I said I would.
The kennel had a door to the side hall, and I left that way, went to the side terrace, and headed for the shack. As I expected, Cal was not alone. He stood with his back against the door, his arms folded. Laura Jay was against him, gripping his wrists, her head tilted back, talking fast in a voice so low I caught no words. I called sharply, 'Break it up!' She whirled on a heel and a toe, her eyes daring me to come any closer. I went closer. 'You damn fool,' I said, reaching her. 'Snap out of it. Beat it! Get!'
'She thinks I killed him,' Cal said. 'I been trying to tell her, but she won't--'
What stopped him was her hands pressed against his mouth. He got her wrists and pulled them away. 'He knows about it,' he said. 'I told him.'
'Cal! You didn't! You mustn't-'
I got her elbow and jerked her around. 'If you want to make it good,' I said, 'put your arms around his neck and moan. When I poke you in the ribs that'll mean a cop's coming and you'll moan louder and then turn and let out a scream, and when he's close enough, say ten feet, you leap at him and start clawing his face. That'll distract him and Cal can run to the terrace and jump off. Have you got anything at all in your skull besides air? What do you say when they ask you why you dashed out to find Cal when I announced the news? That you wanted to be the first to congratulate him?'
Her teeth were clamped on her lip. She undamped them. She twisted her neck to look at Cal, twisted back to look at me, and moved. One slow step, and then she was off, and just in time. As she passed the first evergreen the sound came of the back door of the penthouse closing, and heavy feet, and I turned to greet the company. It was a harness bull.
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in
Even when I get my full ration of sleep, eight hours, I don't break through my personal morning fog until I have emptied my coffee cup, and when the eight is cut to five by events beyond my control, as it was that night, I have to grope my way to the bathroom. After getting home at five in the morning, and leaving a note for Fritz saying I would be down for breakfast at 10:45,1 na^ set the alarm for ten o'clock. That had seemed sensible, but the trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off. Before prying my eyes open I stayed flat a while, trying to find an alternative, and had to give up when I was conscious enough to realize that Wolfe would come down from the plant rooms at eleven. Forty minutes later I descended the two flights to the ground floor, entered the kitchen, told Fritz good morning, got my orange juice from the refrigerator, and sat at the table where my copy of the Times was on the rack. Fritz, who is as well acquainted with my morning fog as I am and never tries to talk through it, uncovered the sausage and lit the fire under the griddle for cakes.
The murder of Wade Eisler with a lasso at the penthouse of Lily Rowan rated the front page even in the Times. There was no news in it for me, nothing that I didn't already know, after the five hours I had spent at the scene of the crime with Homicide personnel, three hours at the District Attorney's office, and three hours back at the penthouse with Lily, at her request. Cal Barrow was in custody as a material witness. The District Attorney couldn't say if he would be released in time for the Tuesday-evening rodeo performance. Archie Goodwin had told a Times reporter that he had not been at the penthouse in his professional capacity; he and Nero Wolfe had merely been guests. The police didn't know what the motive had been, or weren't telling. Wade Eisler, a bachelor, had been a well-known figure in sporting and theatrical circles. The Times didn't say that he had had a chronic and broadminded
The Rodeo Murder 147
taste for young women, but the tabloids certainly would. And so forth.
I was spreading honey on the third griddle cake when the sounds came of the elevator jolting to a stop and then Wolfe's footsteps in the hall crossing to the office. He wouldn't expect to find me there, since Fritz would have told him of my note when he took his breakfast tray up, so I took my time with the cake and honey and poured more coffee. As I was taking a sip the doorbell rang and I got up and went to the hall for a look. Through the one- way glass in the front door I saw a big broad frame and a big pink face that was all too familiar. The hall on the ground floor of the old brownstone is long and wide, with the walnut clothes rack, the elevator, the stairs, and the door to the dining room on one side, the doors to the front room and the office on the other, and the kitchen in the rear. I stepped to the office door, which was standing open, and said, 'Good morning. Cramer.'
Wolfe, in his oversized chair behind his desk, turned his head to scowl at me. 'Good morning. I told him on the phone last evening that I have no information for him.'
I had had two cups of coffee and the fog was gone. 'Then I'll tell him to try next door.'
'No.' His lips tightened. 'Confound him. That will only convince him that I'm hiding something. Let him in.'
I went to the front, opened the door, and inquired, 'Good lord, don't you ever sleep?'
I will never get to see Inspector Cramer at the top of his form, the form that has kept him in charge of Homicide for twenty years, because when I see him I am there and that throws him off. It's only partly me; it's chiefly that I make him think of Wolfe, and thinking of Wolfe is too much for him. When he has us together his face gets pinker and his voice gets gruffer, as it did that morning. He sat in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe's desk, leaning forward, his elbows planted on the chair arms. He spoke. 'I came to ask one question, why were you there yesterday? You told me on the phone last night that you went there to eat grouse, and Goodwin said the same. It's in his signed statement. Nuts. You could have had him bring the grouse here and had Fritz cook it.'
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Wolfe granted. 'When you are invited to someone's table to taste a rare bird you accept or decline. You don't ask that the bird be sent to you--unless you're a king.'
'Which you think you are. You're named after one.'
'I am not. Nero Claudius Caesar was an emperor, not a king, and I wasn't named after him. I was named after a mountain.'
'Which you are. I still want to know why you were there with that bunch. You never leave your house on
