'I thought he knew me. And you think it's funny.'
'I know it's funny. He does know you. I thought you knew him. It's just that he wants to kill him himself. So do I. So do you.'
'Were you on?'
'Wot till he came yesterday, but I should have been. A lot of things-Pierre not telling you, that room at Rusterman's, her asking Lily Rowan about you, him and women, him offering to work for nothing, him wanting to take Lucile Ducos- certainly should have been on.'
He tapped his skull with his knuckles. 'Empty.'
'Mine too, until last night. Have you got anything?'
'Nothing solid. I only started to look yesterday at half past five. I've got an idea how he might have met her. As you know, he often does jobs for Del Bascom, and Bascom took on something for Bassett, for NATELEC, about a year ago. At noon I decided to take a look here, and here you are ahead of me.'
'Not much ahead, I just started. Okay. I came for myself, and you came for him. Who's in charge?'
He grinned. 'It's a temptation, sure it is, but I'm not like Oscar Wilde, I can resist it. Where do you want me to start?'
I was returning the grin. Saul doesn't often drag in such facts as that he knows about people like Oscar Wilde and I don't. 'You might try this desk,' I said I've only done the top drawer. There's a lot of books, and I'll start on them.'
Two hours later, when Mane came, we had covered a lot of ground at least Saul had, and had found exactly nothing. He had done the desk, chairs, closet, bed, floor, dresser, pictures on the wall and a stack of magazines, and had really done them. Flipping through the hundred and some books had taken me half an hour, and then I had settled down to it starting over and turning the pages one by one, making sure not to skip. Saul was having another go at shoes from the closet, examining the insides, when the door opened and Marie was there with a loaded tray. She crossed to the table and put the tray down and said, 'I went out for the beer. We only drink mineral water. I hope you like fromage de cochon. Monsieur Ducos makes it himself. His chair won't go in the kitchen, and I put things in the hall for him.'
I had joined her. 'Thank you very much,' I said. 'I admit I'm hungry. Thank you.'
My hand came out of my pocket, but she showed me a palm. 'No,' she said, 'you are guests'-and walked out.
There was a plate with a dozen slices of something, a long, slender loaf of bread, and the beer. Of course Pierre had told her that Nero Wolfe liked beer, and we were from Nero Wolfe, so she went out for beer. I would remember to tell him. We moved the table over by the bed, and I sat on the bed and Saul on the chair. There was no bread knife. Of course; you yank it off. No butter. The slices, fromage de cochon, which I looked up a week later, was head cheese, and I hope Fritz doesn't read this, because I'm going to state a fact: it was better than his. We agreed that it was the best head cheese we had ever tasted, and the bread was good enough to go with it. I told Saul I was glad we were getting something for the six double sawbucks I had given her.
Half an hour later it was looking as though that was all we were going to get. We looked at each other, and Saul said, 'I skipped something. I didn't look close enough at the inside of the covers. Did you?'
I said maybe not, and we each took a book, he from the top shelf and I from the middle one, and the third book I took, there it was. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. The inside of the back cover was pasted-on paper like all books, but it bulged a little in the middle and at the outside edge the edge of another paper showed, about a sixty-fourth of an inch. I got out my knife and opened the small thin blade Saul put his book back on the shelf and said, 'Easy does it,' and I didn't even glance at him, which showed the condition we were in. We never say things like that to each other.
I went easy all right. It took a good five minutes to make sure that it was glued down tight except for a small part in the- middle, a rectangle about one inch by an inch and a half, where the little bulge was. Then came the delicate part, getting under to the edge of whatever made the bulge. That took another five minutes, but once I had the edge it was simple. I slit along to the comer, then across the end and down the other side, and across the other end. And there it was. A piece of thin paper glued to the paper that had bulged, with writing on it in ink. I am looking at it right now, and the other day I took a picture of it with my best camera to reproduce here: I handed it to Saul, and he took a look and handed it back and said, 'She wrote it.'
'Sure. The one Pierre found on the tray, Orrie gave him a hundred dollars for it. That was four days after the dinner, so Pierre had it four days. I said a week ago that she found it and made a copy of it, and she would try to put the squeeze on him and would get killed. ESP.'
I got out my card case and slipped the piece of paper in under cellophane.
I stood up. 'Have you got a program? I have. I'm not going to report in person. I'm going to the nearest phone booth.'
'I don't suppose I could listen in?'
'Sure, why not?'
We took a look around. Everything was in order except the table, which was still by the bed, and we put it back where it belonged. Saul took our coats and the book, and I took the tray. We found Marie in the kitchen, which was about one-fourth the size of Wolfe's. I told her the bread and wonderful head cheese had saved our lives, that we hadn't found what we had hoped to find, and that we were taking just one thing, a book that we wanted to have a good look at because it might tell us something. She wouldn't let me pay for the book, because Miss Ducos was dead and they didn't want it. She declined my offer to let her go through our pockets and came to the door to let us out. All in all, we had got my money's worth.
Out on the sidewalk I told Saul, 'I said the near- est phone booth, but if you listen in it will be crowded. How about your place?'
He said fine, and that his car was parked in the lot near Tenth Avenue, and we headed west. He doesn't like to talk when he's driving any more than I do, but he'll listen, and I told him about the uninvited guest who had come that morning, and he said he wished he had been there, he would have liked to have a look at her.
We left the car in the garage on Thirty-ninth Street where he keeps it and walked a couple of blocks. He lives alone on the top floor of a remodeled house on Thirty-eighth Street between Lexington and Third. The living room is big, lighted with two floor lamps and two table lamps. One wall had windows, one was solid with books, and the
