The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

Sergeant Purley Stebbins came bright and early, when Wolfe was still up in his room with his breakfast tray, to get filled in on the invasion by the lawyers. I accommodated him. He was suspicious when he arrived, and more suspicious when he left. Though I explained that my employer was a genius and time would show that his stiff-arming them was a brilliant stroke, Purley refused to believe that Wolfe would have those two corralled in his office and not do his damndest to get a needle in. He did accept five or six crescents and two cups of coffee, but that was only because no man who has ever tasted Fritz’s Sunday-morning crescents could possibly turn them down.

Wolfe and I both read every word of the accounts in the morning papers. Not that we hoped to get any hot leads, but at least we knew what the DA and Cramer had seen fit to release, and there were a few morsels to file for reference. Angela Wright, the Executive Secretary of Assadip, had formerly worked for Damon Fromm, and had been put in the Assadip job by him. Mrs. Fromm had supported more than forty charities and worthy causes, but Assadip had been her pet. Vincent Lipscomb, the publisher who had been at the dinner party at Horan’s apartment, had run a series of articles on displaced persons in his magazine, Modern Thought, and was planning another. Mrs. Dennis Horan had formerly been a movie star-well, anyhow, she had acted in movies. Paul Kuffner handled public relations for Assadip as a public service without remuneration, but he had also been professionally engaged in the interest of Mrs. Fromm personally. Dennis Horan was an authority on international law, belonged to five clubs, and had a reputation as an amateur chef.

There still wasn’t a word about the flap from Matthew Birch’s pocket that had been retrieved from the chassis of the car that had killed Pete Drossos. The police were hanging onto that one. But because of the similarity of the manner of the killings, the Birch murder was getting a play too.

Wolfe phoned his lawyer, Henry Parker, to ask about the process of a replevin and to tell him to get set for one in case Maddox kept his promise to make a grab for the ten grand. I had to track Parker down at a country club on Long Island.

Not a peep out of Jean Estey.