“Hilda Lindquist is downstairs and I’m going to send her up.
She thinks the show is over and she has to go back home to her poor old dad with her sock empty, and by the look in her eye it will take more than British diplomacy to keep her off of the next train.
Nero Wolfe is going to work this out.
I don’t know how and maybe he don’t either this minute, but he’ll do it.
Nero Wolfe is probably even better than I think he is, and that’s a mouthful.
You wrote the music for this piece, and half your band has been killed, and it’s up to you to keep the other half intact.
Well?”
I had found her sitting in a chair with her lips compressed tight and her hands clenched.
She looked at me,
“All right.
I will.
Send her up here.”
“She can sleep in here with you, or in the room in front on this floor.
You know how to ring for Fritz.”
“All right.”
I went down and told Squareface that Clara Fox wanted to speak to her, and shooed her up, and heard them exchanging greetings in the upper hall.
There was nothing in the office but a gob of silence; Wolfe was still in conference.
I would have tried some bulldozing if I had thought he was merely dreaming of stuffed quail or pickled pigs’ feet, but his lips were moving a little so I knew he was working.
I fooled around my desk, went over Johnny’s diagrams again in connection with an idea that had occurred to me, checked over Horstmann’s reports and entered them in the records, reread the Gazette scoop on the affair at 55th Street, and aggravated myself into such a condition of uselessness that finally, at eleven o’clock sharp, I exploded.
“If this keeps up another ten minutes I’ll get Weltschmerzi”
Wolfe opened his eyes.
“Where in the name of heaven did you get that?”
I threw up my hands.
He shut his eyes again.
The doorbell rang.
I knew it couldn’t be Johnny Keems with another extra, because he was in the kitchen with Fritz, since I hadn’t been able to prod an instruction from Wolfe to send him home again.
It was probably Saul Panzer with the dope on Muir.
But it wasn’t; I knew that when the bell started again as I entered the hall.
It kept on ringing, so I leisurely pulled the curtain for a look through the panel, and when I saw there were four of them, another quartet, I switched on the stoop light to make a good survey.
One of them, in evening dress, was leaning on the bell button.
I recognized the whole bunch.
I turned and beat it back to the office.
“Who the devil is ringing that bell?” Wolfe demanded. “Why don’t you—”
I interrupted, grinning.
“That’s Police Commissioner Hombert.
With him are Inspector Cramer, District Attorney Skinner, and my old friend Purley Stebbins of the Homicide Squad.
Is it too late for company?”
“Indeed.” Wolfe sat up and rubbed his nose. “Bring them in.”
Chapter 16
They entered as if they owned the place.
I tipped Purley a wink as he passed me, but he was too impressed by his surroundings to reciprocate, and I didn’t blame him, as I knew he might get either a swell promotion or the opposite out of this by the time it was over.
From the threshold I saw a big black limousine down at the curb, and back of it two other police cars containing city fellers.
Well, well, I thought to myself as I closed the door, this looks pretty damned ominous.
Cramer had asked me if Wolfe was in the office and I had waved him on, and now I brought up the rear of the procession.
I moved chairs around.
Cramer introduced Hombert and Skinner, but Skinner and Wolfe had already met.
At Cramer’s request I took Purley Stebbins to the kitchen and told him to play checkers with Johnny Keems.
When I got back Hombert was shooting off his mouth about defiance of the law, and I got at my desk and ostentatiously opened my notebook.
Cramer was looking more worried than I had ever seen him.
District Attorney Skinner, already sunk in his chair as if he had been there all evening, had the wearied cynical expression of a man who had some drinks three hours ago and none since.