our counsel on the phone?”

  “That can wait. First I need to know what you want to hire me to do. The first three cases are history, and apparently the fourth, Mr Oshin’s, soon will be. Do you want me to investigate on behalf of Miss Wynn?”

  “No. I should say, yes and no. This committee was set up six weeks ago, before the claim on Miss Wynn was made. It had been authorized at a meeting of the NAAD council in March. It seemed fairly obvious to us what had happened. Alice Porter’s putting the squeeze on Ellen Sturdevant, and getting away with it, had started a ball rolling. Her method was copied exactly by Simon Jacobs with Richard Echols, except for one detail, the way he established the priority of his manuscript and the assumption of Echols’s access to it; and he changed that one detail because he actually had sent a novelette to that literary agency, Norris and Baum, and had it returned. He merely took advantage of something that had happened two years back. Of course the manuscript which was the basis of his claim-the one he allowed Title House and Echols to inspect-was not the one he had sent to Norris and Baum in 1954. He had written it after Echols’s novel had been published and gave it the same title as the one he had sent to Norris and Baum-‘What’s Mine Is Yours.’ ”

  Wolfe grunted. “You may omit the obvious. You are assuming, I take it, that that was the procedure in all five cases: plagiarism upside down. The manuscript supporting the claim was written after the book was published or the play produced and had achieved success,”

  “Certainly,” Harvey agreed. “That was the pattern. The third one, Jane Ogilvy, followed it exactly, the only difference being that she had a stroke of luck. Whatever plan she had for discovery of the manuscript in Marjorie Lippin’s home, she didn’t ha
ve to use it, for Mrs Lippin conveniently died. Again, with Kenneth Rennert, the only difference was the way the manuscript was found.”

  He stopped to cover his mouth with his palm, and a noise came, too feeble to be called a belch. “Sausage for breakfast,” he said, for the record. “I shouldn’t. That’s how it stood when this committee had its first meeting. At the NAAD council meeting a prominent novelist had said that he had a new book scheduled for early fall and he hoped to God it would be a flop, and nobody laughed. At the first meeting of this committee Gerald Knapp, president of Knapp and Bowen- How did you put it, Mr Knapp?”

  Knapp passed his tongue over his lips. “I said that it hasn’t hit us yet, but we have three novels on the bestseller list, and we hate to open our mail.”

  “So that’s the situation,” Harvey told Wolfe. “And now Alice Porter is repeating. Something has to be done. It has to be stopped. About a dozen lawyers have been consulted, authors’ and publishers’ lawyers, and none of them has an idea that is worth a damn. Except one maybe-the one who suggested that we put it up to you. Can you stop it?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “You don’t mean that, Mr Harvey.”

  “I don’t mean what?”

  “That question. If you expect me to say no, you wouldn’t have come. If you expect me to say yes, you must think me a swaggerer, and again you wouldn’t have come. I certainly wouldn’t undertake to make it impossible for anyone ever again to extort money from an author by the stratagem you have described.”

  “We wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “Then what would you expect?”

  “We would expect you to do something about this situation that would make us pay your bill not only because we had to but also because we felt that you had earned it and we had got our money’s worth.”

  Wolfe nodded. “That’s more like it. That was phrased as might be expected from the author of Why the Gods Laugh , which I have just read. I had been thinking that you write better than you talk, but you put that well because you had been challenged. Do you want to hire me on those terms?”

  Harvey looked at Gerald Knapp, and then at Dexter. They looked at each other. Reuben Imhof asked Wolfe, “Could you give us some idea of how you would go about it and what your fee would be?”

  “No, sir,” Wolfe told him.

  “What the hell,” Mortimer Oshin said, squashing a cigarette, “he couldn’t guarantee anything anyway, could he?”

  “I would vote for proceeding on those terms,” Gerald Knapp said, “providing it is understood that we can terminate the arrangement at any time.”

  “That sounds like a clause in a book contract,” Harvey said. “Will you accept it, Mr Wolfe?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then you’re in favour, Mr Knapp?”

  “Yes. It was our attorney who suggested coming to Nero Wolfe.”

  “Miss Wynn?”

  “Yes, if the others are. That was a good idea, having my apartment searched, and the one on Perry Street.”

  “Mr Oshin?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mr Dexter?”

  “With the understanding that we can terminate at will, yes.”

  “Mr Imhof?”

  Imhof had his head cocked. “I’m willing to go along, but I’d like to mention a couple of points. Mr Wolfe says he can’t give us any idea of how he’ll go about it, and naturally we can’t expect him to pull a rabbit out of a hat here and now, but, as he said himself, the first three cases are history and the fourth one soon will be. But Miss Wyim’s isn’t. It’s hot. The claim has just been made, and it was made by Alice Porter, the woman who started it. So I think he should concentrate on that. My second point is this, if he does concentrate on Alice Porter, and if he gets her, if he makes her withdraw the claim, I think Miss Wynn might feel that it would be fair and proper for her to pay part of Mr Wolfe’s fee. Don’t you think so, Amy?”

  “Why-yes.” Her nose twitched. “Of course.”

  “It might also,” Harvey put in, “be fair and proper for the Victory Press to pay part. Don’t you think so?”

  “We will.” Imhof grinned at him. “Well contribute to the BPA’s share. We might even kick in a little extra.” He went to Wolfe. “How about concentrating on Alice Porter?”

