“Good night, Archie.
I was on the landing when his voice came. Til get your breakfast! I don't have to leave until ten!
“Swell! I called back. “We'll never miss him!
The next day, Tuesday, I had no time to raise a lump. There were dozens of phone calls, from newspapers, former clients, friends, and miscellaneous. One was from
Calvin Leeds, asking me to go up there to see him, and I told him I had had enough of Westchester for a while. When he insisted, I agreed to receive him at the office at two o'clock. I took advantage of another call, from Lon Cohen at the Gazette, to ask about my recent cell mate, Max Christy. Lon asked why I wanted to know. Lon is a good guy, but no newspaperman on earth can answer the simplest question without asking you one first, and more if possible.
“Just curious, I told him. “I met him in jail over the weekend, and thought he was charming. I don't want a biography, just a line or two.
“For quotation?
“No.
“Right. He's comparatively new to this section, but he's a fast mover. Not really big yet. As far as I know, the only thing he's close to right in town is a string of rooms for transients. He seems to be specialising on little week-end roundups in the suburbs.
“Just games, or women, or what?
“Anything men risk money for. Or pay it for. I have heard that he is seen around sometimes with Brownie Costigan. How curious are you? Is it worth a steak? Or is it worth a phone number or address where I can reach Nero Wolfe?
By that time I had abandoned the idea of selling anyone, even Lon Cohen, the idea that I ever told the truth, so I thanked him and hung up.
A couple of cheques in the morning mail, one from a man who was paying in instalments for having a blackmailer removed from his throat, were no problem, since there was a rubber stamp for endorsing them, but in order to pay three bills that came in I had to make a trip to Fifty-fourth Street to see if the formalities about Marko's power of attorney had been attended to. They had, by
Parker, and I was glad to see that Marko signed the cheques on my say-so, without looking at the bills. If he had started auditing on me I swear to God I would have moved out and got a hotel room.
There were other chores, such as phoning Hewitt's place on Long Island to ask if the plants and Theodore had arrived safely, making arrangements with a phone-answering service, handling a report from Fred Durkin on a poison-letter job that was the main item of unfinished business and so on, but I managed to have them all under control when two o'clock came and brought Calvin Leeds.
When I went to let him in and took him to the office, there was a problem.
Should I sit at my desk or at Wolfe's? On the one hand, I was not Wolfe and had no intention of trying to be. On the other hand, when a pinch-hitter is called on he stands at the plate to bat, not off to one side. Also it would be interesting to see, from Wolfe's position, what the light was like on the face of a man sitting in the red leather chair. So again, this time intentionally, I sat behind Wolfe's desk.
“I came here to get an explanation, Leeds said, “and I'm going to get it.
He looked as if he could stand a dose of something-if not an explanation, then maybe castor oil. The hide of his face still looked tough and weathered, or rather as if it had been but someone had soaked it in something to make it stretch and get saggy. His eyes looked determined, but not clear and alert as before. No one would have guessed that he had just inherited half a million bucks, and not from a dearly beloved wife or sister but merely a cousin.
Something like a million times I had seen Wolfe, faced with a belligerent statement from a caller, lean back and close his eyes. I thought I might as well try it, and did so. But the springs which let the chair's back slant to the rear were carefully adjusted to the pressure of Wolfe's poundage, not mine, and I had to keep pushing to maintain the damn' thing in the leaning position.
“A man who comes forty miles for an explanation, I said, with my eyes closed,
“is entitled to one. What needs explaining?
“Nero Wolfe's behaviour does.
“That's nothing new. It was too much of a strain keeping the chair back in a leaning position, and I straightened up. “It often has. But that's not my department.
“I want to see him.
“So do I.
“You're a liar, Goodwin.
I shook my head, my lips tight. “You know, I said, “I have probably told as many lies as any man my age except psychos. But I have never been called a liar as frequently as in the past twenty-four hours, and I have never stuck so close to the truth. To hell with it. Mr Wolfe has gone south to train with the
Dodgers. He will play shortstop.
That won't help any, Leeds said, patient but determined, “that kind of talk. If you don't like being called a liar, neither do I, and the difference is that I'm not. The district attorney says I'm lying, because Nero Wolfe has suddenly disappeared, and he disappeared because he doesn't dare answer questions about my cousin Sarah's visit to him here, and that proves that your report of that visit is false, and since my report is the same as yours mine is false too. Now that sounds logical, but there's a flaw in it. The flaw is their assumption that his disappearance was connected with my cousin's visit. I know it couldn't have been, because there was nothing about our talk that day that could possibly have had such a result. I have told them that, and they think I'm lying.
