Murder by the Book

"Okay, I was impulsive and I apologize. I'll give it back, and you can hand it to me, with the understanding that if you refuse I'll take it by force."

Her eyes twinkled, and she knew it, and flushed a little. She extended a hand. I folded the letter, put it in the envelope, and handed it to her. She looked at it, glanced at me, held it out, and I took it.

"I'm doing this," she said gravely, "because I think my brother would want me to. Poor Len. You think he was killed because he wrote that novel?"

"Yes. Now^I know it. It's up to you whether we get the guy that killed him." I got out my notebook, tore out a sheet, and handed it to her. "All you have to do is write that letter on your own paper. Maybe not quite all. I'll tell you the rest."

She started to read it. I sat down. She looked beautiful. The phony logs in the phony fireplace looked beautiful. Even the pouring rain-but no, I won't overdo it.

15

I PHONED Wolfe at 3:23 from a booth in a dragsters somewhere in Glendale. It is always a pleasure to hear him say "Satisfactory" when I have reported on an errand. This time he did better. When I had given him all of it that he needed, including the letter written by Dykes that I had in my pocket and the one written by Mrs. Potter that I had just put an air-mail stamp on and dropped in the slot at the Glendale Post Office, there was a five-second silence and then an emphatic "Very satisfactory." After another five bucks' worth of discussion of plans for the future, covering contingencies as well as possible, I dove through the rain to my waiting taxi and gave the driver an address in downtown Los Angeles. It rained all the way. At an intersection we missed colliding with a truck by an eighth of an inch, and the driver apologized, saying he wasn't used to driving in the rain. I said he soon would be, and he resented it.

The office of the Southwest Agency was on the ninth floor of a dingy old building with elevators that groaned and creaked. It occupied half the floor. I had been there once before, years back, and, having phoned that morning from the hotel that I would probably be dropping in, I was more or less expected. In a corner room a guy named Ferdinand Dolman, with two chins, and fourteen long brown hairs deployed across a bald top, arose to shake hands and exclaim heartily, "Well, well! Nice to see you again! How's the old fatty?"