I got up and strode past them to the hall.
I was careless for two reasons.
I was taking it for granted it was Saul Panzer, back from planting Hilda Lindquist in seclusion; and the cause of my taking something for granted when I shouldn’t, since that’s always a bad thing to do in our business, was that my mind was still engaged with Wolfe’s vulgar attempt to be funny.
Anyhow, the fact remains that I was careless.
I whirled the lock and took off the bolt and pulled the door open.
They darned near toppled me off my pins with the edge of the door catching my shoulder.
I saved myself from falling and the rest was reHex.
There were two of them, and they were going right on past in a hurry.
I sprang back and got in front and gave one of them a knee in the belly and used a stiff-arm on the other.
He started to swing, but I didn’t bother about i4 I picked up the one that had stopped my knee and just used him for a whisk broom and depended on speed and my 180 pounds.
The combination swept the hall out.
We went through the door so fast that the first guy stumbled and fell down the stoop, and I dropped the one I had in my arms and turned and pulled the door shut and heard the lock click.
Then I pushed the bell-button three times.
The guy that had fallen down the stoop, the one who had tried to plug me, was on his feet again and coming up, with words.
“We’re officers—” “Shut up.”
I heard footsteps inside, and I called through the closed door.
“Fritz?
Tell Mr. Wolfe a couple of gentlemen have called and we’re staying out on the porch for a talk.
And hey!
Those things are in the bottom drawer.”
Chapter 8
I said,
“What do you mean, officers?
Army or navy?”
He looked down at me.
He was an inch taller than me to begin with, and he was stretching it.
He made his voice hard enough to scare a schoolgirl right out of her socks.
“Listen, bud.
I’ve heard about you.
How’d you like to take a good nap on some concrete?”
The other officer was back on his ankles too, but he was a short guy.
He was built something like a whisk broom, at that.
I undertook to throw oil on the troubled waters.
Ordinarily I might have enjoyed a nice rough cussingmatch, but I wanted to find out something and get back inside.
I summoned a friendly grin.
“What the hell, how did I know you bad badges?
Okay, thanks, sergeant.
All I knew was the door bumping me and a cyclone going by.
Is that a way to inspire confidence?”
“All right, you know we’ve got badges now.” The sergeant humped up a shoulder and let it drop, and then the other one. “Let us in.
We want to see Nero Wolfe.”
“I’m sorry, he’s got a headache.”
“We’ll cure it for him.
Listen.
A friend of mine warned me about you once.
He said the time would come when you would have to be taken down.
Maybe that’s the very thing I came here for.
But so far it’s a matter of law.
Open that door or I’ll open it myself.
I want to see Mr. Wolfe on police business.”