"They had been put in. 'Paul Revere' was there and 'silver' was there and 'abacus' was there. The question you can't answer is what joined them when for the first and only time in your life their juncture would meet a need, and I concede that it's unanswerable. I withdraw it." He drank coffee. "Will you telephone Mr. Ballou in the morning or see him?"
"See him. I can't show him a photograph on the phone." "Will Mr. Jarrett do anything, and if he does, what?" "To the first, I doubt it. To the second, I couldn't guess. Of course you realize that if that hit-and-run was murder, not just homicide, it's possible that the client is now a mark. If you ask me if I think it's conceivable that that rich, retired, respectable upper-class citizen stole a car and ran it over a hard-working respectable middle-class woman, the answer is yes. That tough old fish-eyed buzzard? Yes."
He nodded. "It's remote, but… did you warn her?" "No. It's more than remote, it's up in the moon, which they haven't reached yet. From what I said and didn't
say, he knows that all we've got is the checks. So if Elinor knew or threatened something that made it necessary to cross her out, he has no reason to suspect that she passed it on to Amy. I can ring her and tell her to be ready to jump when she crosses streets, but she might get a wrong impression. She might think she's more on my mind than the job is."
"Very well." His shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down again. I have mentioned his screwy notion about young women and me. He removed the paperweight, a chunk of jade that a woman, not young, had used years ago to conk her husband, from some items on his desk. "If your evening is free, I have three or four letters."
I said half of the evening was already gone and got my notebook.