The two meals were screwy, with Wolfe and me, mostly Wolfe, carrying on with table talk, while the other five just ate and listened. Try it sometime. I couldn't even ask one of them to pass the butter; I could just point. And when we were doing something, for instance taking the boxes up to the potting room and stacking them, even I couldn't talk, because whom would I be talking to?
I left the house only once, late Wednesday afternoon, to call Hewitt from a booth and tell him the shipment had arrived in good condition, and to the garage to give Tom Halloran the picture.
There were bright spots, two of them on Wednesday and four on Thursday, when Jarvis observed Wolfe. Jarvis would stand at the foot of the stairs and study Wolfe coming down, at the top and study him going down, and in the hall and study him on the level. By the second session Thursday I knew Jarvis was pulling Wolfe's leg, enjoying the look on his face, but I was enjoying it too. Of course Kirby observed me the same way, but that was no hardship; on a normal day I go up and down those stairs a dozen times or more. What Kirby couldn't observe was my driving. They would probably be tailed all the way to Hewitt's, and if his style at the wheel was too different from mine it could make a smart G-man suspicious. Thursday morning I took him to the office and turned on the radio and discussed it for half an hour.
Looking back at it, I don't think we missed a single bet. Around eleven o'clock Wednesday night I went up to my room, which fronts on Thirty-fifth Street, paid no more attention to the curtains than usual, changed to pajamas, sat on the bed, and turned out the light on the bed stand. In a couple of minutes Fred and Orrie entered and undressed in the dark, and I got out and they got in. Saul slept on the sofa in the front room, and we didn't turn the lights on in there at all. We rarely do.
I mention a funny thing. As I turned the office lights out Wednesday night and got between sheets on the couch, I was thinking not of the trap we were setting and whether it was going to work, but of the couch in Sarah Dacos's apartment. What if the cleaning woman decided to turn the cushion over and looked under the spring? If I had stayed another five minutes maybe I could have found a better spot.
The two meals I mentioned were Wednesday's lunch and dinner.
Thursday's breakfast and lunch were different because Fritz wasn't there. The arrangement was that Hewitt would have a car there for Fritz at eight o'clock, and it came right on time. I carried his bag out for him, and at the car door he shook my hand, looking glum. He was in no mood for producing masterpieces for a bunch of aristologists. Saul and I handled the breakfast problem, and for lunch we had cold cuts, including the sturgeon, which had been passed as edible, two bottles of champague, and five kinds of cheese.
At 4:45 Thursday afternoon I was in the office with Saul and Fred and Orrie when Theodore Horstmann, the orchid nurse, who had been told to leave early, came downstairs, said good night, and left. Wolfe was up in his room. At 5:10 I went up to my room, turned on the lights, and started changing. I could have made sure that there was no chink in the curtains and just sat, but it wouldn't have been normal for me to bother about chinks and we damned well wanted everything normal. Wolfe, in his room, was doing likewise. At 5:40, dressed for dinner, I went back down to the office, and at 5:45 there was the sound of the elevator, and Wolfe appeared, also dressed. He and I started talking, no radio, about traffic problems. At 5:55 on the dot there was a faint sound of footsteps in the hall, and Jarvis and Kirby were there. Jarvis's dinner uniform was a big improvement on Wolfe's, which had seen better years, but Kirby's wasn't up to mine, which had set me back three Cs. They stood at the door. I told Wolfe I would wait in the car, went to the hall, held my coat for Kirby and handed him my hat, and stayed in the corner out of range as he opened the door, crossed the sill, and pulled the door shut. As Jarvis came and stood looking out through the one-way glass, with me at his elbow, the lights in the office went out, and I got Wolfe's coat and hat for Jarvis. In about half an hour which was really about six minutes the Heron showed and came to a stop at the curb. Jarvis flipped the light switch and the hall was dark, but I moved out of range until he was out and the door closed. I watched him and decided he was earning the extra grand. I had had no opinion about Kirby, since I don't know how I look when I walk, but I would have sworn it was Wolfe going down the steps, crossing the sidewalk, and getting into the car, if I hadn't known. The Heron rolled away, smooth, no jerks, like me, and I realized I had been holding my breath God knows how long.
The office was now empty if they had followed the script. Before the lights went out in the hall Wolfe had gone to the dark kitchen, Orrie to the dark dining room, and Saul and Fred through the connecting door to the dark front room. I hadn't heard them, so no one had. I put my hand in my side pocket to touch the Marley.38, stepped to the door and touched the edge to make sure it was closed, stood until my eyes were as well adjusted to the dark as they would get, and sat down on the chair at the wall opposite the rack.
I felt fine. The strain was over. It could have been spoiled a hundred different ways, by either bad handling or bad luck, but here we were, all set, with nothing to do but wait. Either they had decided to do a bag job or they hadn't, and that was their strain, not mine. I didn't know what their score was on bag jobs, no outsider does, but I knew of four in New York the past year, definitely, and I had heard talk of several more.
It depended on whether Wragg believed that a G-man had killed Althaus. If he did, ten to one they would come. If he didn't, if he had somehow been satisfied that his men were clean on the murder, they wouldn't come. Whether the bait was good enough depended on him, not on us. I felt fine.
When I decided half an hour had passed I went to the door to look at my watch by the light coming through the one-way glass, and when I saw 6:22 I felt a little less fine. Wrong by eight minutes. I am supposed to be good at judging time, so evidently I wasn't as unstrained as I thought I was. Instead of sitting, I walked down the hall to the office door and felt still less fine when I rubbed against the wall twice. That was inexcusable. Of course going back to the front, toward the rectangle of light, was simple, but damn it, I should be able to go straight down the center of the hall I knew so well into the pitch dark. I did, three times, and then went to the chair and sat.
I can't give the precise time that they came because I was determined not to look again until seven o'clock, but it was close to seven. Suddenly the dim light at the door was even dimmer and there they were. Two of them. A third was probably down on the sidewalk. One of them bent over to look at the lock, and the other stood at the top of the first step, his back to the door, facing the street.
Of course they had known the lock was a Rabson and had brought the right items, but no matter how good he was he wouldn't get a Rabson at the first stab, so there was no hurry. The door from the hall to the front room, open, was right there, four feet from the chair. I stepped to it, stuck my head in, let a low hiss through my teeth, and got one back. I walked to the dining room door, not touching the wall, did another hiss, and it was returned. Then I went and stood just outside the office door. They wouldn't flash a light the instant they made it in; they would stand and listen.
I have since argued with Saul about how long it took him. He says the door opened eight minutes after I hissed, and I say ten. Anyway it opened, and as it started I moved into the office, got my back against the wall to the left of the door, put my left hand behind me with a finger on the light switch, and took the Marley from my pocket with the right.
Once in, they didn't listen more than five seconds, which was bad technique. They came straight down the hall. With my head turned, I saw the faint gleam of a pencil-flash grow brighter, then streak into the office, and then them. They came in three or four steps and stopped. The one with the flash started it around and in three seconds it would have hit me, so I sang out, 'Play ball!' raised the Marley, and flipped the switch, and
