Unless you're hungry and want to make soup of him.
Saul won't get anywhere with that bird.
You can't keep him-”
“The hell we can't keep him.
I ain't through, wait till I tell you.
We had been in there with that Gebert ten or fifteen minutes, when there was a noise out front and I hopped out to take a look.
It was two cars, and they stopped by the gate.
They piled out and came in the yard after me, and by God if they didn't pull guns.
You might have thought I was Dillinger.
I saw state troopers' uniforms. I let out a yell to warn Saul to lock the door and then I met the attack.
I was surrounded by who do you think?
Rowcliff, that mutt of a lieutenant from the Homicide Squad, and three other dicks, and two troopers, and a little runt with spectacles that told me he was an assistant district attorney of Putnam County.
Huh? Was I surrounded?”
“Yes. At last.
Did they shoot you?”
“Sure, but I caught the bullets and tossed them back.
Well, it seems that what they came for was to look for that red box.
They went to the door and wanted in. Saul left Orrie there inside the door and went to a window and talked to them through the glass.
Of course he asked to see a search warrant and they didn't have any.
There was some gab back and forth, and then the troopers announced they were going in after Saul because he was trespassing, and he held the paper that Mr. Wolfe signed up against the window and they put a flashlight on it.
There was more talk, and then Saul told me to drive to the village and phone you, and Rowcliff said nothing doing until he searched me for the red box, and I told him if he touched me I'd skin him and hang him up to dry.
But I couldn't get the sedan out because Gebert's car was in the driveway and the others blocked the road at the gate, so we declared a truce and Rowcliff took his car and we both came to Brewster in it.
It's only about three miles.
We left the rest of the gang sitting there on the porch.
I'm in a booth in a restaurant and Rowcliff's down the street in a drug store phoning headquarters.
I've got a notion to grab his car and go back without him.”
“Okay.
Damn good idea.
Does he know Gebert's there?”
“No.
If Gebert's shy about cops, of course he don't want to leave.
What do we do?
Toss him out?
Let the cops in?
We can't go out and dig, all we can do is sit there and watch Gebert smile, and it's as cold as an Englishman's heart and we haven't got a fire.
Good God, you ought to hear those troopers talk, I guess out there in the wilds they catch bears and lions with their hands and eat 'em raw.”
“Hold it.” I turned to Wolfe. “I suppose I go for a drive?”
He shuddered.
I presume he calculated that there must be at least a thousand jolts between 35th Street and Brewster, and ten thousand cars to meet and pass.
The lurking dangers of the night. He nodded at me. I told Fred,
“Go on back.
Keep Gebert, and don't let them in.
I'll be there as soon as I can make it.”
Chapter Thirteen
It was a quarter to ten by the time I got away and around the corner to the garage on Tenth Avenue and was sailing down the ramp in the roadster, and it was
11:13 when I rolled into the village of Brewster and turned left-following the directions I had heard Helen Frost give Saul Panzer.
An hour and twenty-eight minutes wasn't bad, counting the curves on the Pines Bridge Road and the bum stretch between Muscoot and Croton Falls.
I followed the pavement a little over a mile and then turned left again onto a dirt road.
It was as narrow as a bigot's mind, and I got in the ruts and stayed there.
My lights showed me nothing but the still bare branches of trees and shrubbery close on both sides, and I began to think that Fred's jabber about the wilds hadn't been so dumb.