started to swing, but I didn't bother about it, I picked up the one that had stopped my knee and just used him for a whisk broom and depended on speed and my 180 pounds. The combination swept the hall out. We went through the door so fast that the first guy stumbled and fell down the stoop, and I dropped the one I had in my arms and turned and pulled the door shut and heard the lock click. Then I pushed the bell-button three times. The guy that had fallen down the stoop, the one who had tried to plug me, was on his feet again and coming up, with words.
'We're officers-'
'Shut up.' I heard footsteps inside, and I called through the closed door. 'Fritz? Tell Mr. Wolfe a couple of gentlemen have called and we're staying out on the porch for a talk. And hey! Those things are in the bottom drawer.'
VIII
I SAID, 'What do you mean, officers? Army or Navy?'
He looked down at me. He was an inch taller than me to begin with, and he was stretching it. He made his voice hard enough to scare a schoolgirl right out of her socks. 'Listen, bud. I've heard about you. How'd you like to take a good nap on some concrete?'
The other officer was back on his ankles too, but he was a short guy. He was built something like a whisk broom, at that. I undertook to throw oil on the troubled waters. Ordinarily I might have enjoyed a nice rough cussing-match, but I wanted to find out something and get back inside. I summoned a friendly grin.
'What the hell, how did I know you had badges? Okay, thanks, sergeant. All I knew was the door bumping me and a cyclone going by. Is that a way to inspire confidence?'
'All right, you know we've got badges now.' The sergeant humped up a shoulder and let it drop, and then the other one. 'Let us in. We want to see Nero Wolfe.'
'I'm sorry, he's got a headache.'
'We'll cure it for him. Listen. A friend of mine warned me about you once. He said the time would come when you would have to be taken down. Maybe that's the very thing I came here for. But so far it's a matter of law. Open that door or I'll open it myself. I want to see Mr. Wolfe on police business.'
'There's no law about that. Unless you've got a warrant.'
'You couldn't read it anyhow. Let us in.'
I got impatient. 'What's the use wasting time? You can't go in. The floor's just been scrubbed. Wolfe wouldn't see you anyhow, at this time of night. Tell me what you want like a gentleman and a cop, and I'll see if I can help you.'
He glared at me. Then he put his hand inside to his breast pocket and pulled out a document, and I had a feeling in my knees like a steering wheel with a shimmy. If it was a search warrant the jig was up right there. He unfolded it and held it for me to look, and even in the dim light from the street lamp one glance was enough to start my heart off again. It was only a warrant to take into custody. I peered at it and saw among other things the name Ramsey Muir, and nodded.
The sergeant grunted, 'Can you see the name? Clara Fox.'
'Yeah, it's a nice name.'
'We're going in after her. Open up.'
I lifted the brows. 'In here? You're crazy.'
'All right, we're crazy. Open the door.'
I shook my head, and got out a cigarette, and lit up. I said, 'Listen, sergeant. There's no use wasting the night in repartee. You know damn well you've got no more right to go through that door than a cockroach unless you've got a search warrant. Ordinarily Mr. Wolfe is more than willing to cooperate with you guys; if you don't know that, ask Inspector Cramer. So am I. Hell, some of my best friends are cops. I'm not even sore because you tried to rush me and I got excited and thought you were mugs and pushed you. But it just happens that we don't want company of any kind at present.'
He grunted and glared. 'Is Clara Fox in there?'
'Now that's a swell question.' I grinned at him. 'Either she isn't, in which case I would say no, or she is and I don't want you to know it, in which case would I say yes? I might at that, if she was somewhere else and I didn't want you to go there to look for her.'
'Is she in there?'
I just shook my head at him.
'You're harboring a fugitive from justice.'
'I wouldn't dream of such a thing.'
The short dick, the one I had swept the hall with, piped up in a tenor, 'Take him down for resisting an officer.'
I reproved him. 'The sergeant knows better than that. He knows they wouldn't book me, or if they did I read about a man once that collected enough to retire on for false arrest.'
The big one stood and stared into my frank eyes for half a minute, then turned and descended the stoop and looked up and down the street. I didn't know whether he expected to see the Russian Army or a place to buy a drink. He called up to his brother in arms, 'Stay here, Steve. Cover that door. I'll go and phone a report and
