'He came and went up. I told him he wouldn't come.'
'Ill be down, but don't bother with breakfast. I'll eat the second section of the Times. With vinegar.'
'It's better with ketchup.'
He hung up.
But when I finally made it down to the kitchen the stage was set. Tools and cup and saucer and the toaster and butter dish were on the little table, and the Times was on the rack, and the griddle was on the range. On the big center table was a plate of slices of homemade scrapple. I got a glass and went to the refrigerator for orange juice, poured some, and took a sip.
'As far as I'm concerned,' I said, 'you and I are still friends. You're the only friend I've got in the world. Let's go somewhere. Switzerland? That ought to be far enough. Have there been phone calls?'
'There have been rings, four, but I didn't answer. Neither did he.'
He had turned the heat on under the griddle. That thing on the door of that room, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT, how long will it Stay?'
I drank orange juice. That's a good idea,' I said. 'Forget all the other details, such as headlines like GUEST EN NERO WOLFE'S HOUSE KILLED BY BOMB Or ARCHIE GOODWIN OPENS DOOR TO HOMICIDE, and concentrate on that door. Wonderful idea.'
He was getting bacon fat on the griddle. I went to my chair at the little table and picked up the Times. President Ford wanted us to do something about inflation. Nixon was in shock from the operation. Judge Sirica had told Ehrlichman's lawyer he talked too much. The Arabs had made Arafat it. Items which ordinarily would have had me turning to inside pages, but I had to use will power to finish the first paragraphs. I tried other departments-sports, weather, obituaries, metropolitan briefs-and decided that it's possible to tell your mind what to do only when your mind agrees with you. I was going on from there to decide if that meant anything and if so what, when Fritz came with two slices of scrapple on a plate. As he put it down he made a noise which I'll spell Tchahh!'
I asked him why, and he said he forgot the honey and went and brought it.
As I was buttering the third slice of toast the phone rang. I counted. It rang twelve times and stopped. In a couple of minutes Fritz said, 'I never saw you do that before.'
'There'll probably be a lot of things you never saw me do before. Did you get the plates and glasses I left in the office?'
'I haven't been to the office.'
'Did he mention me when you took his breakfast up or went for the tray?'
'No. He asked me if I had been up during the night. I started to tell him about it, how many of them had come, and he stopped me.'
'How did he stop you?'
'By looking at me and then turning his back.'
'Was he dressed?'
'Yes. The dark brown with little stripes. Yellow shirt and brown tie.'
When I put the empty coffee cup down and went to the office it was ten past eleven. Since he hadn't come down at eleven, he probably wasn't coming. I decided it would be childish not to do the chores, so I dusted the desks, removed yesterday's calendar sheets, changed the water in the vase on Wolfe's desk, took the plates and glasses to the kitchen, and put the chair Purley had sat on where it belonged, and was opening the mail when the house phone buzzed. I got it and said, I'm in the office.'
'Have you eaten?'
'Yes.'
'Come up here.'
I got the carbon of my statement from the drawer and went. Since I had been summoned, of course I didn't knock on his door. He was seated at the table between the windows, with a book. Either he had finished with his copy of the Times or his mind had refused to cooperate, like mine. As I crossed to him he put the book down- The Palace Guard by Dan Rather and Gary Gates-and growled, 'Good morning.'
'Good morning,' I snarled.
'Have you been downtown?'
'No. I don't answer the phone.'
'Sit down and report.'
Of course he had the big chair. I brought the other one over and sat and said, 'The best start would be for you to read this copy of the statement I gave Stebbins.'
I handed it to him. It was four pages.
Once through is usually enough for him, but that time he went back to the first two pages-what Pierre and I had said, which I had given verbatim. He eyed me. 'What did you reserve?'
'Of my talk with Pierre, nothing. Every word is there. Of the rest, also nothing, except that you were armed when you came, with that club, and that you told me you supposed I had to. It's all there, what was said and what happened, but I didn't include a guess I made. I saved that for Stebbins. When I left Pierre there, he felt something in his topcoat pocket and took it out. It was an aluminum tube, the kind Don Pedro cigars come in. When he unscrewed the cap, he was holding it only a few inches from his face. You saw his face. There were pieces of aluminum on the floor, and I recognized the printing on them. Of course they had been collected and Stebbins had seen them. Also of course, they would soon make the same guess, so I thought I might as well give it to
