engineered himself out of his chair and was erect. “You can come here Monday morning, Saul, and go downtown with Archie. For the present-come up to the plant rooms with me. I have one or two suggestions for you.” They left, Saul for the stairs and Wolfe for his elevator. Their destination reminded me that I had got behind on the germination and blooming records, and I opened a desk drawer to get the accumulation of memos from Theodore.
CHAPTER Twenty-Four
I had got behind on sleep too, and I caught up that night, Saturday. But not quite to the extent that Wolfe thought I did. Soon after he had gone up to the roof with Saul my mind had informed me that it was too restless to concentrate on germination records, at least of plants, and I had gone and got the car and driven to Twentieth Street to see what was stirring. Sergeant Purley Stebbins had not thought it necessary, just because for some hours I had enjoyed the important role of last man to see the victim alive, to open all the books for me, but I was allowed to hang around long enough to get an impression that nothing startling had developed. Of course a couple of them took a stab at trying to filter out of me the dope on how Wolfe had learned about Naylor taking a taxi on Fifty-third Street, but I had insisted that I had had nothing whatever to do with it, which was perfectly true. The taxi driver had not yet been collected, though the number of his cab had of course led them straight to where he should have been. He had gone to Connecticut to fish for shad, and a courier had been sent to get him, and I only hoped to God he wouldn’t find him walking back and forth on a river bank with Hester Livsey.
It was because of her that Wolfe thought I got more sleep Saturday night than I really did. Saturday nights I usually take some person of an interesting sex to a hockey or basketball game, or maybe a fight at the Garden, but that one I worked in the office a while after dinner and then announced that I was sleepy.
Taking some doughnuts, blackberry jam, and a pitcher of milk upstairs with me, I sat in the chair I had selected and paid for myself and went over matters. On account of Saul’s description of her clothes, particularly the dark brown hat with a white cloth flower, I knew darned well it had been Hester Livsey he had seen with Naylor. I deny I was in a frenzy, but when a girl has patted a man’s head he should be willing to go to a little trouble to see that she gets a break. Besides, it isn’t often that at first sight, in the very first minute, a girl gives you the feeling that no one on earth but you knows how beautiful she is, and that too seemed to me to be worthy of consideration.
I thought she should have a chance to wipe off the smudge, in case it hadn’t made a stain that wouldn’t come out, and I well knew what the wiping process would be like if we turned her over to Cramer and his bozos. It could be that her walkie-talkie with Naylor had concerned a private matter not connected with what was about to happen to him, and if it had, and if she chose to keep it to herself, she was as likely a prospect as I had ever seen for an all-day and all-night conference with men, coming at her in shifts, who think nothing of taking their coats off in front of ladies. What I had come to my room to consider was whether to go get the car and drive to Westport and have some conversation with her. I decided against it finally, and undressed and went to bed, because if it turned out wrong in the end it would be Wolfe who would have to save the pieces, not me.
Next morning, Sunday, I was in the kitchen finishing breakfast, enjoying the last two swallows of my second cup of coffee and reading the paper, when the doorbell rang. Fritz went to answer it, and when, a moment later, I heard a female voice in the hall I tossed the paper down and went to see.
“A lady, Archie,” Fritz told me.
“Yeah, that’s what you always think. Hello there.” It was Rosa Bendini, Mrs. Harold Anthony, and she was good and scared if I know what emotions look like.
She came down the hall to me and practically demanded, “For God’s sake put your arms around me!” I didn’t regard the request as offensive per se, but Fritz was there, on his way back to the kitchen, and in his Swiss-French way he can be a very tenacious kidder. So I tried to hold her off and spoke sharply, but she kept uttering sounds, possibly even words, and was determined to crawl inside of me. Fritz was staying as an impartial observer. She wasn’t keeping her voice down, we were at the foot of the stairs, and Wolfe was in his room one flight up, eating his breakfast. I picked her up, carried her into the office, deposited her in the red leather chair, and told her roughly: “You look like you just escaped from night court and the chase is hot. Is your husband out front?” “My husband?” She slid forward to the edge of the chair. “Is he here?” “I don’t know, I was asking you, and stay in that chair. After you ran out on me the other night I knocked him flat and made him tame.” I thought it might give her some perspective and steady her to refer to the past. “Have you seen him since?” She didn’t answer that. Apparently her husband was the least of her troubles.
But she slid back again until enough of her fanny was on the chair so she could sit instead of squat, and said so the words could be heard: “The police are after me!” “I’ll shoot the first six and then start throwing rocks. How far back are they?”
She bounced out of the chair and was on my lap before I could even brace myself, requesting me for the second time to put my arms around her, and it seemed less trouble to comply than to argue with her. I gathered her in and held her, and she encircled my neck, twisting her body around so as to make the contact more comprehensive. There have been occasions on which I have held a creature like that and as time passed she has begun to tremble, but this time it was the other way around. She was trembling at first, but gradually it tapered off, and after a while she was warm and quiet against me, with her face burrowing into the side of my neck, which I kept relaxed for her.
Finally she lifted the face an inch to murmur at my ear, “I was so scared I was going to go jump off a pier. I always have been scared of the cops, ever since I can remember, I guess because they came and arrested my brother when I was a little kid.” She kept close against me. “When I got home and the janitor and Isabel-she’s the girl that lives across the hall-when they told me the police had been there three times and they might come back any minute-no, hold me tight, I don’t mind if it’s hard to breathe-I didn’t even go in my room, I just scooted. I ran towards the subway, I don’t know where I thought I was going, and after I got on an uptown express I remembered about Nero Wolfe, so I got off at Thirty-third Street and came here to see him. And you were here! How did that happen? Now you ought to kiss me.” I held her firm enough to keep her from changing position. “I never kiss people before noon except the one I had breakfast with. Then you just got home?” “Yes. Then let’s eat breakfast. Oh, I know how you happened to be here! That piece in the paper! Your name’s Archie Goodwin and you’re Nero Wolfe’s brilliant lieutenant!” “Right. Here you are in the house you didn’t want to come to with me, and look at you. Where were you Friday night and Saturday and Saturday night?” She bit me on the neck.
“Ouch,” I said. “That’s where your husband hit me before I got him. Where were you?” She kissed
