After a while Dora Chapin came back, with coffee cups and a bowl of sugar.
Of course it was in the coffee, she probably put it right in the pot since she didn't drink any, but I didn't notice a taste. It was strong but it tasted all right.
However, she must have put in all the sleeping tablets and a few other things she could get hold of, for God knows it was potent. I began to feel it when I was reaching to hand Scott a cigarette, and at the same time I saw the look on his face.
He was a few seconds ahead of me. Dora
Chapin was out of the room again. Scott looked at the door she had gone through, and tried to get up out of his chair, but couldn't make it. That was the last I really remember, him trying to get out of his chair, but I must have done one or two things after that, because when I came out of it I was in the dining-room, halfway across to the door which led to the sittingroom and the hall.
When I came out of it, it was dark.
That was the first thing I knew, and for a while it was all I knew, because I couldn't move and I was fighting to get my eyes really open. I could see, off to my right, at a great distance it seemed, two large oblongs of dim light, and I concentrated on deciding what they were. It came with a burst that they were windows, and it was dark in the room where I was, and the street was lit. Then I concentrated on what room I was in.
Things came back but all in a jumble.
I still didn't know where I was, though I was splitting my head fighting for it. I rolled over on the floor and my hand landed on something metal, sharp, and I shrunk from it. I pulled myself to my knees and began to crawl. I bumped into a table and a chair or two, and finally into the wall. I crawled around the wall with my shoulder against it, detouring for furniture, stopping every couple of feet to feel it, and at last I felt a door. I tried to stand up, but couldn't make it, and compromised by feeling above me. I found the switch and pushed on it, and the light went on. I crawled over to where there was some stuff on the floor, stretching the muscles in my brow and temples to keep my eyes open, and saw that the metal thing that had startled me was my ring of keys. My wallet was there too, and my pad and pencil, pocketknife, fountain pen, handkerchief – things from my pockets.
I got hold of a chair and pulled myself to my feet, but I couldn't navigate. I ^tried, and fell down. I looked around for a telephone, but there wasn't any, so Icrawled to the sitting-room and found the light switch by the door and turned it on.
The phone was on a stand by the further wall. It looked so far away that the desire to lie down and give it up made me want to yell to show I wouldn't do that, but I couldn't yell. I finally got to the stand and sat down on the floor against it and reached up for the phone and got the receiver off and shoved it against my ear, and heard a man's voice, very faint. I said the number of Wolfe's phone and heard him say he couldn't hear me, so then I yelled it and that way got enoug'h steam behind it. After a while I heard another .voice and yelled: ‹(I want Nero Wolfe!'
The other voice mumbled and I said to talk louder, and asked who it was, and got it into my bean that it was Fritz. I told him to get Wolfe on, and he said Wolfe wasn't there, and I said he was crazy, and he mumbled a lot of stuff and I told him to say it again louder and slower. (‹I said, Archie, Mr. Wolfe is not here. He went to look for you. Somebody came to get him, and he told me he was going for you.
Archie, where are you? Mr. Wolfe said -'
I was having a hard time holding the phone, and it dropped to the floor, the whole works, and my head fell into my hands with my eyes closed, and I suppose what I was doing you would call crying.
19
I haven't the slightest idea how long I sat there on the floor with my head laying in my hands trying to force myself out of it enough to pick up the telephone again. It may have been a minute and it may have been an hour. The trouble was that I should have been concentrating on the phone, and it kept sweeping over me that Wolfe was gone. I couldn't get my head out of my hands. Finally I heard a noise. It kept on and got louder, and at last it seeped into me that someone seemed to be trying to knock the door down. I grabbed the top of the telephone stand and pulled myself up, and decided I could keep my fet if I didn't let go of the wall, so I followed it around to the door where the noise was.
I got my hands on it and turned the lock and the knob, and it flew open and down I went again. The two guys that came in walked on me and then stood and looked at me, and I heard remarks about full to the gills and leaving the receiver off the hook.
By that time I could talk better. I said I don9! know what, enough so that one of them beat it for a doctor, and the other one helped me get up and steered me to the kitchen. He turned the light on. Scott had slewed off of his chair and curled up on the floor. My chair was turned over on its side. I felt cold air and the guy said something about the window, and I looked at it and saw the glass was shattered with a big hole in it. I never did learn what it was I had thrown through the window, maybe the plate of chicken; anyway it hadn't aroused enough curiosity down below to do any good. The guy stooped over Scott and shook him, but he was dead to the world. By working the wall again, and furniture, I got back to the dining-room and sat on the floor and began collecting my things and putting them in my pockets. I got worried because I thought something was missing and I couldn't figure out what it was, and then I realized it was the leather case Wolfe had given me, with pistols on one side and orchids on the other, that I carried my police and fire cards in. And by God I started to cry again. I was doing that when the other guy came back with the doctor. I was crying, and trying to push my knuckles into my temples hard enough to get my brain working on why Dora Chapin had fed me a knockout so she could frisk me and then took nothing but that leather case. ^ I had a fight with the doctor. He insisted that before he could give me anything he'd have to know just what it was I had inside of me, and he went to the bathroom to investigate bottles and boxes and I went after him with the idea of plugging him. I was beginning to have thoughts and they were starting to bust in my head. I got nearly to the bathroom when I forgot all about the doctor because I suddenly remembered that there had been something peculiar about Scott curled up on the floor, and I turned around and started for the kitchen. I was getting overconfident and fell down again, but I picked myself up and went on. I looked at Scott and saw what it was: he was in his shirt-sleeves. His gray taxi-driver's jacket was gone. I was trying to decide why that was important when the doctor came in with a glass of brown stuff in his hand.
