“Did you show it to Mrs Vail at once?”
“Certainly. I took it to her room.”
“Were you present Sunday night when she phoned to the country to ask about her husband?”
“No. I was in the house, but I was in bed.”
“What time yesterday did the call come from Mr Knapp?”
“Eight minutes after four. I knew that might be important somehow, and I made a note of it.”
“You listened to that conversation?”
“Yes. Mrs Vail had told me to take it down, and I did.”
“Then you know shorthand?”
“Of course.”
“Are you a college graduate?”
“Yes.”
“Do you type with two fingers, or four?”
She smiled. “All of them. By touch.” She turned a hand over. “Really, Mr Wolfe. Isn’t this rather silly? Is it going to get Mr Vail back alive?”
“No. But it may conceivably serve a purpose. Naturally you want to be with Mrs Vail, and she wants you; I won’t keep you much longer. There’s no point now in asking you about that man’s voice and diction; even if I got a hint that suggested another wording for the notice it’s too late. But you will please let Mr Goodwin take samples of your fingerprints. Archie?”
That roused her a little. “My fingerprints? Why?”
“Not to get Mr Vail back alive. But they may be useful later on. It’s barely possible that Mr Knapp or an accomplice inadvertently left a print on that note. To your knowledge, has anyone handled it besides Mrs Vail and you?”
“No.”
“And Mr Goodwin and me. We shall get Mrs Vail’s. Mr Goodwin is an expert on prints, and even if Mr Vail returns safely, as I hope he will, we’ll want to know if there are any unidentifiable prints on that note. Do you object to having your prints taken?”
“Of course not. Why should I?”
“Then Archie?”
I had opened a desk drawer and was getting out the equipment-ink with dauber and surfaced paper. I prefer a dauber to a pad. Knowing now, as I did, what the conjecture was that Wolfe had been testing when he inspected my typewriter keyboard with the note from Mr Knapp in his hand, and therefore also knowing why I was to take Dinah Utley’s prints, it wasn’t necessary to write her name on the paper, but I did anyway. She got up and came to my desk and I did her right hand first. She had good hands, firm, smooth, well kept, with long slender fingers. No rings. With her left hand, when I had done the thumb, index, and middle, and started to daub the ring finger, I asked casually, “What’s this? Scald it?”
“No. Shut a drawer on it.”
“The pinkie too. I’ll go easy.”
“It’s not very tender now. I did it several days ago.”
But I went easy, there being no point in making her suffer, since we had no use for the prints. As she cleaned her fingers with solvent and tissues she asked Wolfe, “You don’t really think a kidnaper would be fool enough to leave his fingerprint on that note, do you?”
“No,” Wolfe said, “not fool enough. But possibly distraught enough. One thing more, Miss Utley. I would like you to know that I’m aware that the primary concern is the safety of Mr Vail. I have done all I can. Archie, show her a copy of the notice.”
I got it from my desk and handed it to her. Wolfe waited until she had finished reading it to say, “That will appear, prominently, in today’s Gazette and the morning papers. If the kidnaper sees it, it may have an effect; it certainly will if he has some knowledge of me. For I will have publicly committed myself, and if he kills Mr Vail he will be doomed inevitably. A month, a year, ten years; no matter. It’s regrettable that you or I can’t reach him, to make that clear to him.”
“Yes, it is.” Still perfectly cool. She handed me the notice. “Of course he may not have as high an opinion of your abilities as you have.” She turned to go, after three steps stopped and turned her head to say, “He might even think the police are more dangerous than you are,” and went. There ahead of her, and preceding her to the hall and the front door, I let her out; and, expecting no thanks or good day, got none.
Returning to the office, I stopped in front of Wolfe’s desk, stood looking down at him, and said, “So she typed it.”
He nodded. “Of course I didn’t-”
“Excuse me. I’ll do the spiel. When you first looked at it you noticed, as I did, that whoever typed it had an uneven touch. Later, while I was phoning, you looked at it again, got an idea, and came and compared it with the keyboard, and you saw that all the letters that were faint were on the left-not just left of center, but at the left end. W, E, A, S. and D. So you conjectured that the typist had been someone who used all his fingers, not just two or four, and that for some-”
“And probably typed by touch, because-”
“Excuse me, I’m doing the spiel. The touch was merely a probable. And for some reason the ring and little fingers of his left hand had not hit the keys as hard as the other fingers, not nearly as hard. Okay. I caught up with you after lunch, while you were reading, just before she came. You saw me comparing the note with the keyboard.”
“No. I was reading.”
“Let me not believe that. You miss nothing, though you often pretend to. You saw me all right. Then she came, and you went on ahead of me again, and I admit I ought to be docked. My eyes are as good as yours, and I had been closer to her than you were, but you noticed that the tips of those two fingers on her left hand were discoloured and slightly swollen, and I didn’t. Of course when you told her we wanted her prints I saw it, and you will ignore what I said about being docked because I found out how and when the fingers got hurt. Any corrections?”
“No. It is still a conjecture, not a conclusion.”
“Damn close to it. One will get you fifty. That it is just a coincidence that she, a touch typist, living in that house, hurt just those two fingers, just at that time, just enough to make her go easy with them but not enough to stop using them-nuts. One will get you a hundred. So you had her read that notice and rubbed it in, thinking she’ll get in touch with Mr Knapp. Why did you let her walk out?”
Wolfe nodded. “The alternative was obvious. Go at her. Would she have yielded?”
“No. She’s tough.”
“And if Mr Vail is already dead, as he well may be, it would be folly to let her know what we suspect. If he is alive, no better. She would have flouted me. Detain her forcibly, as a hostage, on a mere suspicion, however well grounded, and notify Mr Knapp that we would exchange her for Mr Vail? That would have been a coup, but how to reach Mr Knapp? It’s too late to get another notice in the paper. Have you a suggestion?”
“Yes. I go to see Mrs Vail to ask her something, no matter what, and I manage somehow to get something written on the typewriter Dinah Utley uses. Of course she could have used another machine for the note, but if what I got matched the note, that would settle that.”
He shook his head. “No. You have ingenuity and can even be delicate, but Miss Utley would almost certainly get a hint. Besides, to ask a question she asked, would it help to get Mr Vail back alive? No.” He glanced at the clock. In ten minutes he would leave for his four-to-six afternoon session in the plant rooms. Time enough for a few pages. He reached and got his book and opened to his place.
CHAPTER 3
It’s possible that I have given a wrong impression of Jimmy Vail, and if so I should correct it.
Age, thirty-four; height, five feet ten; weight, 150. Dark eyes, sometimes lazy and dull, sometimes bright and very quick. Smooth dark hair, nearly black, and a neat white face with a wide mouth. I had seen him about as often as I had seen his wife, since they were nearly always together at a restaurant or theater. In 1956 he had made a big splash at the Glory Hole in the Village with a thirty-minute turn of personal chatter, pointed comments on everyone and everything. Althea Tedder, widow of Harold F. Tedder, had seen him there, and in 1957 she had married him, or he had married her, depending on who is talking.