which were ready for my tongue simultaneously, but the look on his face indicated that he would like nothing better than for me to try to stay, so he could add some remarks of his own. Therefore I outwitted him by pivoting on my heel and getting out, just as he said.
Back in my own room, I stood at the window and examined Kerr Naylor’s latest card, top and bottom. I had a notion to go down to a booth and phone Wolfe, but it was past four o’clock and he would be up in the plant rooms until six, and he never liked to be asked to use his brain when he was up there, so I rejected it.
Instead, I put some paper in the typewriter and put the same head on it as on my report to Naylor- Kerr, Inc., the day before. I sat a few minutes making up my mind how to word it and then hit the keys: Mr. Kerr Naylor came to my office at 3:25 p.m. He talked of irrelevant matters for some time, and then he told me that he knows who killed Waldo Moore. He said that was all he could say, because “it is neither proper nor safe to accuse a person of murder without communicable evidence to support the charge.” He told me to tell Mr. Wolfe he was sorry. I would have tried to get him not to wait until Monday to go to see Mr. Wolfe, but he left and went to his room, and in view of his attitude and manner I thought it would be useless to go after him.
I had a couple of other items to add, regarding Ben Frenkel and Sumner Hoff, filling a page, but it seemed pretty skimpy for a full day’s work. Still liking the idea that someone might be curious enough, or scared enough, to take a look at my folders, I had made a second carbon, and I disposed of it as I had the day before, putting it on top of the other one inside the third folder from the top, and deploying tobacco crumbs in the same spots. By the time that was all arranged it was four-thirty. I went out and took an elevator to the thirty-sixth, and told the receptionist, Miss Abrams, that I had no appointment with Pine but would like to have one minute with him to hand him something. She said he was in a meeting and wouldn’t be free for an hour or more. I thought if Pine could trust her I could too, got an envelope from her and put the report in it and sealed it and left it with her for Pine.
On the way back to the stock department I had a bright idea. I still hadn’t seen Gwynne Ferris. If a unit of personnel could waylay me on Wednesday, why couldn’t I return the compliment on Thursday? Not by waylaying, but through channels. I would wait until I saw her to decide whether to invite her to Rusterman’s or take her home with me and let Wolfe do some work.
But I didn’t see her. Using my phone, I was told by the head of the reserve pool that he was sorry, but Miss Ferris had so much in her book that she would have to stay overtime, and he would greatly appreciate it if I could wait till morning. I told him sure.
I knocked off with the bunch, at quitting time, and going down in the elevator I couldn’t complain of lack of attention. Some stared at me openly, some glanced when they thought I wasn’t looking, and some used the corner-of-the-eye technique, but for each and all I was certainly it.
CHAPTER Sixteen
Wolfe was reading three books at once. He had been doing that, off and on, all the years I had been with him, and it always annoyed me because it seemed ostentatious. The three current items were The Sudden Guest by Christopher La Farge, Love from London by Gilbert Gabriel, and A Survey of Symbolic Logic by C.
I. Lewis. He would take turns with them, reading twenty or thirty pages in each at a time. In the office after dinner that evening he sat at his desk, having a wonderful time with his literary ring-around-a- rosy.
I had already, before dinner, reported to him on the day’s events, and presumably he had listened, but he had not asked a single question or made a single comment. For table conversation business was of course taboo, but it might have been supposed that with digestion proceeding under control and according to plan he would have one or two suggestions to offer. Not so.
I was at my own desk, cleaning and oiling my arsenal-two revolvers and an automatic. When he finished the second heat with A Survey of Symbolic Logic, dogeared it, put it down, and reached for Love from London, I inquired respectfully, “Where’s Saul?” “Saul?” You might have thought he was trying to decide whether I meant Saul of Tarsus or Saul Soda. “Oh. It seemed pointless to waste a client’s money. Did you want him for something? I believe he’s working on a forgery case for Mr.
Bascom.” “So I’m doing a solo. Shall I go up and start catching up on sleep, or would you care to pretend we both earn money?” “Archie.” He picked up the book. “I do not propose to start sorting out chaos.
At present this case is merely a guggle of unintelligible babel. If Mr. Naylor killed Mr. Moore, it is quite possible that he will carry his joke too far. If he didn’t, and he knows that someone else did, the same comment can be made. If neither, the corporation is spending money foolishly but we are not stockholders. We’ll probably know more about it after my talk with Mr. Naylor Monday evening. Until then it would be futile to bother my head about it.
Besides, you don’t really want me to. You are wallowing in clover, with hundreds of young women accessible, unguarded, and utterly at your mercy.” “I do not,” I said, closing the drawer where I kept the arsenal and getting to my feet, “like clover.” I walked to the door to the hall, where I turned. “It is not my mercy they’re at. And if I stick my foot in something down there that you have to pull it out of, don’t blame me.”
CHAPTER Seventeen
At nine-thirty-five A.M. Friday, the next morning, I stood in front of the filing cabinet in my room in the Naylor-Kerr stock department, gazing down into the drawer I had opened with a feeling of real satisfaction. Not only were the tobacco crumbs nowhere visible, but the edge of the Thursday report was a good half inch down from the Wednesday report, and I had left them precisely even.
