deeply anxious to get it straight. My free-for-nothing suggestion about walking in her sleep didn’t appeal to her, or more probably she didn’t even hear it. At length she spoke.
“Fingerprints?” Her tone implied that it must be a Russian word and unfortunately she didn’t know that language.
“That’s right. Little lines on the tips of your fingers that make pretty patterns when you touch something. F-I-N-G-” “Don’t be offensive,” she said in a hurt tone. “Anyway, you said it would be impossible for you to believe I could do such a thing!” “No you don’t,” I said firmly. “In the first place, I didn’t say that. In the second place, one of my favorite rules is never to let a woman start an argument about what she said or what I said. You’ve had time now to think up something.
What will it be?” She was still hurt. “I don’t have to think up something,” she declared indignantly. “All I have to do is tell you the truth even if I think you don’t deserve it. Yesterday you said you wanted to see me, and I couldn’t come because I had a pile of work for Mr. Henderson, because his secretary is home sick, and I had to stay overtime, and when I got through I came here because I thought you might still be waiting for me, and you were gone, and I thought perhaps you had left some work for me in your cabinet, so I looked in it to see, and of course I had to look in the folders because that was where you would leave it. And now you accuse me of something underhanded just because I tried to do my duty even if it was nearly seven o’clock!” My head was moving slowly up and down, with my eyes maintaining focus on hers.
“Not bad,” I conceded. “It would really be good, although loony, if you hadn’t denied it at first and come clear here to my chair with your perfume and other attributes. Why did you deny it, precious?” “Well-I guess I just can’t help kidding people. I guess it’s part of my character.” “And that’s your story and you like it, huh?” “Of course it is, it’s the truth!” I would have liked to use assorted tortures on her in a well-equipped underground chamber. “This room is not suitable,” I admitted reluctantly, “for giving you the kind of attention merited by your character and abilities. But there are other rooms, policemen act sore at accomplished and fantastic liars much quicker than I do. Tomorrow will be Saturday and this office will be closed, but policemen work seven days a week. It will be nice meeting you in other surroundings. Go on home.” “You’re not a policeman,” she stated, as if she were contradicting me. She got out of her chair. “You’re too handsome and cultured.” When I had just got through saying, or at least plainly implying, that I was not a policeman!
I took the carton home with me, not caring to leave its contents there even with the cabinet locked.
CHAPTER Nineteen
That evening after dinner Wolfe was going on with his three books. Since there was wide variation in the number of pages it looked to me as if he was going to run into trouble when the shortest one suddenly petered out on him, unless he had foreseen the difficulty and was adjusting his installments accordingly.
After I had given him the day’s report, to which he reacted the same as he had the day before, namely not at all, and after getting nothing but a grunt of indifference when I volunteered the opinion that Kerr Naylor had been read the riot act by his sister and as a result was crawling from under, I decided to take in a flat- face opera.
Ordinarily I let the movies wait when we’re busy on a case, but I broke precedent that Friday evening because (a) we weren’t busy-at least God knows Wolfe wasn’t- and (b) I strongly doubted if it was a case. I would have been willing to settle for nothing more homicidal than a mess of dirty internal politics on the higher levels at Naylor-Kerr, Inc., and while that may have seemed important and even exciting to the Board of Directors and hostile camps of executives, I had to confess that I couldn’t blame Wolfe for going aloof on it, since I was inclined to feel the same way. So I let my mind go blank and enjoyed the movie up to a certain point, staying nearly to the end. When it came to where they were preparing to wind it up right and let it out that the hero really had not put over the fake contract and cleaned up, I left in a hurry, because I had formed my own opinion of the hero from where I sat and chose to think otherwise.
Then, when I got home at half-past eleven, I found Inspector Cramer there in the office, seated in the red leather chair, talking to Wolfe. Evidently it wasn’t a very amiable conversation, for Cramer’s look at me as I entered was an unfriendly glare, and, since I had done nothing to earn it, it must have been the state of his feelings toward Wolfe.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, as if he had me under contract or I was on the parole list.
“It was a wonderful movie,” I informed them, sitting down at my desk. “Only two people in it have amnesia, this incredibly beautiful girl with-” “Archie,” Wolfe snapped. He was out of humor too. “Mr. Cramer wants to ask you something. I suppose you have seen the piece about us in this evening’s Gazetee?” “Sure. It’s a bum picture of you, but-” “You didn’t mention it to me.” “Yeah, you were busy reading and anyway it wasn’t worth wasting breath on.” “It’s an outrage!” Cramer rasped. “It’s a flagrant betrayal of a client’s confidence!” “Nuts.” I had to keep my eyes on the go to meet the two glares alternately. “It doesn’t quote me and it doesn’t even say I was interviewed. It merely says that Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s brilliant lieutenant, is investigating the death of Waldo Wilmot Moore, and therefore it may be conjectured that somebody smells murder. Except for those it mentions no names. Since about a thousand people down at Naylor-Kerr know about it and at least one of them knows who I am and probably a lot more, you can have that word betrayal back and use it somewhere else. Even so, Lon Cohen wouldn’t have done it without getting my okay. It was that damn Whosis, the city editor. Whose belly aches, the client’s? Have you been promoted from homicide to patting the kittens?” Wolfe and Cramer started to speak both at once, and Wolfe won. “The piece,” he said, “does indeed apply that word, brilliant, to you, and that’s all I find in it to object to. But jVlr. Cramer is seriously annoyed. It seems that Mr.
O’Hara, the Deputy Commissioner, is also annoyed. They want us to quit the job.”
“They’ve got a hell of a nerve,” I asserted. “Will they feed us?” Cramer started again to speak, but Wolfe pushed a palm at him.
“Nothing edible,” Wolfe said with a grimace. There was no joking about food with him. “They say the piece in the Gazetee is the opening of another campaign of criticism of the police for an unsolved murder, and that it is irresponsible because there isn’t the slightest evidence that Mr. Moore’s death was anything but a hit-and-run accident. They say that our undertaking an investigation is the only valid excuse the Gazetee can have for starting such a campaign or continuing it. They say that either we have been gulled by the whimsicality of an eccentric man, Mr. Kerr Naylor, or that, not gulled, we are exploiting it in order to build up for a fee. They say that you have even gone so far as to report that Mr. Naylor said something to you-that he knows who killed Mr.
