No fingerprints … and so forth and so forth.
I finished my second cup of coffee and got up and stretched and from then on I was as busy as a pickpocket on New Year’s Eve.
When Fred and Orrie came I let them in, and after they had got their instructions from Wolfe I distributed expense money to all four oЈ them and let them out again.
The siege was still on.
There were two dicks out there now, one of them about the size of Charles Laughton before he heard beauty calling, and every time anyone passed in or out he got the kind of scrutiny you read about.
I got the long-distance call through to London, and Wolfe talked from his room to Ethelbert Hitchcock, which I consider the all-time low for a name for a snoop, even in England.
I phoned Murger’s for the copies of Metropolitan Biographies, and they delivered them within a quarter of an hour and I took them up to the plant rooms, as Wolfe had said he would glance at them after nine o’clock.
As I was going out I stopped where Theodore Horstmann was turning out some old Cattleyas trianae and growled at him,
“You’re going to get shot in the gizzard.”
I swear to God he looked pale.
I phoned Henry H.
Barber, the lawyer that we could count on for almost anything except fee-splitting, to make sure he would be available on a minute’s notice all day, and to tell him that he was to consider himself retained, through us, by Miss Clara Fox, in two actions: a suit to collect a debt from the Marquis of Clivers, and a suit for damages through false arrest against Ramsey Muir.
Likewise, in the first case. Miss Hilda Lindquist.
It looked as if I had a minute loose, so I mounted the two flights to the south room and knocked on the door, and called out my name.
She said come in, and I entered.
She was in the armchair, with books and magazines on the table, but none of them was opened.
Maybe she had slept like a log, but her eyes looked tired.
She frowned at me, I said, ‘“You shouldn’t sit so close to the window.
If they wanted to bad enough they could see in here from that Thirty-fourth Street roof.”
She glanced around.
“I shouldn’t think so, with those curtains.”
“They’re pretty thin.
Let me move you back a little, anyhow.”
She got up, and I shoved the chair and table toward the bed.
“I’m not usually nervous, but this is a stunt we’re pulling.”
She sat down again and looked up at me.
“You don’t like it, do you, Mr. Goodwin?
I could see last night you didn’t approve of it.
Neither do I.”
I grinned at her.
“Bless your dear little heart, what difference does that make?
Nero Wolfe is putting on a show and we’re in the cast.
Stick to the script, don’t forget that.”
“I don’t call it a show.” She was frowning again. “A man has been murdered and it was my fault.
I don’t like to hide, and I don’t want to.
I’d rather—”
I showed her both palms.
“Forget it.
You came to get Wolfe to help you, didn’t you?
All right, let him.
He may be a nut, but you’re lucky that he spotted the gleam of honesty in your eye or you’d be in one sweet mess this minute.
You behave yourself.
For instance, if that phone there on the stand is in any way a temptation …”
She shook her head.
“If it is, I’ll resist it”
“Well, there’s no use leaving it here anyhow.”
I went and pulled the connection out of the plug and gathered the cord and instrument under my arm.
“I learned about feminine impulses in school. There goes the office phone. Don’t open the door and don’t go close to the windows.”
I beat it and went down two steps at a time.
It was Dick Morley on the phone, with a tale.