Murder by the Book

After showing Wellman out I returned to the office. Wolfe was leaning back, scowling, running a fingertip around a race track on the arm of his chair.

I stretched and yawned. "Well," I remarked, "I suppose I'd better go up and change my clothes. The light brown, you know. They like a soft material that doesn't scratch when they put their head on your shoulder. Meanwhile you can be thinking up my instructions."

"There will be no instructions," he growled. "Confound it, get me something, that's all." He leaned forward to ring for beer.

7

MY REMARK about changing my clothes had of course been a feeble gag. Starting contacts with the personnel in the office of Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs would require more elaborate outfitting than a light brown suit, though it was a good shade and a nice soft fabric. As Wolfe had told Wellman, everyone there would certainly be fed up with questions about Leonard Dykes and the name of Baird Archer, and if I had merely gone there and opened fire I would have been bounced.

I did go up to my room though, to think it over away from Wolfe and the phone. The approach was simple. What did we have too much of that girls liked, besides me? That was a cinch: orchids, especially at that time of year, when there were thousands of blossoms and practically all of them would be left on the plants till they wilted. In a quarter of an hour I went down again to the office and announced to Wolfe, "I'm going to need a lot of orchids."

"How many?"

"I don't know. Maybe four or five dozen to start with. I want a free hand."

"You won't get it. Consult me. No Cypripedium Lord Fisher, no Dendrobium Cybele, no-"

"Not gaudy enough anyway. I'll stick to Cattleyas, Brasses, and Laelios."

"You know the rarities."

"Sure. I ought to."

I went out and took a taxi to Homicide on Twentieth Street. There I hit a snag. Purley Stebbins was out to lunch. It would have been useless to try to get what I wanted from any of the riffraff, so I insisted on seeing Cramer and got waved down the hall to his room. He was at his desk, eating pickles and salami and drinking buttermilk. When I told him I wanted to take a look at the Dykes file and make a list of the employees at the law office where he had worked, he said he was busy and had no time to argue and would I please go away.