Work Text:
The following typewritten pages were found among Mr. Archie Goodwin's papers after his death. They appear to be a partial account of one of his employer's cases, in similar vein to those he had dramatized previously. The manuscript is incomplete, though whether the missing pages are lost or were never written is unknown.
"Your reputation precedes you, Comrade Wolfe," the Englishman slouched elegantly if lazily in the red leather chair said. "The cry goes forth: Comrade Wolfe is the hero of the people! If you are in trouble he is the man of the hour!"
Wolfe snorted, dividing a scowl between the Englishman, his as-yet-silent companion, and yours truly. I had no more love of socialists than Wolfe, but this particular specimen seemed more inclined to keep his dough to himself than to share it with the populace, and the checking account was lower than it should be. As it was my job to point this out to Wolfe, it was--in his opinion--my fault that Wolfe was being called comrade by a supercilious Englishman.
"I will not endeavor to find your friend Mr. Jarvis innocent, Mr. Smith," he said, shifting his bulk with an eye to the clock nearing the hour of four, when he ascended to the plant rooms to tend to his orchids. "If Mr. Jarvis is guilty I can do nothing, will do nothing, except confirm his guilt."
Psmith studied the ceiling languidly. "One could not state with even a semblance of veracity that Comrade Jarvis is not capable of killing a man, particularly to protect, or in the case revenge, one of his plethora of felines. Yet he asserts that he did not and I would not expect a man of Comrade Jarvis's caliber to be coy on such a matter. We may thus engage you to investigate without fear of the consequences."
"And you, Mr. Jackson?" Wolfe asked, turning to Psmith's companion. "Are you equally convinced of Mr. Jarvis's innocence?"
Jackson was also an Englishman, as evident when he spoke. "He says he didn't. I hardly know him; I was traveling with the M.C.C.--playing cricket--most of last summer when Smith met the man. He seems like a decent chap," he added with lukewarm approval.
"Comrade Jarvis is of the erroneous impression that Comrade Jackson keeps Angora cats at his home in Shropshire," Psmith said, earning a hard look from his friend. "He might be expected to believe that a fellow cat fancier would find the death of a cat sufficient rationale for executing the miscreant responsible for the felonious feline fatality."
"He did say he wished to shake the hand of the man who killed O'Reilly," Jackson offered. "But not that he killed him."
Wolfe looked at the clock, not nearly as subtly as he probably thought he was being. "Very well, on your heads be it. Mr. Goodwin will go with your to the stationhouse to interview Mr. Jarvis." He stood and disappeared through the door just as the hands of the clock pointed to four and twelve.
An unknown number of pages are missing before the account continues.
"Well?" Wolfe demanded as soon as we were seated in the office after dinner, before even ringing Fritz for beer. Only his iron-clad rule against talking business during meals had kept him pent up that long. I saw no reason to make it easier for him.
"I think it's only fair to inform you that I plan to marry Miss Dore," I said, leaning back to gaze dreamily at the ceiling. "I'll have to quit, of course. We'll take my little nest-egg and buy a farm upstate. You'll visit us in our married life, toddling up to Schenectady on the train. The future Mrs. Goodwin will call you dada and convert you from your idolatrous orchid-growing ways to the one true way of roses--"
"Roses?"
"Miss Dore--she said to call her Billie--is as enamored of roses as you are of orchids, and possibly as knowledgeable."
Wolfe closed his eyes, his lips moving in and out as they did only in actual thought. He opened his eyes after only a moment, so maybe he was only considering his future without me. "What did Miss Dore tell you?"
"What a girl like Miss Dore was doing palling around with a man like O'Reilly I will never understand," I said. "When we're married I'll take her away from such rough society. She'll wear a gingham dress and tend to the roses while I--"
"I am well aware that you can play the fool for a woman," Wolfe growled. "But I know that you aren't stupid. What did she say about O'Reilly's meeting with Waring?"
I had made him ask three times. Anything more was probably pushing it, so I repeated what Miss Dore has said, concluding with a verbatim account of their second meeting. Wolfe showed a disappointing lack of surprise but gratifying attention.
More pages appear to be missing between the preceding scene and the following.
"The notion that Mr. Waring would kill Mr. O'Reilly and frame Mr. Jarvis for his murder in revenge for Mr. Jarvis's admittedly minor role in Mr. Waring losing last year's alderman race is fatuous," Wolfe said after he and Miss Dore came down from the plant room and I had passed out drinks to those who wished them. Wolfe opened his bottle of beer and put the cap into the desk drawer that he used to keep track of his consumption. Waring smirked at Psmith and settled back more comfortably in his seat.
"I didn't off the gink," Bat Jarvis spoke up from his spot between Cramer and Purdy. "He asked for it but wasn't me as pulled the trigger." Purdy looked unconvinced, ready to haul Jarvis back downtown as soon as Wolfe was finished with him.
"Comrade Waring proved himself willing and capable of extreme action on little provocation during our contretemps of last year. He is a man of high passions and limitless ambition who finds no repugnance at stooping to what I understand those in your fine city call 'the dirty work,'" Psmith said as casually as if he were talking of a baseball player with a habit of throwing spitballs instead of a man who--he claimed--had made multiple attempts on Psmith's life and those of his friends. "I'm afraid I cannot comprehend why the notion of him framing Comrade Jarvis would be--fatuous, you said?--given his known tendencies."
"That's libel!" Waring said. He turned to Cramer. "You're my witness, Inspector. That was libel and I'll bring an action against him."
