Murder by the Book

"This," he told Cramer, "is a copy of a letter Miss Wellman wrote to her parents on Thursday, February first. She was killed the evening of the next day, Friday." He held it out, and Cramer got up to take it. "Read it all if you like, but the relevant part is the marked paragraph."

Cramer ran over it. He took his time, and then sat frowning at it. Looking up at Wolfe, he kept the frown. "I've seen that name somewhere. Baird Archer. Isn't that it?"

Wolfe nodded. "Shall we see how long it takes you to dig it up?"

"No. Where?"

"On the list of names written by Leonard Dykes which you came here to show me six weeks ago. It was seventh on the list, I think-possibly eighth. Not sixth."

"When did you first see this letter?"

"This evening. My client gave it to me."

"I'll be damned." Cramer gawked at him and at the relevant paragraph. He folded the letter with slow deliberate fingers and put it in his pocket.

"The original," Wolfe told him, "is in the possession of your colleague in the Bronx. That's my copy."

"Yeah. I'll borrow it." Cramer reached for his glass, took a swallow, and focused his eyes on a corner of Wolfe's arc-wood desk. He took another swallow and went back to studying the desk. So alternating, two more swallows with intervals for desk study emptied the glass. He put it down on the little table.

"What else have you got?'

"Nothing."

"What have you done?"

"Nothing. Since I saw that letter, I have dined."

"I bet you have." Cramer came up out of his chair, still springy in spite of his years. "I'll be going. Damn it, I was going home."

He headed for the hall. I followed.

When I returned to the office after letting the law out, Wolfe was placidly opening a bottle of beer.

"What do you Say," I suggested, "I get on the phone and call in Saul and Fred and Orrie, and you lay it out, and we set a deadline, sundown tomorrow would do, for solving both cases? Just to make a monkey out of Cramer?"

Wolfe scowled at me. "Confound it, don't bounce like that. This will be no skirmish. Mr. Cramer's men have been looking, more or less, for a Baird Archer for seven weeks. The Bronx men have been looking for one for seventeen days. Now they'll get serious about it. What if there isn't one?"

"We know there was enough of one to date Joan Wellman for February second."