Might as Well Be Dead

“Very well. You want to appeal and I want to collect my fee. I warned my client that the search might take months. I shall tell him merely that I am working on his problem, as I shall be. You will give me all the information you have, all of it, and I’ll investigate. In thirty days-much less, I hope-I’ll know where we stand. If it is hopeless there will be nothing for it but A or B, and that decision can wait. If it is promising we’ll proceed. If and when we get evidence that will clear your client, my client will be informed and he will foot the bill. Your client may not like it but he’ll have to lump it; and anyway, I doubt if he would really rather die in the electric chair than face his father again, especially since he will be under no burden of guilt, either of theft or of murder. I make this proposal not as a paragon, but only as a procedure less repugnant than either A or B. Well, sir?”

The lawyer was squinting at him. “You say you’ll investigate. Who will pay for that?”

“I will. That’s the rub. I’ll hope to get it back.”

“But if you don’t?”

“Then I don’t.”

“There should be a written agreement.”

“There won’t be. I take the risk of failure; you’ll have to take the risk of my depravity.” Wolfe’s voice suddenly became a bellow. “Confound it, it is your client who has been convicted of murder, not mine!”

Freyer was startled, as well he might be. Wolfe can bellow. “I meant no offense,” he said mildly. “I had no thought of depravity. As you say, the risk is yours. I accept your proposal. Now what?”

Wolfe glanced up at the wall clock and settled back in his chair. A full hour till lunchtime. “Now,” he said, “I want all the facts. I’ve read the newspaper accounts, but I want them from you.”

Chapter 5

PETER HAYS HAD BEEN convicted of killing the husband of the woman he loved, on the evening of January 3, by shooting him in the side of the head, above the left ear, with a Marley.38. I might as well account for things as I go along, but I can’t account for the Marley because it had been taken by a burglar from a house in Poughkeepsie in 1947 and hadn’t been seen in public since. The prosecution hadn’t explained how Peter Hays had got hold of it, so you can’t expect me to.