“There’s no law about that.
Unless you’ve got a warrant.’
“You couldn’t read it anyhow. Let us in.”
I got impatient.
“What’s the use wasting time?
You can’t go in.
The floor’s just been scrubbed.
Wolfe wouldn’t see you anyhow, at this time of night.
Tell me what you want like a gentleman and a cop, and I’ll see if I can help you.”
He glared at me.
Then he put his hand inside to his breast pocket and pulled out a document, and I had a feeling in my knees like a steering wheel with a shimmy.
If it was a search warrant the jig was up right there.
He unfolded it and held it for me to look, and even in the dim light from the street lamp one glance was enough to start my heart off again.
It was only a warrant to take into custody.
I peered at it and saw among other things the name Ramsey Muir, and nodded.
The sergeant grunted,
“Can you see the name?
Clara Fox.”
“Yeah, it’s a nice name.”
“We’re going in after her.
Open up.”
I lifted the brows.
“In here?
You’re crazy.”
“All right, we’re crazy.
Open the door.”
I shook my head, and got out a cigarette, and lit up.
I said,
“Listen, sergeant.
There’s no use wasting the night in repartee.
You know damn well you’ve got no more right to go through that door than a cockroach unless you’ve got a search warrant.
Ordinarily Mr. Wolfe is more than willing to cooperate with you guys; if you don’t know that, ask Inspector Cramer.
So am I.
Hell, some of my best friends are cops.
I’m not even sore because you tried to rush me and I got excited and thought you were mugs and pushed you.
But it just happens that we don’t want company of any kind at present.”
He grunted and glared.
“Is Clara Fox in there?”
“Now that’s a swell question.” I grinned at him. “Either she isn’t, in which case I would say no, or she is and I don’t want you to know it, in which case would I say yes?
I might at that, if she was somewhere else and I didn’t want you to go there to look for her.”
“Is she in there?”
I just shook my head at him.
“You’re harboring a fugitive from justice.”
“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.”
The short dick, the one I had swept the hall with, piped up in a tenor,
“Take him down for resisting an officer.”
I reproved him.
“The sergeant knows better than that.
He knows they wouldn’t book me, or if they did I read about a man once that collected enough to retire on for false arrest.”
The big one stood and stared into my frank eyes for half a minute, then turned and descended the stoop and looked up and down the street.