  “I may do that, sir. Upon consideration.” Wolfe focused on the chairman. “Who is my client? Not this committee.”

  “Well…” Harvey looked at Gerald Knapp. Knapp smiled and spoke. “The arrangement, Mr Wolfe, is that the Book Publishers of America and the National Association of Authors and Dramatists will each pay half of any expenses incurred by this committee. They are your clients. You will report to Mr Harvey, the committee chairman, as their agent. I trust that is satisfactory?”

  “Yes. This may be a laborious and costly operation, and I must ask for an advance against expenses. Say five thousand dollars?”

  Knapp looked at Harvey. Harvey said, “All right. You’ll get it.”

  “Very well.” Wolfe straightened up, took a deep breath, and let it out. It looked as if he were going to have to dig in and do a little work, and it takes a lot of oxygen to face a prospect as dismal as that. “Naturally,” he said, “I must have all records and documents pertaining to all of the cases, or copies of them. Everything. Including, for instance, the reports from the detective agency hired by Mr Oshin. I can form no plan until I am fully informed, but it may help to get answers to a few questions now. Mr Harvey. Has any effort been made to discover a connection among Alice Porter, Simon Jacobs, Jane Ogilvy, and Kenneth Rennert, or between any two of them?”

  Harvey nodded. “Sure, that’s been tried. By the lawyer representing Marjorie Lippin’s heirs, her son and daughter, and by the detective agency Oshin hired. They didn’t find any.”

  “Where are the four manuscripts on which the claims were based? Not copies, the manuscripts themselves. Are they available?”

  “We have two of them, Alice Porter’s ‘There Is Only Love’ and Simon Jacobs’ ‘What’s Mine Is Yours.’ Jane Ogilvy’s ‘On Earth but Not in Heaven’ was an exhibit in evidence at the trial, and after she won the case it was returned to her. We have a copy of it-a copy, not a facsimile. Kenneth Rennert’s play outline, ‘A Bushel of Love,’ is in the possession of Oshin’s attorney, and he won’t give us a copy of it. Of course we-”

  Mortimer Oshin postponed striking a match to mutter, “He won’t even let me have a copy.”

  Harvey finished, “Of course we know nothing about Alice Porter’s ‘Opportunity Knocks,’ the basis of her claim against Amy Wynn. I have a suspicion that you’ll find it when you search the apartment Miss Wynn lived in on Perry Street. If you do, then what?”

  “I have no idea.” Wolfe made a face. “Confound it, you have merely shown me the skeleton, and I am not a wizard. I must know what has been done and what has been overlooked, in each case. What of the paper and typing of the manuscripts? Did they offer no grounds for a challenge? What of the records and backgrounds of the claimants? Did Jane Ogilvy testify at the trial, and was she cross-examined competently? How did Alice Porter’s manuscript get into Ellen Sturdevant’s bureau drawer? How did Jane Ogilvy’s manuscript get into the trunk in Marjorie Lippin’s attic? How did Kenneth Rennert’s play outline get into the file of Mr Oshin’s former agent? Was any sort of answer found, even a conjectural one, to any of those questions?”

  He spread his hands. “And there is the question, what about your assumption that all of the claims were fraudulent? I can’t swallow it with my eyes shut. I can accept it as a working hypothesis, but I can’t dismiss the possibility that one or more of the supposed victims is a thief and a liar. ‘Most writers steal a good thing when they can’ is doubtless an-”

  “Blah!” Mortimer Oshin exploded.

  Wolfe’s brows went up. “That was in quotation marks, Mr Oshin. It was said, or written, more than a century ago by Barry Cornwall, the English poet and dramatist. He wrote Mirandola , a tragedy performed at Covent Garden with Macread
y and Kemble. It is doubtless an exaggeration, but it is not blah. If there had been then in England a National Association of Authors and Dramatists, Barry Cornwall would have been a member. So that question must remain open along with the others.”

  His eyes moved. “Miss Wynn. The search of the apartments should not be delayed. Will you arrange it, or shall I?”

  Amy Wynn looked at Imhof. He told her, “Let him do it.” She told Wolfe, “You do it.”

  “Very well. You will get permission from your former fellow tenants at Perry Street, and you will admit the searchers to your present apartment and then absent yourself. Archie, get Saul Panzer and Miss Bonner.”

  I turned to the phone and dialed.

  Chapter 3

  Thirty-four hours later, at eleven o’clock Wednesday evening, Wolfe straightened up in his chair and spoke. “Archie.”

  My fingers, on the typewriter keys, stopped. “Yes, sir?”

  “Another question has been answered.”

  “Good. Which one?”

  “About the candor of the victims. Their bona fides is established. They were swindled. Look here.”

  I got up and crossed to his desk. To get there I had to detour around a table that had been brought from the front room to hold about half a ton of paper. There were correspondence folders, newspaper clippings, photographs, mimeographed reports, transcripts of telephone conversations, photostats, books, tear sheets, lists of names and addresses, affidavits, and miscellaneous items. With time out only for meals and sleep and his two daily sessions in the plant rooms on the roof, Wolfe had spent the thirty-four hours working through it, and so had I. We had both read all of it except the four books- The Colour of Passion , by Ellen Sturdevant. Hold Fast to All I Give You , by Richard Echols, Sacred or Profane , by Marjorie Lippin, and Knock at My Door , by Amy Wynn. There was no point in wading through them, since it was acknowledged that their plots and characters and action were the same as those in the stories on which the claims had been based.