Read Plot It Yourself for Free Online Page B

I found his name in the row, next to the top, and pressed the button. When the click sounded I pushed the door open, entered, and went to the stairs and started up, smelling garlic. The smell of garlic in Spanish sauce as Fritz makes it is a come-on, but in a tenement hall where it has been seeping into the plaster for fifty years it's a pinch-nose. The best way is to pull in a long deep breath of it immediately and then your insides know it's hopeless.
    Three flights up a woman was standing at an open door near the front of the hall, with a boy, nine or ten, at her elbow. As I approached, the boy said, 'Oh, it's not Tommy,' and disappeared. I asked the woman, 'Mrs Jacobs?'
    She nodded. She was a surprise. Simon Jacobs, now sixty-two, had been fifty-one when he had married in 1948, but she was no crone. There wasn't a wrinkle showing, and there was no sign of gray in her soft brown hair. When I told her my name and I would like to speak with her husband, and she said he didn't like to be disturbed when he was working and would I please tell her what I wanted, and I said I wasn't selling anything, it was a business matter and might be to his advantage, she turned and went, leaving the door open. After a long moment he appeared, a good likeness to the photograph-thin and scrawny, with enough wrinkles for two, and, as Title House's lawyer had said, hair like Mark Twain's.
    'Well, sir?' A thin high voice would have fitted him, but his was deep and full.
    'My name's Goodwin, Mr Jacobs.'
    'So my wife said.'
    'I'm on the staff of a magazine with national circulation. I won't name it until I find out if you're interested in an idea we are considering. May I come in?'
    'That depends. I'm right in the middle of a story. I don't want to be rude, but what's the idea?'
    'Well-we thought we might ask you to do an article for us. About how it feels to have a story you have written stolen by another author and turned into a best-seller. We thought Tlot It Yourself might be a good title for it. I'd like to tell you how we think it might be handled, and we can discuss-'
    He shut the door in my face. You may think I'm not much of a detective, that an experienced snoop should have had sense enough to have it blocked with his foot, but in the first place it was totally unexpected, and in the second place you don't block a door unless you're on the offensive. So I merely put my thumb to my nose and wiggled my fingers, turned, and made for the stairs. When I got to the sidewalk I took a long, deep breath to let my insides know they could relax. Then I walked to Tenth Avenue, stopped a taxi, and told the driver 37th and Lexington.
    That building, between Lexington and Third, was a house of a different colour. It may have been nearly as old as the 21st Street tenement, but it had used make-up. Its brick front was painted silver-gray with bright blue trim, the doorframe was aluminum, and there were evergreens in boxes. There were eight names on the panel in the vestibule, two tenants to a floor, with a grill to talk through and a receiver on a hook. I pushed the button opposite Rennert and put the receiver to my ear, and in a moment had a crackle and then a voice.
    'Who is it?'
    'You don't know me. My name's Goodwin. Nothing to sell. I may want to buy something.'
    'Bill Goodwin?'
    'No. Archie Goodwin.'
    'Archie'Not by any chance Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin?'
    'In person.'
    'Well, well! I often wonder what detectives buy one-half so precious as the goods they sell. Come on up and tell mel Top floor.'
    I hung up and turned, and when the buzz sounded opened the door and entered. More aluminum, framing the self-service elevator. I stepped in and pushed the '4' button and was lifted. When it stopped and the door opened he was there in the little hall, shirt sleeves rolled up and no tie, virile, muscular, handsome, looking younger than thirty-four. I took his offered hand and returned his manly grip and was ushered through a door and was in the nice big