“Where is he?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Has he talked with her?”
“No.”
“How long has she been here?”
“Half an hour.”
“Excuse my manners. I’ve had a night.” I headed for the end of the hall, the swinging door to the kitchen, pushed it open, and entered. Wolfe was at the center table with a glass of beer in his hand. He grunted. “So. Have you slept?”
“No.”
“Have you eaten?”
I got a glass from the cupboard, went to the refrigerator and got milk, filled the glass, and took a sip. “If you could see the bacon and eggs they had brought in for me and I paid two bucks for, let alone taste it, you’d never be the same. You’d be so afraid you might be hauled in as a material witness you’d lose your nerve. They think maybe I killed Faber. For your information, I didn’t.” I sipped milk. “This will hold me till lunch. I understand I have a caller. As you told Parker, this is my affair and you are not concerned. May I take her to the front room? I’m not intimate enough with her to take her up to my room.” I sipped milk.
“Confound it,” he growled. “How much of what you told Mr. Cramer was flummery?”
“None. All straight. But he’s on me and so is the DA, and I’ve got to find out why.” I sipped milk.
He was eying me. “You will see Miss McLeod in the office.”
“The front room will do. It may be an hour. Two hours.”
“You may need the telephone. The office.”
If I had been myself I would have given that offer a little attention, but I was somewhat pooped. So I went, taking my half a glass of milk. The door to the office was closed and, entering, I closed it again. She wasn’t in the red leather chair. Since she was there for me, not for Wolfe, Fritz had moved up one of the yellow chairs for her, but hearing the door open and seeing me she had sprung up, and by the time I had shut the door and turned she was to me, gripping my arms, her head tilted back to get my eyes. If it hadn’t been for the milk I would have used my arms for one of their basic functions, since that’s a sensible way to start a good frank talk with a girl. That being impractical, I tilted my head forward and kissed her. Not just a peck. She not only took it, she helped, and her grip on my arms tightened, and I had to keep the glass plumb by feel since I couldn’t see it. It wouldn’t have been polite for me to quit, so I left it to her.
She let go, backed up a step, and said, “You haven’t shaved.”
I crossed to my desk, sipped milk, put the glass down, and said, “I spent the night at the district attorney’s office, and I’m tired, dirty, and sour. I could shower and shave and change in half an hour.”
“You’re all right.” She plumped onto the chair. “Look at me.”
“I am looking at you.” I sat. “You’d do fine for a before-and-after vitamin ad. The before. Did you get to bed?”
“I guess so, I don’t know.” Her mouth opened to pull air in. Not a yawn, just helping her nose. “It couldn’t have been a jail because the windows didn’t have bars. They kept me until after midnight asking questions, and one of them took me home. Oh yes, I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep, but I must have, because I woke up. Archie, I don’t know what you’re going to do to me.”
“Neither do I.” I drank milk, emptying the glass. “Why, have you done something to me?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course not.”
“It came out. You remember you explained it for me one night.”
I nodded. “I said you have a bypass in your wiring. With ordinary people like me, when words start on their way out they have to go through a checking station for an okay, except when we’re too mad or scared or something. You may have a perfectly good checking station, but for some reason, maybe a loose connection, it often gets bypassed.”
She was frowning. “But the trouble is, if I haven’t got a checking station I’m just plain dumb. If I do have one, it certainly got bypassed when the words came out about my going to meet you there yesterday.”
“Meet me where?”
“On Forty-eighth Street. There at the entrance to the alley where I used to turn in to deliver the corn to Rusterman’s. I said I was to meet you there at five o’clock and we were going to wait there until Ken came because we wanted to have a talk with him. But I was late, I didn’t get there until a quarter past five, and you weren’t there, so I left.”
I kept my shirt on. “You said that to whom?”
“To several people. I said it to a man who came to the apartment, and in that building he took me to downtown I said it to another man, and then to two more, and it was in a statement they had me sign.”
“When did we make the date to meet there? Of course they asked that.”
“They asked everything. I said I phoned you yesterday morning and we made it
