and started on another one. It was midnight, bedtime, but I stayed on because Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes closed and with his lips working-pushing out, then back in, then out and in again-and I was curious to learn if anything would come of it.
He stirred in his chair, sighed clear to his solar plexus, and opened his eyes to a slit.
“Archie.” “Yes, sir.” “You were correct.” “Yes, sir.” “I have, as you put it, run up against one too slick for me. Either too slick or too lucky. Mr. Moore has been dead nearly four months, and Mr. Naylor nine days, and what have we got?” “An expense account.” “Yes. It is wholly unprecedented. We have one fact only that might be helpful-Miss Livsey’s promenade with Mr. Naylor-but we don’t know whether it is significant or not, and no way of finding out. We can’t sort out the real clues and the false ones because we have no clues at all. Literally none. Neither has Mr. Cramer. Has that ever happened to us before?” “No, sir.” “No. It hasn’t. I find it interesting and stimulating. What do we do when we have no clues? Do you know?” “No, sir.” “We make one. We may have to make more, but we’ll start with one.
Experimentally. Cover that confounded machine and turn your chair around and listen to me.
“Yes, sir.” It took him nearly an hour to complete the diagram, with me making notes. At the end he asked sharply, “Well?” I nodded uncertainly. “If it’s the best you can do we’ll have to try it-or rather I will. The least we can get is another murder.”
CHAPTER Twenty-Nine
The best evidence of where we stood and how we were doing on that case was the changed attitude toward me, when I appeared in the Naylor-Kerr stock department that Monday morning, on the part of the personnel. The time had been when my progress down an aisle had been followed by hundreds of pairs of eyes. No more.
I got about the same attention as one of the messenger boys toting mail around.
The first item of the build-up was a visit, not too brief, with Hester Livsey, and, wanting to be sure of getting it in before she got called by Rosenbaum for the morning dictation, I crossed the arena to her office as soon as I had deposited my hat and coat in my own room, which I was still being allowed to occupy. Her door was standing open, but I closed it behind me when I entered.
She had finished dusting and was sorting papers on her desk. She sent me a sidewise glance, then jerked her head around and demanded, “What do you want?” I sat down and grinned at her. “That’s a bad habit you’re forming, that what do you want. It’s nerves.” “What do you want?” She looked older and somewhat more used, but I didn’t try to kid myself that to me she had become merely a collection of assorted cells and was around ninety per cent water. I could still look at her and not be repulsed by the notion that she needed me, and the hell of it was that I was committed to an operation that was likely to make her need me a lot more.
“Sit down and relax,” I told her.
“No.” She stood with papers in her hand. “I could tell Mr. Rosenbaum that you’re annoying me.” “Indeed you could,” I agreed. “And I wouldn’t deny it. I’m annoying lots of people, and so are you. That’s the way it goes under circumstances like this. I doubt if Rosenbaum would try to bounce me, it would make such a commotion with me yelling and hanging onto the doorjamb, and maybe breaking loose and dodging around the desks out there. How- ever, you can try it-or you can just ignore me and go on with your work. I won’t pounce on you from behind.” She was sorting papers, with her face looking distorted because of the way her jaw was set, with tight muscles.
“Speaking of your work,” I went on, “do you remember that you told me once that you like it here and have to have a job? I shouldn’t think you’d like it here much now, with all the annoyance. But I can understand your having to have a job because I do too. I can understand your not wanting to do anything that would get you fired. So don’t get fired. Quit. Mr. Wolfe knows a lot of people, and one of them is a senior partner in one of the best and biggest law firms in New York. You can have a job with them, secretary to a member of the firm, seventy a week to start, nine-thirty to five and closed Saturdays, haven’t skipped a Christmas bonus for eighteen years. Your room will be three times as big as this one, two windows, two rugs, any kind of typewriter you want, good view of the harbor and the Statue of Liberty. What do you say?” She sorted papers, with no glance at me. I warmed up to it and proceeded to analyze her chances for a glowing future in the law business. To get the effect I was after it was desirable to spend at least a quarter of an hour with her, and twenty minutes would be better. So I went into the matter thoroughly and considered it from every angle. I found as I went on that what appealed strongest to my fancy was the possibility of her becoming a court stenographer, with all the dramatic opportunities and financial advantages which that offered.
On that I really went to town. I had been with her twenty-three minutes, and saw no reason why it shouldn’t go on until lunchtime, when I heard the door opening behind me. Twisting my head, I saw Sumner Hoff.
He shut the door, circled around to confront me, and told me in a low threatening tone, “Get out of here.” I couldn’t have asked for anything better. This would be a real help. I looked up at him and matched his tone. “Get out yourself, you goddam snooping son of a bitch.” He reacted as might have been expected from the cavalier who had plugged Waldo Moore in full view of the whole arena. He made me aware in fact, that I might have done him an injustice that day in Wolfe’s office; he was capable of rating a sock when his emotions were fully aroused. But it would have been bad tactics to smash him at that point and anyway his ideas of combat were so ill advised that it would have been a shame. As I left my chair he came for me with his right as if it was the only fist in the world and nothing else was worth considering. I jerked my head aside out of the way, and while he was recovering his balance I stepped to the door and opened it, saying in a loud voice: “You’re too late to stop her, Hoff! You’re too late!” Then I ran. I ran across the middle of the arena, glancing over my shoulder, in flight, to see that Hoff had started after me, got as far as the fourth desk, and stopped. I kept going, getting, now, the attention I deserved from all eyes.
When I reached the other side I darted into my room, grabbed my hat and coat, emerged, left by the main entrance, took a down elevator, flagged a taxi on William Street, and gave the driver Wolfe’s address.
I found Wolfe up in the potting room with Theodore, inspecting a newly arrived shipment of osmundine. It was humid and warm in there, so I perched on a stool, got out my handkerchief, and wiped my brow.
