you’re putting her in?” He was coming close to whimpering.
“You know what happened to Naylor-don’t you know her life isn’t safe, not for a minute? What kind of a coldhearted bastard are you anyhow?” I leaned forward to tap him on the knee. “Lookit, my friend,” I said slowly and distinctly, “the score is exactly what you think it is. It’s tied up. Like it or lump it.” He jerked his knee aside as if my fingertip might be rubbing germs on him, went sidewise out of his chair and up, and trotted out of the room.
I had enough now, it seemed to me, to justify blowing a nickel, so after watching Hoff recross the arena to Hester’s room I went out and down the aisle to the corner where the phone booths were.
I told Wolfe, briefly, what had happened, and asked if he wanted me to fill it in on the phone. He said no, that could wait until I got home, and then proceeded to ask questions that amounted to contradicting himself. He was counting on getting something all right, a good deal more than I was. Finally he let me go. As I returned down the aisle three hundred typewriters stopped their clatter, and all the eyes were mine. It was enough to make Dana Andrews feel self-conscious.
When I reached the door of my room I stopped and stood, but not to prolong the treat for my audience. The door was closed, and I was sure I had left it wide. I opened it and went in, and then closed the door behind me when I saw that Hester Livsey was standing there.
I took a step, and she took two, and her right hand took hold of my left arm.
“Please!” she said, her face lifted to me.
I asked her stiffly, “Please what?” “Please don’t do this to me!” Her other hand got my other arm. “Don’t! Please!” I stood still, neither inviting her hands to stay, nor, by any motion, implying that I didn’t want them there. The nearness, with her face so close that I could see how black her pupils were, was her doing, and if it suited her it suited me.
“I’m not doing anything to you,” I said. “I think you’re wonderful-” “You are! You’re lying about me! You’re telling a deliberate malicious lie!” I nodded. “Sure I am.” Her breath was sweet. “You’ve never met Saul Panzer, have you?” “What-who-you’re just-” “Saul Panzer. A friend of mine and the best leg-and-eye detective on earth. He saw you that evening with Naylor. So you lied. I admire you so much that I want to do everything you do, I can’t bear it not to. So I lied.” She took her hands away and backed up a step.
“It makes me feel better all over,” I said.
“You admit it’s a lie,” she said.
“To you, sure. Not to anyone else. It’s our first secret, just you and me. If you don’t love me enough to have secrets with me, we can fix it. We can go to Nero Wolfe and confess we both lied, and tell him the truth. Shall we?” She was breathing hard, as sweet as ever presumably, but I was no longer close enough to get it.
“You mean it, don’t you,” she said, not a question.
“I mean everything I say. Let’s go see Mr. Wolfe and get it over with.” “I thought-I thought you-” She stopped. Her voice wanted to quiver but her chin didn’t. “You’re terrible. I thought- you’re terrible!” She moved to the door, not hurrying, just walking, pulled it open, and went.
CHAPTER Thirty-Two
At a quarter past eleven that evening, in Nero Wolfe’s office, the phone rang. I answered it, and Fred Durkin’s voice told me: “The lights are all out and so she’s safe in bed. For Christ’s sake, Archie, you don’t want me-” “I do,” I said firmly, “and so does Mr. Wolfe. You’ve got your instructions, and what do you do for a living anyway? You stick and stick good.” I hung up and told Wolfe, “Fred says the lights are out. I’m relieved and I admit it. I was going to marry her if she hadn’t gone partners with Hoff on that damn lie, and I don’t care for my share of this at all. I suppose I’ll have a nightmare tonight.” Wolfe didn’t bother to grunt.
Although I know Wolfe as well as anybody does and a good deal better, I hadn’t been able to tell whether my report for the day had given him anything that would pass for the word or gesture or countermove he wanted. He had received it all, complete, with the attention it deserved, leaning back motionless, with his eyes closed, and had had plenty of questions. He even wanted to know exactly what Miss Abrams, the receptionist on the thirty-sixth floor, had said when I gave her the report to be taker, in to Jasper Pine. I had performed that ernnd at four-thirty, as usual, and she had tod me that Pine was engaged at the moment but she would be sure he got it before he left for the day.
That night I had no nightmare, but if there had been a wife in bed with me she would probably have asked me in the morning why all the tossing and turning. It was by no means the first time I had bem responsible for putting someone’s pursuit of happiness in jeopardy, but this was something special. Things had somehow got reversed. At first sight of Hester Livsey I had instantly got the feeling that she was in some trouble that no one but me could get her out of, and here I was poking her head thiough the bull’s-eye of a target for a killer who had made two perfect hits, which was certanly a peculiar way to go about it.
When I left the house Tuesday morning, April Fool’s Day, I was fidgety because there had been no phone call, though there was no good reason to expect one.
Fred cerainly wouldn’t call until Hester showed horself, and after that happened there would te no opportunity. I got to the William Street building a quarter of an hour ahead of time at nine-fifteen, and lurked in the lobby at the spot Saul and I had chosen eight days earlier. The incoming throng had already started.
Five minutes before the deadline here she came. As she entered the elevator I caught sight of Fred Durkin, who had followed her into the lobby and stopped ten paces away. As I glimpsed him Bill Gore appeared from the other direction, exchanged signals with Fred, and strolled on. Fred went to the newsstand and bought a paper and then beat it.
I took an elevator to the thirty-fourth floor, went to my room, left the door open, and sat at my observation post. I was having a letdown. Our fire hadn’t smoked Hester out and didn’t seem likely to, and it was hard on my temperament just to sit there and wait for someone to make a peep. However, I hadn’t been sitting long when the phone rang. I dived for it as if I was expecting word that it was an eight-pound baby boy, but all I got
