About a hundred and eighty pounds too much. Come on, Wengert, I'm late.'
They went. I supposed that was the last of that, but a couple of days later, Monday afternoon, while Wolfe was dictating a letter, the phone rang and a voice said it was Carol Berk. I said hello, showing no enthusiasm, and asked her, 'How are your manners?'
'Rotten when required,' she said cheerfully. 'Privately like this, from a phone booth, I can be charming. I thought it was only fair for me to apologize for calling you little.'
'Okay, go ahead.'
'I thought you might prefer it face to face. I'm willing to take the trouble if you insist.'
'Well, I'll tell you. I had an idea last week, Wednesday I think it was, that I ought to find time some day to tell you why I don't like you. We could meet and clean it up. I'll tell you why I don't like you, and you'll apologize. The Churchill bar at four-thirty? Can you be seen with me in public?'
'Certainly, I'm supposed to be seen in public.'
'Fine. I'll have a hammer and sickle in my buttonhole.'
As I hung up and swiveled I told Wolfe, 'That was Carol Berk. I'm going to buy her a drink and possibly food. Since she was connected with the case we've just finished, of course I'll put it on the expense account.'
'You will not,' he asserted and resumed the dictation.
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1
a
graHERE were several reasons why I had no complaints as I u walked along West Thirty-fifth Street that morning, approaching the stoop of Nero Wolfe's old brownstone house. The day was sunny and sparkling, my new shoes felt fine after the two-mile walk, a complicated infringement case had been 'polished off for a big client, and I had just deposited a check in five figures to Wolfe's account in the bank.
Five paces short of the stoop I became aware that two people, a man and a woman, were standing on the sidewalk i across the street, staring either at the stoop or at me, or maybe both. That lifted me a notch higher, with the thought that while two rubbernecks might not put us in a class with the White House still it was nothing to sneeze at, until a second glance made me realize that I had seen them before. But where? Instead of turning up the steps I faced them, just as .they stepped off the curb and started to me.
'Mr. Goodwin,' the woman said in a sort of gasping whisper that barely reached me.
She was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, young enough, kind of nice-looking and neat in a dark blue assembly-line coat. He was as dark as she was fair, not much bigger than her, with his nose slanting slightly to the left and a full wide mouth. My delay in recognizing him was because I had never seen ^him with a hat on before. He was the hatandcoatandtie ^custodian at the barber shop I went to.
'Oh, it's you, Carl-'
'Can we go in with you?' the woman asked in the same
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gasping whisper, and then I knew her too. She was also from the barber shop, a manicure. I had never hired her, since I do my own nails, but had seen her around and had heard her called Tina.
I looked down at her smooth white little face with its pointed chin and didn't care for the expression on it. I glanced at Carl, and he looked even worse.
'What's the matter?' I guess I was gruff. 'Trouble?'
'Please not out here,' Tina pleaded. Her eyes darted left and right and back up at me. 'We just got enough brave to go to the door when you came. We were thinking which door, the one down below or up the steps. Please let us in?'
It did not suit my plans. I had counted on getting a few little chores done before Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o'clock. There could be no profit in this.
'You told me once,' Carl practically whined, 'that people in danger only have to mention your name.'
'Nuts. A pleasantry. I talk too much.' But I was stuck. 'Okay, come in and tell me about it.'
I led the way up the steps and let us in with my key. Inside, the first door on the left of the long wide hall was to what we called the front room, not much used, and I opened it, thinking to get it over with in there, but Fritz was there, dusting, so I took them along to the next door and on into the office. After moving a couple of chairs so they would be facing me I sat at my desk and nodded at them impatiently. Tina had looked around swiftly before she sat.
'Such a nice safe room,' she said, 'for you and Mr. Wolfe, two such great men.'
'He's the great one,' I corrected her. 'I just caddy. What's this about danger?'
'We love this country,' Carl said emphatically. All of a sudden he started trembling, first his hands, then his arms and shoulders, then all over. Tina darted to him and grabbed his elbows and shook him, not gently, and said things to him in some language I wasn't up on. He mumbled back at her and then got more vocal, and after a little the trembling stopped, and she returned to her chair.
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'We do love this country,' she declared. I nodded. 'Wait till you see Chillicothe, Ohio, where I was born. Then you will love it. How far west have you been, Tenth Avenue?'
'I don't think so.' Tina was doubtful. 'I think Eighth Avenue. But that's what we want to do, go west.' She decided it would help to let me have a smile, but it didn't work too well. 'We can't go east, can we, into the ocean?' She opened her blue leather handbag and, with no fingering or digging, took something from it. 'But you
