Might as Well Be Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 settled 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.