Murder by the Book

"Six would be all right, but it would be better to make it

here. There will be four of us-perhaps five. Six o'clock here?"

"No, sir. If at all, here."

"Hold the wire a minute."

It was more like three minutes. Then he was on again. "Sorry to keep you waiting. All right, we'll be there at six or a little after."

Wolfe cradled his phone, and I did likewise.

"Well," I remarked, "at least we touched a sore spot somewhere. That's the first cheep we've got out of anybody in ten days."

Wolfe picked up bis book.

11

THAT was the biggest array of legal talent ever gathered in the office. Four counselors-at-law in good standing and one disbarred.

James A. Corrigan (secretary, Charlotte Adams) was about titie same age as his secretary, or maybe a little younger. He had the jaw of a prizefighter and the frame of a retired jockey and the hungriest pair of eyes I ever saw-not hungry the way a dog looks at a bone you're holding up but the way a cat looks at a bird in a cage.

Emmett Phelps (secretary, Sue Dondero) was a surprise to me. Sue had told me that he was the firm's encyclopedia, the guy who knew all the precedents and references and could turn to them with his eyes shut, but he didn't look it. Something over fifty, and a couple of inches over six feet, broad-shouldered and long-armed, on him a general's or admiral's uniform would have looked fine.

Louis Kustin (secretary, Eleanor Gruber) was the youngster of the bunch, about my age. Instead of hungry eyes he had sleepy ones, very dark, but that must have been a cover because Sue had told me that he was their trial man, and hot, having taken over the tougher courtroom assignments when O'Malley had been disbarred. He looked smaller than he was on account of the way he slumped.

Frederick Briggs, Helen Troy's Uncle Fred, had white hair

and a long bony face. If he had a secretary I hadn't met her. From the way he blinked like a half-wit at everyone who spoke, it seemed a wonder he had been made a partner even in his seventh decade-or it could have been his eighth-but it takes all kinds to make a law firm. I wouldn't have hired him to change blotters.