He looked at his folded handkerchief as if he wondered what it was for, and stuck it back in his pocket. “In nineteen-fifty the LBA people submitted some names for a new line we were getting ready to start, and from the list I picked Pour Amour. I didn’t learn until later that that name had been suggested by a young man named Louis Dahlmann who hadn’t been with them long. Do you know anything about the agency game?” “No.”
“It’s very tough, especially with the big ones. The men who have made it, who have got up around the top, most of them spend a lot of their time kicking the faces of the ones who are trying to climb. Of course that’s more or less true in any game because it’s how people are made, but advertising agencies are about the worst, I mean the big ones. It took me two years to find out who thought of that name Pour Amour, and it was another year before Dahlmann was allowed to confer with me on my account. By that time he had shown so much stuff there was no holding him. There was a lot of talk—you may have heard of him?”
“No.”
“He wasn’t very likable. He was too cocky, and if he thought you were a goddam fool he said so, but he had real brains and there’s no substitute for brains, and his were a special kind. I don’t say that Oliver Buff and Pat O’Garro and Vern Assa haven’t got brains. Buff has some real ability. He’s a good front man. Lippert trained him and knew what he was good for. Now he’s the senior member of the firm. For presenting an outline for an institutional campaign to the heads of a big national corporation, he’s as good as anybody and better than most, but that kind of approach never has sold cosmetics and never will. I’ve been one of the firm’s big accounts for years, and he has never personally come up with an idea that was worth a dime.”
Heery turned a hand over. “There’s Pat O’Garro. He knows about as much about advertising, my kind, as I know about Sanskrit, but he’s at the very top as a salesman. He could sell a hot-water bottle to a man on his way to hell, and most of the accounts LBA has today, big and little, were landed by him, but that’s nothing in my pocket. I don’t need someone to sell me on LBA, I need someone who can keep my products sliding over the counters from Boston to Los Angeles and New Orleans to Chicago, and O’Garro’s not the man. Neither is Vern Assa. He started in as a copy writer, and that’s where he shines. He has a big reputation, and now he’s a member of the firm—so is O’Garro of course. I did a lot of analyzing of Vern and his stuff during the years after Lippert died, and it had real quality, I recognize that, but there was something lacking-the old Lippert touch wasn’t there. It’s not just words, you’ve got to have ideas before you’re ready for words, and LBA didn’t have any that were worth a damn until Louis Dahlmann came along.”
He shook his head. “I thought my worries were over for good. I admit I didn’t like him, but there are plenty of people to like. He was young, and within a year he would have been a member of the firm-he could have forced it whenever he pleased—and before too long he would be running the show, and he had a real personal interest in my account because it appealed to him. Now he’s dead, and I’m through with LBA. I’ve decided on that, I’m through with them, but this goddam contest mess has got to be cleaned up. This morning, when they suggested hiring you, I didn’t have my thoughts in order and I told them to go ahead, but with the situation the way it is and me deciding to cut loose from them as soon as this is straightened out it doesn’t make sense for LBA to be your client. It will be my money you’ll get anyhow. You were a little too quick tearing up that check.”
“Not under the circumstances,” Wolfe said.
“You didn’t know all the circumstances. Now you do— at least the main points. Another point, some important decision about this contest thing may have to be made at any minute, and be made quick, about what you do or don’t do, and as it stands now they hired you and they’ll decide it. I won’t have it that way. I’ve got more at stake than they have.” He took the black leather case from his pocket. “What shall I make it? Ten thousand all right?”
“It can’t be done that way,” Wolfe objected. “You know it can’t. You have a valid point, but you admit you told them to come and hire me. There’s a simple way out: get them on the phone and tell them you wish to replace them as my client, and if they acquiesce they can speak to me and tell me so.”
Heery looked at him. He put his palms on the chair arms, and spread his fingers and held them stiff. “That would be difficult,” he said. “My relations with them the past year or so, especially Buff, have been a little—” He let it hang, and in a moment finished positively, “No, I can’t do that.”
Wolfe grunted. “I might be willing to phone them myself and tell them what you want. At your request.”
“That would be just as bad. It would be worse. You understand, I’ve got to avoid an open break right now.”
“I suppose so. Then I’m afraid you’ll have to accept the status quo. I have sympathy with your position, Mr. Heery. Your interest is as deeply engaged as theirs, and as you say, the money they pay me will have come from you. At a minimum you have a claim to get my reports firsthand. Do you want me to phone them for authority to give them to you? That shouldn’t be an intolerable strain on the thread of your relations. I shall tell them that it seems to me your desire is natural and proper.”
“It would be something,” Heery said grudgingly.
“Shall I proceed?”
“Yes.”
The phone rang. I answered it, exchanged some words with the caller, asked him to hold on, and turned to tell Wolfe that Rudolph Hansen wished to speak to him. He reached for his instrument, changed his mind, left his chair, and made for the door. As he rounded the corner of his desk he pushed air down with his palm, which meant that I was to hang up when he was on-presumably to leave me free to chat with the company. A faint squeak that came via the hall reminded me that I had forgotten to oil the kitchen door. When I heard Wolfe’s voice in my ear I cradled the phone.
Heery and I didn’t chat. He looked preoccupied, and I didn’t want to take his mind off his troubles. We passed some minutes in silent partnership before Wolfe returned, crossed to his chair, and sat.
He addressed Heery. “Mr. Hansen was with Mr. Buff, Mr. O’Garro, and Mr. Assa. They wanted my report and I gave it to them. They have no objection to my reporting to you freely, at any time.”
“That’s damned sweet of them,” Heery said, not appreciatively. “Did they have anything to report?”
“Nothing of any consequence.”
“Then I’m back where I started. Have you got anywhere?”
“Now I can answer you. No.”
“Why not?”
Wolfe stirred. “Mr. Heery. I tell you precisely what I told Mr. Hansen. If my talks with the contestants had led me to any conclusions, I might be ready to disclose them and I might not, but I have formed no conclusions. Conjectures, if I have any, are not fit matter for a report unless I need help in testing them, and I don’t. You interrupted the digestion not only of my dinner, but also of the information and impressions I have gathered in a long and laborious day. Those four men wanted to come here. I told them either to let me alone until I have something worth discussing or hire somebody else.”
“But there’s no time! What do you do next?”
It took another five minutes to get rid of him, but finally he went. After escorting him to the door I went back to my desk, got at the typewriter, and resumed where I had left off on my notes of the Frazee interview. They should all be done before I went to bed, and it was after ten o’clock, so I hammered away. There were one or two remarks I had for Wolfe, and several questions I wanted to ask, but I was too busy, and besides, he was deep in a book. When I returned after seeing Heery out he had already been to the bookshelves and was back at his desk, with Beauty for Ashes, by Christopher La Farge, opened to his place, and the wall light turned on. That may not be the way you go about settling down to work on a hard job with a close deadline, but you’re not a genius.