Nor can I. Report to her and tell her to return to the beach. Escort her. Return this evening. If you're anchored here you'll badger me and we'll squabble. Tomorrow we'll do something, I don't know what.
I objected. Mrs. Valdon will want her own car at the beach. After reporting to her I'll have the afternoon and evening for checking on Carol Mardus for May twentieth.
No! He slapped the desk. A jackass could do that. Have I no imagination? No wit? Am I a dolt?
I stood. Don't ask me if I'll answer. I might. Tell Fritz to save some lobster for me for when I come home tonight. The food at the beach is apt to be spotty. I went, first upstairs for a clean shirt.
So five hours later I was stretched out on the sand at the edge of the Atlantic. If I had extended an arm my fingers would have touched the client. Her reaction to the report had been in the groove for a woman. She had wanted to know what Carol Mardus had said, every word, and also how she had looked and how she had been dressed. There was an Implication that the way she had been dressed had a definite bearing on the question, was Richard Valdon the father of the baby? but of course I let that slide. No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.
Naturally she wanted to know what we were going to do now. I told her if I knew the answer to that I wouldn't be there with her, I would be somewhere else, doing it. The difficulty, I said, is that Mr. Wolfe is a genius. A genius can't be bothered with just plain work like having someone tailed. He has to do stunts. He has to take a short cut. Anybody can get a rabbit out of a hat, so he has to get a hat out of a rabbit. This evening he will be sitting in the office, leaning back with his eyes closed, working his lips, pushing them out and pulling them in, out and in. That's probably how Newton discovered the law of gravitation, leaning back with his ayes closed and working his lips.
He did not. It was an apple falling.
Sure. His eyes were closed and it hit him on the nose.
When I got back to the old brownstone a little after midnight I was expecting to find on my desk a note telling me to come to Wolfe's room at 8:15 in the morning, but it wasn't there. Evidently his imagination and wit hadn't delivered. Fritz's had. In the kitchen there was a dish of Lobster Cardinal and a saucer with Parmesan ready grated. I sprinkled the cheese on and put it in the broiler, and drank milk and made coffee while it was browning, and while I was thinking that when Fritz came down after taking up the breakfast tray he might have word that I was to go up for instructions. Now that we had flushed the mother we had damn well better get a gun up.
Nothing doing. When Fritz returned to the kitchen at 8:20 Saturday morning, no word; and I had done with only six hours' sleep in order to be on tap. I decided to poke him, and it would be better to get him in his room before he went up to the orchids, so I speeded up with the poached eggs Creole and toasted muffins and skipped the second cup of coffee; and I was pushing my chair back when the phone rang.
It was Saul. He asked if I had listened to the 8:30 news, and I said no, I had been brooding.
Then I'm bad news, he said. About three hours ago a cop found a corpse in an alley off of Perry Street and it has been identified as Carol Mardus. She was strangled.
I said something but it didn't get out. My throat was clogged. I cleared it. Anything else?
No, that was all.
Thank you very much. I don't have to tell you to bite your tongue.
Of course.
And stand by. I hung up.
I looked at my watch: 8:53. I went to the hall, to the stairs, mounted a flight, found the door standing open, and entered. Wolfe had finished breakfast and was on his feet, shirt-sleeved, his jacket in his hand.
Yes? he demanded.
Saul just phoned an item from the eight-thirty news. The body of Carol Mardus was found in an alley by a cop. Strangled.
He glared. No.
Yes.
He threw the jacket at me.
It came close, but I didn't catch it; I was too stunned. I couldn't believe he had actually done it. As I stood and stared he moved. He went to the house phone, on the table by a window, pushed the button, and lifted the receiver, and in a moment said in a voice tight with rage, Good morning, Theodore. I won't be with you this morning. He cradled the phone and started pacing back and forth. He never paced. After half a dozen turns he came and picked up the jacket, put it on, and headed for the door.
Where are you bound for? I demanded.
The plant rooms, he said, and kept going, and the sound came of the elevator. He was off his hinges. I went down to the kitchen and got my second cup of coffee. When Wolfe entered the office at eleven o'clock, assuming that he followed his schedule, he found on his desk a note which read as follows: 9:22 a.m. I am leaving for the beach, having phoned Mrs. Valdon that I'm coming. If she hears a news broadcast it might hit her as hard as it did you and she might do something undesirable. I'm assuming that we intend to hold on and will tell her so. I should be back by lunchtime. The phone number of the cottage is on the card. AG
Actually the phone number was useless if he had something urgent to say, because at the moment he was reading the note I was in the Heron with the client beside me, parked under a tree at the roadside. There were two weekend guests at the cottage, in addition to the maid and cook and nurse, not a good setting for a strictly private conversation, and I had got Lucy in the car and away before telling her the news. Now, parked, I could give