"Slander," Wolfe corrected. "It isn't libel until it's in print." He waved the subject away with one hand. "Pfui. If every man slandered in New York took the matter to court nothing else would be accomplished."
"So you're telling us that we were right and arrested the real killer?" Purdy demanded. "I may die of shock to hear you admit it, but we didn't need to come out here to know that." He stood up, pulling Jarvis up by the arm.
"Sit down!" Wolfe thundered. Purdy stayed on his feet. "I never said that Mr. Jarvis killed Mr. O'Reilly."
Purdy glared at Wolfe. "You said that it was--you said that Mr. Waring didn't frame Jarvis. You saying someone else did?" I doubted that Purdy knew what fatuous meant or could remember how to pronounce it.
Wolfe pursed his lips. "That is one possibility that must be considered. O'Reilly stole Mr. Jarvis's cat and killed it, no one doubts that, but no one has explained why he would do such a thing other than to provoke Mr. Jarvis to murder. The cat was not valuable?" he asked Jarvis.
Jarvis ducked his head. "Was to me."
"But not in a monetary sense," Wolfe prompted him. Jarvis nodded slowly without looking up.
Cramer sighed. "Sit down, Purdy. We might as well let Wolfe get it out of his system." Purdy sat at his superior's insistence, but he made it clear that he would have rather not.
"You knew Mr. O'Reilly, did you not?" Wolfe asked Waring, ignoring the byplay between Purdy and Cramer. "Can you think of any animus Mr. O'Reilly might have had against Mr. Jarvis or his cat?"
"As I told Mr. Goodwin," Waring said with a put-upon-but-patient sigh, "I only met the late Mr. O'Reilly once, after Mass a few months ago. Cats were not discussed." He looked at his watch ostentatiously.
"Did you discuss the Shamrock?" Wolfe asked.
"The Shamrock?" Waring tried for puzzled ignorance, but failed, his hand clenching against the arm of his chair. I had placed him in the chair closest to my desk, though I would rather have had the more decorative Miss Dore.
"A dance-hall according to Mr. Goodwin, though not one he frequents," Wolfe said, feigning ignorance of the difference between the Flamingo and a 10-cent Bowery dance-hall. "You have been in discussions with its proprietor, trying to convince him to sell."
"This the bird was pressing Maginnis to sell?" Jarvis said. He favored Waring with a decidedly less than friendly stare.
"Indeed," Wolfe said. "You know Mr. Maginnis, of course." It wasn't a question.
"I toss the ones that cut up rough about the place for him," Jarvis said.
"You and your...associates," Wolfe said. "It would be safe to say that without your assistance Mr. Maginnis would suffer a loss of remuneration?"
Jarvis looked blank.
"He would lose money," Jackson translated. No doubt he provided a similar service for Psmith on a regular basis. Jarvis nodded.
"A fruity scheme if I understand the drift of your remarks, Comrade Wolfe. Comrade Waring induces Comrade O'Reilly to steal the cat and then arranges for him to become the late Comrade O'Reilly. Comrade Jarvis is blamed, removing him from circulation, leaving Comrade Waring a free hand to scoop the Shamrock."
"Precisely." Wolfe might have hid his petulance at being upstaged in the final act of his carefully arranged drama from Psmith and the others, but I knew the old ham too well to be fooled. "No doubt Mr. O'Reilly's murder and Mr. Jarvis's arrest has already created considerable friction between their associates, furthering Mr. Waring's aims."
"The two gangs are squared off on Groome Street if that's what you're nattering on about," Purdy growled.
"I protest this slander!" Waring said, getting to his feet. This time he got the word right, at least. I edged my chair out from the desk, ready to lunge at him if he made a break for it. "I came here to see this matter settled, not to hear this super-fatted bore add to his client's malicious lies!"
"Lies, is it?" Miss Dore spoke up. "I heard you--"
Whatever she was going to say was cut off when Waring pulled a snub-nosed .45, waving it among those present. From this side the muzzle looked as big as the Holland Tunnel, a black maw ready to swallow someone.
I cursed silently, realizing that in pushing my chair back I'd made it that much more difficult to get to the gun I keep in my desk drawer for just this sort of eventuality. Purdy and Cramer were on the far side of Psmith and Jackson, effectively taking them out of the game unless they were going to do something stupid, which I wouldn't put past Purdy.
"Don't--" Before Waring could speak his piece, he dropped the .45 to clutch at his bleeding face. The shattered remains of a lowball glass, last seen intact on the table at Jackson's elbow, tinkled to the floor. I lunged at Waring and tackled him against the wall in deference to the sharp stuff on the floor.
"Beamer!" Psmith cried to Jackson. "No ball, old chap, but well bowled. The M.C.C. should put you in as an all-rounder." Jackson would have made a hell of a pitcher for the Giants if he could throw a glass like that.
"Sorry to break the glassware," Jackson said, splitting the difference between me and Wolfe. "First thing that came to hand." He seemed more embarrassed than triumphant.
I let go of Waring after Purdy put the cuffs on him. "It's worth a glass or two." Not that Jackson should have expected any thanks from Wolfe, of course.
Wolfe hadn't moved a muscle the entire time, the fat son of a gun. "The female of the species is lamentably inquisitive," he said to Cramer as if Miss Dore had never been interrupted. "After Miss Dore relates the transactions she overheard between Waring and the late Mr. O'Reilly I imagine you will find that you have, once again, arrested the wrong man."
Illegible and faded handwriting at the bottom of the page suggests that this was not to be the final scene.