“It's all a matter of practice, I said courteously.
“Yeah, the taller one agreed, in a tenor that was almost a falsetto. “Follow me.
He moved to the wall, with me behind. The cars had been stopped short of the wall to leave an alley, and we went down it a few paces to a door where a man was standing. He opened the door for us-it was the one that made little noise-and we passed through into a small vestibule, also with no windows in its concrete walls. Across it, only three paces, steps down began, and we descended-fourteen shallow steps to a wide metal door. My conductor pushed a button in the metal jamb. I heard no sound within, but in a moment the door opened and a pasty-faced bird with a pointed chin was looking at us.
“Archie Goodwin, my conductor said.
“Step in.
I waited politely to be preceded, but my conductor moved aside, and the other one said impatiently, “Step in, Goodwin.
I stepped, and the sentinel closed the door. I was in a room bigger than the vestibule above: bare concrete walls, well-lighted, with a table, three chairs, a water-cooler, and a rack of magazines and newspapers. A second sentinel, seated at the table, writing in a book like a ledger, sent me a sharp glance and then forgot me. The first one crossed to another big metal door directly opposite to the one I had entered by, and when he pulled it open I saw that it was a good five inches thick. He jerked his head and told me, “On in.
I stepped across and passed through, with him at my heels.
This was quite a chamber. The walls were panelled in a light grey wood with pink in it, from the tiled floor to the ceiling, and the rugs were the same light grey with pink borders. Light came from a concealed trough continuous around the ceiling. The six or seven chairs and the couch were covered in pinkish-grey leather, and the same leather had been used for the frames of the pictures, a couple of big ones on each wall. All that, collected in my first swift survey, made a real impression.
“Archie Goodwin, the sentinel said.
The man at the desk said, “Sit down, Goodwin. All right, Schwartz, and the sentinel left us and closed the door.
I would have been surprised to find that Pete Roeder rated all this splash so soon after hitting this territory, and he didn't. The man at the desk was not
Roeder. I had never seen this bozo, but no introduction was needed. Much as he disliked publicity, his picture had been in the paper a few times, as for instance the occasion of his presenting his yacht to the United States Coast
Guard during the war. Also I had heard him described.
I had a good view of him at ten feet when I sat in one of the pinkish-grey leather chairs near his desk. Actually there was nothing to him but his forehead and eyes. It wasn't a forehead, it was a dome, sloping up and up to the line of his faded thin hair. The eyes were the result of an error on the assembly line.
They had been intended for a shark and someone got careless. They did not now look the same as shark eyes because Arnold Zeck's brain had been using them to see with for fifty years, and that had had an effect.
“I've spoken with you on the phone, he said.
I nodded. “When I was with Nero Wolfe. Three times altogether-no, I guess it was four.
“Four. Where is he? What has happened to him?
“I'm not sure, but I suspect he's in Florida, training with an air hose, preparing to lay for you in your swimming pool and get you when you dive.
There was no flicker of response, of any kind, in the shark eyes. “I have been told of your habits of speech, Goodwin, he said. “I make no objection. I take men for what they are or not at all. It pleases me that, impressed as you must be by this meeting, you insist on being yourself. But it does waste time and words. Do you know where Wolfe is?
“No.
“Have you a surmise?
“Yeah, I just told you. I got irritated. “Say I tell you he's in Egypt, where he owns a house. I don't, but say I do. Then what? You send a punk to Cairo to drill him? Why? Why can't you let him alone? I know he had his faults-God knows how I stood them as long as I did-but he taught me a lot, and wherever he is he's my favourite fatty. Just because he happened to queer your deal with
Rackham, you want to track him down. What will that get you, now that he's faded out? 5
“I don't wish or intend to track him down.
“No? Then what made me so interesting? Your Max Christy and your bearded wonder offering me schoolboy jobs at triple pay. Get me sucked in, get me branded, and when the time comes use me to get at Wolfe so you can pay him. No. I shook my head. “I draw the line somewhere, and all of you together won't get me across that one.
I'm not up enough on fish to know whether sharks blink, but Zeck was showing me.
He blinked perhaps one-tenth his share. He asked, “Why did you take the job?
“Because it was Rackham. I'm interested in him. I was glad to know someone else was. I would like to have a hand in his future.
No blink. “You think you know, I suppose, the nature of my own interests and activities.
“I know what is said around. I know that a New York police inspector told me that you're out of
