rubber. Right now I’m taking on Nero Wolfe, so it will have to be postponed. I’m glad you don’t think I’m beautiful. Nothing irritates a woman more than to be thought beautiful.”
I had my coat on and she had the door open. The bag under her arm was the same dark blue material as the hat. On the way to the elevator I explained, “I didn’t say I didn’t think you were beautiful. I said-”
“I heard what you said. It stabbed me clear through. Even from a stranger who may also be my enemy, it hurt. I’m vain and that’s that. Because it just happens that I can’t see straight and I do think I’m beautiful.”
“So do-” I began, but just in time I saw the corner of her mouth moving and bit it off. I am telling this straight. If anyone thinks I was muffing everything she sent my way I won’t argue, but I would like to point out that I was right there with her, looking at her and listening to her, and the hell of it was that she
Driving down to Thirty-fifth Street, she kept the atmosphere as neighborly as if I had never been within ten miles of the NIA. Entering the house, we found the office uninhabited, so I left her there and went to find Wolfe. He was in the kitchen, deep in a conference with Fritz regarding the next day’s culinary program, and I sat on a stool, thinking over the latest development, Gunther by name, until they were finished. Wolfe finally acknowledged my presence.
“Is she here?”
“Yep. She sure is. Straighten your tie and comb your hair.”
Chapter 11
IT WAS A QUARTER past two in the morning when Wolfe glanced at the wall clock, sighed, and said, “Very well, Miss Gunther, I am ready to fulfill my part of the bargain. It was agreed that after you had answered my questions I would answer yours. Go ahead.”
I hadn’t been distracted much by gazing at beauty because, having been told to get it in the notebook verbatim, my eyes had been busy elsewhere. It was fifty-four pages. Wolfe had been in one of his looking-under- every-stone moods, and the stuff on some of the pages had no more to do with Boone’s murder, from where I sat, than Washington crossing the Delaware. Some of it might conceivably help. First and foremost, of course, was her own itinerary for last Tuesday. She knew nothing about the conference which had prevented Boone from leaving Washington on the train with the others, and admitted that that was surprising, since she was his confidential secretary and was supposed to know everything and usually did. Arriving in New York, she had gone with Alger Kates and Nina Boone to the BPR New York office, where Kates had gone into the statistical section, and she and Nina had helped department heads to collect props to be used as illustrations of points in the speech. There had been a large collection of all sorts of things, from toothpicks to typewriters, and it wasn’t until after six o’clock that the final selection had been made: two can openers, two monkey wrenches, two shirts, two fountain pens, and a baby carriage; and the data on them assembled. One of the men had conveyed them to the street for her and found a taxi, and she had headed for the Waldorf, Nina having gone previously. A bellboy had helped her get the props to the ballroom floor and the reception room. There she learned that Boone had asked for privacy to go over his speech, and an NIA man, General Erskine, had taken her to the room, to be known before long as the murder room.
Wolfe asked, “
“Yes,” she said, “Ed Erskine, the son of the NIA President.”
I snorted.
“He was a B.G.,” she said. “One of the youngest generals in the Air Force.”
“Do you know him well?”
“No, I had only seen him once or twice and had never met him. But naturally I hate him.” At that moment there was no question about it; she was not smiling. “I hate everybody connected with the NIA.”
“Naturally. Go ahead.”
Ed Erskine had wheeled the baby carriage to the door of the room and left her there, and she had not stayed with Boone more than two or three minutes. The police had spent hours on those two or three minutes, since they were the last that anyone except the murderer had spent with Boone alive. Wolfe spent two pages of my notebook. Boone had been concentrated and tense, even more than usual, which was not remarkable under the circumstances. He had jerked the shirts and monkey wrenches out of the baby carriage and put them on the table, glanced at the data, reminded Miss Gunther that she was to follow a copy of the speech as he talked and take notes of any deviation he made from the text; and then had handed her the leather case and told her to get. She had returned to the reception room and had two cocktails, two quick ones because she felt she needed them, and then had joined the exodus to the ballroom and had found table number eight, the one near the dais reserved for BPR people. She was eating her fruit cocktail when she remembered about the leather case, and that she had left it on the window sill in the reception room. She said nothing about it because she didn’t want to confess her carelessness, and just as she was starting to excuse herself to Mrs. Boone and leave the table, Frank Thomas Erskine, on the dais, had spoken into the microphone:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret the necessity of giving you this news, thus abruptly, but I must explain why no one can be allowed to leave this room…”
It was an hour later when she finally got to the reception room, and the leather case was gone.
Boone had told her the case contained cylinders he had dictated in his Washington office that afternoon, and that was all she knew. It wasn’t remarkable that he hadn’t told her what the dictation was about, because he seldom did. Since he used other stenographers for all routine stuff, it was understood that any cylinders he turned over to her personally were important and probably confidential. There were twelve such cases in use in Boone’s office, each holding ten cylinders, and they were constantly going back and forth among him and her and other stenographers, since Boone had done nearly all of his dictating on the machine. They were
