check.
“Oh,” she said, “must we go?”
“Look here,” I told her, looking in her wide-open eyes, “you’re giving me a run-around. Maybe you did the same to Lily Rowan, or she did to me. Are you in trouble, or aren’t you?”
“Why, yes. Yes, Archie, I am.”
“What kind of trouble? A run in your stocking?”
“No, really. It’s-real trouble. Honestly.”
“But you’re not telling me about it?”
She shook her head. “I can’t. Honestly I can’t. I mean-I don’t want to. You see, you
“Is it about the death of Miss Leeds’ mother?”
“It-” She stopped. Then she went on. “Yes, it is. But that’s all I’ll tell you. If you’re going to be like this-”
The waiter brought the change, and I took my share. Then I said, “Okay. The reason I’m like this, I caught myself smelling your hair. Not only that, for the last half-hour I’ve had a different attitude toward our dancing. You may have noticed it.”
“Yes, I-did.”
“Very well. I didn’t. Until just now. I admit it’s possible there is romance ahead of us. Or you may break my heart and ruin my life. Anything can happen. But not yet. What I want to know now is, what time do you quit work?”
She was smiling at me. “I leave the office at five o’clock.”
“And what, go home?”
She nodded. “I usually get home a little before five-thirty. And take a bath, and start cooking dinner. This time of year, grandmother gets home from the Square around seven, and I have dinner ready for her. Sometimes Roy or Leon eats with us.”
“Could you eat early tomorrow and come to Nero Wolfe’s house at seven o’clock? And tell him about the trouble you’re in? Tell him all about it?”
She frowned at me, hesitating. I covered her hand, on the tablecloth, with mine. “Look, sister,” I said, “it’s possible that you’re headed for something terrible yourself. I’m not trying to pretend-”
I stopped because I felt a presence, and I felt eyes. I glanced up, and there were the eyes looking down at me, one on each side of Lily Rowan’s pretty little nose.
I tried to grin at her. “Why-hello there-”
“You,” Lily said, in a tone to cut my throat. “On duty, huh? You louse!”
I think she was going to smack me. Anyhow, it was obvious that she wasn’t going to care what she did, and intended to proceed without delay, so it was merely a question of who moved first and fastest. I was out of my chair, on my feet across the table from her, in half a second flat, with a gesture to Ann, and Ann passed that test too, a fairly tough one, with flying colors. As fast as I moved she was with me, and before even Lily Rowan could get any commotion started we had my cap from the hat-check girl and were out on the sidewalk.
As the taxi rolled away with us I patted Ann’s hand and said, “Good girl. Apparently she was upset about something.”
“She was jealous,” Ann chuckled. “My lord, she was jealous. Lily Rowan jealous of me!”
When I left her at 316 Barnum Street, it was agreed that she would be at Nero Wolfe’s place at 7:00 the next day. Even so, as the taxi took me back to 35th Street, I was not in a satisfactory frame of mind, and it wasn’t improved by finding pinned to my pillowcase a note which said:
Chapter 6
I slept because I always sleep, but my nerves must have been in bad shape, because when my eyes opened and read the clock at 6:50 I was immediately wide awake. I would have given my next two promotions for the satisfaction of planting myself in the downstairs hall and glaring at Wolfe and Fritz as they left on their way to the training field, but knowing that would be a bad blunder in strategy I restrained myself. All I did was open my door so I could hear noises, and when, promptly at 7:00 I heard the street door open and close, I went to a window and leaned out for a look. And there they went, off toward the river, Wolfe in the blue serge pants and my maroon sweater and heavy shoes, no hat, at a gait he probably thought was a stride, swinging his arms. It was simply too damn pathetic.
On that heavy gray March morning my Ann Amory operation looked pretty hopeless, but it was all I had, so I prepared to give it the works. After orange juice and ham and eggs and pancakes and two cups of coffee
