When I thought of it, it was too late to send them, so I decided to bring them with me-”
“All right, dad. It's all right.
There's plenty of flowers…”
Maybe still dreary, but no longer hushed.
I wondered how they managed with him during the minute of memorial silence on Armistice Day.
I had thought of three possible methods when the door opened again and Mrs. Frost entered.
Her brother-in-law came to meet her with ejaculations.
She looked pale too, but certainly not as much as Helen, and apparently had on a black evening gown under a black wrap, with a black satin piepan for a hat.
There was no sag to her as she more or less disregarded Dudley, nodded at Gebert, greeted the two women, and went across to her daughter and nephew.
I sat and took it in.
Suddenly a newcomer appeared, so silently through some other door that I didn't hear him do it.
It was another aristocrat, fatter than the one in the anteroom but just as melancholy. He advanced a few steps and bowed:
“If you will come in now, please.”
We all moved.
I stood back and let the others go ahead.
Lew seemed to be thinking that Helen should have his arm, and she seemed to think not.
I followed along behind with the throttle wide open on the decorum.
The chapel was dimly lighted too.
Our escort whispered something to Mrs. Frost, and she shook her head and led the way to seats.
There were forty or fifty people there on chairs.
A glance showed me several faces I had seen before; among others, Collinger the lawyer, and a couple of dicks in the back row.
I stepped around to the rear because I saw the door to the anteroom was there.
The coffin, dead black with chromium handles, with flowers all around it and on top, was a platform up front.
In a couple of minutes a door at the far end opened and a guy came out and stood by the coffin and peered around at us.
He was in the uniform of his profession and he had a wide mouth and a look of comfortable assurance by no means flippant.
After a decent amount of peering he began to talk.
For a professional I suppose he was okay.
I had had enough long before he was through, because with me a little unction goes a long way.
If I have to be slid up to heaven on soft soap, I'd just as soon you'd forget it and let me find my natural level.
But I'm speaking only for myself; if you like it I hope you get it.
My seat at the rear permitted me to beat it as soon as I heard the amen.
I was the first one out.
For having admitted me to the private parlor I offered the aristocrat in the ante-room two bits, which I suppose he took out of noblesse oblige, and sought the sidewalk.
Some cur had edged in and parked within three inches of the roadster's rear bumper, and I had to do a lot of squirming to get out without scraping the fender of Gebert's convertible.
Then I zoomed to Central Park West and headed downtown.
It was nearly ten-thirty when I got home.
A glance in at the office door showed me that Wolfe was in his chair with his eyes closed and an awful grimace on his face, listening to the Pearls of Wisdom Hour on the radio.
In the kitchen Fritz sat at the little table I ate breakfast on, playing solitaire, with his slippers off and his toes hooked over the rungs of another chair.
As I poured a glass of milk from a bottle I got from the refrigerator, he asked me:
“How was it?
Nice funeral?”
I reproached him.
“You ought to be ashamed.
I guess all Frenchmen are sardonic.”
“I am not a French!
I'm a Swiss.”
“So you say.
You read a French newspaper.”
I took a first sip from the glass, carried it into the office, got into my chair, and looked at Wolfe.
His grimace appeared even more distorted than when I had glanced in on my way by.