Final Deduction

"Excuse me. I'll do the spiel. When you first looked at it you noticed, as I did, that whoever typed it had an uneven touch. Later, while I was phoning, you looked at it again, got an idea, and came and compared it with the keyboard, and you saw that all the letters that were faint were on the left-not just left of center, but at the left end. W, E, A, S. and D. So you conjectured that the typist had been someone who used all his fingers, not just two or four, and that for some-"

"And probably typed by touch, because-"

"Excuse me, I'm doing the spiel. The touch was merely a probable. And for some reason the ring and little fingers of his left hand had not hit the keys as hard as the other fingers, not nearly as hard. Okay. I caught up with you after lunch, while you were reading, just before she came. You saw me comparing the note with the keyboard."

"No. I was reading."

"Let me not believe that. You miss nothing, though you often pretend to. You saw me all right. Then she came, and you went on ahead of me again, and I admit I ought to be docked. My eyes are as good as yours, and I had been closer to her than you were, but you noticed that the tips of those two fingers on her left hand were discoloured and slightly swollen, and I didn't. Of course when you told her we wanted her prints I saw it, and you will ignore what I said about being docked because I found out how and when the fingers got hurt. Any corrections?"

"No. It is still a conjecture, not a conclusion."

"Damn close to it. One will get you fifty. That it is just a coincidence that she, a touch typist, living in that house, hurt just those two fingers, just at that time, just enough to make her go easy with them but not enough to stop using them-nuts. One will get you a hundred. So you had her read that notice and rubbed it in, thinking she'll get in touch with Mr Knapp. Why did you let her walk out?"

Wolfe nodded. "The alternative was obvious. Go at her. Would she have yielded?"

"No. She's tough."

"And if Mr Vail is already dead, as he well may be, it would be folly to let her know what we suspect. If he is alive, no better. She would have flouted me. Detain her forcibly, as a hostage, on a mere suspicion, however well grounded, and notify Mr Knapp that we would exchange her for Mr Vail? That would have been a coup, but how to reach Mr Knapp? It's too late to get another notice in the paper. Have you a suggestion?"

"Yes. I go to see Mrs Vail to ask her something, no matter what, and I manage somehow to get something written on the typewriter Dinah Utley uses. Of course she could have used another machine for the note, but if what I got matched the note, that would settle that."

He shook his head. "No. You have ingenuity and can even be delicate, but Miss Utley would almost certainly get a hint. Besides, to ask a question she asked, would it help to get Mr Vail back alive? No." He glanced at the clock. In ten minutes he would leave for his four-to-six afternoon session in the plant rooms. Time enough for a few pages. He reached and got his book and opened to his place.

CHAPTER 3

It's possible that I have given a wrong impression of Jimmy Vail, and if so I should correct it.

Age, thirty-four; height, five feet ten; weight, 150. Dark eyes, sometimes lazy and dull, sometimes bright and very quick. Smooth dark hair, nearly black, and a neat white face with a wide mouth. I had seen him about as often as I had seen his wife, since they were nearly always together at a restaurant or theater. In 1956 he had made a big splash at the Glory Hole in the Village with a thirty-minute turn of personal chatter, pointed comments on everyone and everything. Althea Tedder, widow of Harold F. Tedder, had seen him there, and in 1957 she had married him, or he had married her, depending on who is talking.

I suppose any woman who marries a man a dozen years younger is sure to get the short end of the stick when her name comes up among friends, let alone enemies, no matter what the facts are. The talk may have been just talk. Women of any age liked Jimmy Vail and liked to be with him, there was no question about that, and undoubtedly he could have two-timed his middle-aged wife any day in the week if he felt like it, but I had never with my own eyes seen him in the act. I'm merely saying that as far as I know, disregarding talk, he was a model husband. I had expected her to ask Wolfe to put a tail on him because I assumed that her friends had seen to it that she knew about the talk.

She also had made a public splash, twenty-five years back-Althea Purcell as the milkmaid in Meadow Lark-and she had quit to marry a man somewhat older and a lot richer. They had produced two children, a son and a daughter; I had seen them a couple of times at the Flamingo. Tedder had died in 1954, so Althea had waited a decent interval to get a replacement.