'Yes, sir.'
'Note the dates-but I don't need to tell you. Go up there and get all you can. Phone me on arrival.'
'Yes, sir. If necessary do I pay for it?'
Wolfe grimaced. 'Within reason. I want all I can get. Make it two hundred, Archie.'
I counted ten twenties into Saul's hand from the stack I got from the safe, and he stuffed it into his pocket and went, as usual, without any foolish questions.
Wolfe resumed with Rose, after ringing for beer. First he spent five minutes trying to get her to remember what Harry had gone to Salamanca for, or anything he had said to her about it, but that was a blank. No savvy Salamanca. Then he returned to former topics, but with a series of flanking movements. He discussed cooking with her. He asked about Harry's abilities and experience as a gardener, his pay, his opinion of Hewitt and Dill, his employers, his drinking habits and other habits.
I was busy getting it down in my notebook, but I certainly wasn't trembling with excitement. I knew that by that method, by the time dawn came Wolfe could accumulate a lot of facts that she wouldn't know he was getting, and one or two of them might even mean something, but among them would not be the thing we wanted most to know, what and who she had seen in the corridor. As it stood now we didn't dare to let the cops get hold of her even if we felt like it, for fear Cramer would open her up by methods of his own, and if he learned about the stick episode his brain might leap a barricade and spoil everything. And personally I didn't want to toss her to the lions anyhow, even after that Clark Gable crack.
It was a little after midnight when the doorbell rang again, and I went to answer it and got an unpleasant surprise. There on the stoop was Johnny Keems. I never resented any of the other boys being called in to work on a case, and I didn't actually resent Johnny either, only he gave me a pain in the back of my lap with his smirking around trying to edge in on my job. So I didn't howl with delight at sight of him, and then I nearly did howl, not with delight, when I saw he wasn't alone and what it was that kept him from being alone.
It was Anne Tracy standing behind him. And standing behind her was Fred Updegraff.
'Greetings,' I said, concealing my emotions, and they all entered. And the sap said to her, 'This way, Miss Tracy,' and started for the office with her!
I stepped around and blocked him. 'Some day,' I said, 'you'll skin your nose. Wait in the front room.'
He smiled at me the way he does. I waited until all three of them had gone through the door to the front room and it had closed-behind them, and then returned to the office and told Wolfe:
'I didn't know you had called out the army while I was gone. Visitors. The guy who wants my job and is welcome to it at any time, and my future wife, and the wholesome young fellow with the serious chin.'
'Ah,' Wolfe said. 'That's like Johnny. He should have phoned.' He grunted. He leaned back. His eyes rested on Rose an instant, then they closed, and his lips pushed out, and in, and out and in.
His eyes opened. 'Bring them in here.'
'But-' Rose began, starting from her chair.
'It's all right,' he assured her.
I wasn't so darned sure it was all right, but it was him that wanted the black orchids, not me, so I obeyed orders, went to the front room by the connecting doors, and told them to come in. Johnny, who is a gentleman from his skin out, let Anne and Fred pass through ahead of him. She stopped in the middle of the room.
'How do you do,' Wolfe said politely. 'Forgive me for not rising; I rarely do. May I introduce-Miss Rose Lasher, Miss Anne Tracy. By the way, Miss Lasher has just been telling me that you were engaged to marry Mr. Gould.'
'That's a lie,' Anne said.
She looked terrible. At no time during the afternoon, when the turmoil had started or when Cramer had announced it was murder or when he had marched her out for examination, had she shown any sign of sag or yellow, but now she looked as if she had taken all she could. At least she did when she entered, and maybe that is why she reacted the way she did to Wolfe's statement and got rough.
'Marry Harry Gould?' she said. 'That isn't true!' Her voice trembled with something that sounded like scorn but might have been anything.
Rose was out of her chair and was trembling all over. All right, I thought, Wolfe arranged for it and now he'll get it. She'll scratch Anne's eyes out. I moved a step. But she didn't. She even tried to control her voice.
'You bet it ain't true!' she cried, and that was scorn. 'Harry wasn't marrying into your family! He wasn't marrying any daughter of a thief!'
Anne gawked at her.
Rose spat. 'You with your stuckup nose! Why ain't your father in jail where he belongs? And you up there showing your legs like a ten-cent floozie-'
'Archie,' Wolfe said sharply. 'Take her upstairs.'
Rose went on, not even hearing him. I got her suitcase in one hand and gripped her arm with the other and turned her around, and the idea of her nonmarrying Harry marrying another girl, in spite of his being dead, occupied her brain so that she kept right on spitting compliments without even knowing I was propelling her out of the room until we were in the hall. Then she went flat-footed and shut her mouth and glared at me.
'On up two flights,' I said. 'Or I know how to carry you so you can't bite.' I still had her arm. 'Up we
