Cramer put up a hand at her.
“Okay, madam.
No compulsion at all-”
“Very well.
It should be understood by all that citizenship has its privileges as well as its duties-”
Two or three snickered.
Cramer tossed me a glance, and I joined him and followed him down the corridor and into the room.
Captain Dixon didn't bother to move even his eyes this time, probably having enough of us already in his line of vision to make a good guess at our identity.
Cramer grunted and sat down on one of the silk affairs against the partition.
“Now that we're ready to start,” he growled, “I think it's the bunk.”
Captain Dixon made a noise something between a pigeon and a sow with young. I had decided to wear out the ankles so as to see better.
I removed the four top Royal Medleys from the stack and put them on the floor under the table, out of sight, and picked up the other one.
“As arranged?” I asked Cramer. “Am I to say it?”
He nodded.
The door opened, and one of the dicks ushered in a middle-aged woman with a streamlined hat on the side of her head, and lips and fingernails the color of the first coat of paint they put on an iron bridge.
She stopped and looked around without much curiosity.
I put out a hand at her.
“The papers, please?”
She handed me the slips of paper, and I gave one to Captain Dixon and kept the other.
“Now, Mrs. Ballin, please do what I ask, naturally, as you would under ordinary circumstances, without any hesitation or nervousness-”
She smiled at me.
“I'm not nervous.”
“Good.” I took the cover from the box and held it out to her. 'Take a piece of candy.”
Her shoulders lifted daintily, and fell.
“I very seldom eat candy.”
“We don't want you to eat it.
Just take it.
Please.”
She reached in without looking and snared a chocolate cream and held it up in her fingers and looked at me.
I said,
“Okay.
Put it back, please.
That's all.
Thank you.
Good day, Mrs. Ballin.”
She glanced around at us, said, “Dear me,” in a tone of mild and friendly astonishment, and went.
I bent to the table and marked an X on a comer of her paper, and the figure 6 beneath her name.
Cramer growled,
“Wolfe said three pieces.”
“Yeah.
He said to use our judgment too.
In my judgment, if that dame was mixed up in anything, even Nero Wolfe would never find it out. What did you think of her, Captain?”
Dixon made a noise something between a hartebeest and a three-toed sloth.
The door opened and in came a tall slender woman in a tight-fitting long black coat and a silver fox that must have had giantism.
She kept her lips tight and gazed at us with deepest concentrated eyes.
I took her slips and gave one to Dixon.
“Now, Miss Claymore, please do what I ask, naturally, as you would under ordinary circumstances, without any hesitation or nervousness.
Will you?”
She shrank back a little, but nodded. I extended the box.
“Take a piece of candy.”