Murder by the Book

"I bet you do." That having slipped out by force of habit, Cramer decided it wasn't tactful and smiled it off. He could smile when he wanted to. "Not only is no one charged, we haven't got a smell. We've done everything, you know what we've done, and we're stopped. He lived alone in a room-and-bath walk-up" on Sullivan Street. By the time we got there it had been combed-not torn apart, but someone had been through it good. We didn't find anything that's been any help, but we found one thing that might possibly help if we could figure it out."

He got papers from his breast pocket, from them selected an envelope, and from the envelope took a folded sheet of paper. "This was inside a book, a novel. I can give you the name of the book and the numbers of the pages it was found between, but I don't think that has a bearing." He got up to hand the paper to Wolfe. "Take a look at it."

Wolfe ran his eyes over it, and, since I was supposed to be up on everything that went on in that office so as to be eligible for blame if and when required, I arose and extended a hand. He passed it over.

"It's in Dykes's handwriting," Cramer said. "The paper is a sheet from a scratch pad there on a table in his room. There were more pads like it in a drawer of the table."

I was giving it a look. The paper was white, ordinary, six by nine, and at the top was the word "Tentative," under-scored, written with pencil in a neat almost perpendicular hand. Below it was a list of names:

Sinclair Meade Sinclair Sampson Barry Bowen David Yerkes Ernest Vinson Dorian Vick Baird Archer Oscar Sniff Oscar Cody Lawrence McCue Mark McCue Mark Flick Mack Flick Louis Gill Lewis Gill

I handed it back to Cramer and returned to my chair.

"Well?" Wolfe asked impatiently.