No, none of these things. They had been killed by an axe, gripped by his fingers and melded by the muscles of his arm…
At eleven o'clock I gave up. The milk was all gone, and it didn't seem likely that I would catch up with where Wolfe thought he was if I sat up all night. I thought I detected a hint here and there that the author of that book was reasonably bloodthirsty, but I had some faint suspicions on that score already. I dropped the book on the table, stretched for a good yawn, went and opened the window and stood there looking down on the street long enough to let the sharp cold air make me feel like blankets and hopped for the hay.
Saturday morning I started out again. It was all stale bread to me, and I suppose I did a rotten job of it; if one of those guys had had some little fact tucked away that might have helped there wasn't much chance of my prying it loose, the way I was going about it. I kept moving anyhow. I called on Elkus, Lang, Mike Ayers, Adier, Cabot and Pratt. I phoned Wolfe at eleven o'clock and he had nothing to say. I decided to tackle Pitney Scott the taxi-driver. Maybe my wild guess that day had been right; there was a chance that he did know something about Andrew Hibbard. But I couldn't find him.
I called up the office of his cab company, and was told that he wasn't expected to report in until four o'clock. They told me that his usual cruising radius was from Fourteenth to Fifty-ninth streets, but that he might be anywhere. I went down and looked around Perry Street, but he wasn't there. At a quarter to one I phoned Wolfe again, expecting to be invited home to lunch, and instead he handed me a hot °ne. He asked me to grab a bite somewhere and run out to Mineola for him. Ditson had phoned to say that he had a dozen bulbs of a new Miltonia just arrived from England, and had offered to give Wolfe a couple if he would send for them.
The only times I ever really felt like turning Communist were the occasions when, in the middle of a case, Wolfe sent me chasing around after orchids. It made me feel too damn silly. But it wasn't as bad this time as usual, since the particular job I was on looked like a washout anyhow. It was cold and raw that Saturday afternoon, and kept trying to make out that it was going to snow, but I opened both windows of the roadster and enjoyed the air a lot and the Long Island traffic not at all.
I got back to Thirty-fifth Street around three-thirty, and took the bulbs in the office to show them to Wolfe. He felt them and looked them over carefully, and asked me to take them upstairs to Hortsmann and tell him not to snip the roots. I went up, and came back down to the office, intending to stop only a minute to enter the bulbs in the record book and then beat it again to get Pitney Scott. But Wolfe, from his chair, said:
'Archie.'
I knew from the tone it was the start of a speech, so I settled back. He went on:
'Now and then I receive the impression that you suspect me of neglecting this or that detail of our business. Ordinarily you are wrong, which is as it should be. In the labyrinth of any problem that confronts us, we must select the most promising paths; if we attempt to follow all at once we shall arrive nowhere. In any art – and I am an artist or nothing – one of the deepest secrets of excellence is a discerning elimination. Of course that is a truism.'
'Yes, sir.' a!
'Yes. Take the art of writing. I am, let us say, describing the actions of my hero rushing to greet his beloved, who has just entered the forest. He sprang up from the log on which he had been sitting, with his ^ft foot forward; as he did so, one leg of his trousers fell properly into place but the other remained hitched up at the knee.
He began running towards her, first his ^ght foot, then his left, then his right ^ain, then left, right, left, right, left, ^ht… As you see, some of that can surely be left out – indeed, must be, if he is to accomplish his welcoming embrace in the same chapter. So the artist must leave out vastly more than he puts in, and one of his chief cares is to leave out nothing vital to his work.'
'Yes, sir.'
'You follow me. I assure you that the necessity I have just described is my constant concern when we are engaged in an enterprise. When you suspect me of neglect you are in a sense justified, for I do ignore great quantities of facts and impingements which might seem to another intelligence – let it go without characterization – to be of importance to our undertaking. But I should consider myself an inferior workman if I ignored a fact which the event proved actually to have significance. That is why I wish to make this apology to myself, thus publicly, in your hearing.'
I nodded. 'I'm still hanging on.
Apology for what?' '
'For bad workmanship. It may prove not to have been disastrous, it may even turn out of no importance whatever. But sitting here this afternoon contemplating my glories and sifting out the sins, it occurred to me, and I need to ask you about it. You may remember that on Wednesday evening, sixty-five hours ago, i i ' you were describing for me the contents of ( Inspector Cramer's bean.' • I grinned. 'Yeah.'
'You told me that it was his belief that Dr. Elkus was having Mr. Chapin •shadowed.'
'Yep.'
'And then you started a sentence; I think you said, But one of those clicks – Something approximating that. I was impatient, and I stopped you. I should not ' have done so. My impulsive reaction to •what I knew to be nonsense betrayed me into an error. I should have let you finish.
Pray do so now.' • I nodded. 'Yeah, I remember. But since you've dumped the Dreyer thing into the ash can, what does it matter whether Elkus -'
'Archie. Confound it, I care nothing about Elkus; what I want is your sentence about a dick. What dick? Where is he?'
'Didn't I say? Tailing Paul Chapin.'
'One of Mr. Cramer's men.'
I shook my head. 'Cramer has a man there too. And we've got Durkin and Gore and Keems, eight- hour shifts. This bird's an extra. Cramer wondered who was paying him and had him in for a conference, but he's tough, he never says anything but cuss words. I thought maybe he was Bascom's, but no.'
'Have you seen him?'
