Wolfe nodded. “The Attorney General told me that the county attorney is a man of ability and integrity and good judgment.”
“Which may be true, in spite of something he did yesterday. He came here yesterday afternoon with the defense counsel, the lawyer Miss Rowan has hired, to ask her some questions. He wanted to know — they wanted to know — if Miss Rowan had—”
I stopped because I heard a car out front. Lily rose, but I said I would go, and when I did she came along, down the hall and on out to the terrace. It was the taxi, and the hackie had opened the rear door and was lifting out a big tan leather suitcase which hadn’t been out of the basement storeroom in the brownstone on West 35th Street for six years. The new guest’s luggage had come.
Chapter 5
At a quarter past three the next afternoon, Thursday, Nero Wolfe and I were sitting on rocks, facing each other. We had been there more than three hours. The top of his rock, about chair-height from the ground, was level and flat and fairly smooth, and had plenty of room for his rump. Mine was more rugged, level enough but far from smooth, but I had eased it by standing from time to time. To Wolfe’s right there was a tangle of brush, to his rear and left there were trees, mostly jack pine, and to his front, at a distance of some ten yards, Berry Creek was skimming and skittering over its rocky bottom toward the cabin, which was about half a mile away.
The night before, after leaving him in his room Lily and I had agreed that he shouldn’t be pampered. He was in rough country and would have to rough it. If he wanted any of the frills to which he was accustomed such as breakfast on a tray in his room he would load it in the kitchen and carry it in himself. He would make his bed or not make it, as he chose, as we all did. I had gone back to his room, found him already under the electric blanket, and told him the household routine, and he had grunted and turned over.
The breakfast hour was nine o’clock, and usually we all made it unless there was something special on the program — except Diana, who often slept late. That morning she was right on time, probably because there was a new man to practice on. Of course Mimi knew Wolfe’s reputation on food, and I gave her a grin when I saw her putting paprika on the scrambled eggs, and again when I saw that she had nearly doubled the amount of bacon and bread slices for toast. Also instead of three kinds of jam on the table there were six. As Wade Worthy sat he said, “A reputation like yours has advantages, Mr. Wolfe. Such abundance!”
“Don’t mind him,” Diana said. She patted Wolfe’s sleeve with two fingertips. “He’s just jealous. I would love to butter a toast for you.”
Wolfe declined the offer but didn’t scowl at her. A guest is a jewel. Mimi brought another platter of eggs, and they had paprika too.
After breakfast Wolfe and I had gone to his room and I helped him unpack. I admit that smacked of pampering, but I was curious. And as I had suspected when I had helped the hackie with the luggage, he had prepared for an extended stay when he left home; there was another suit — the brown worsted with little green specks — another pair of shoes, five shirts, ten pairs of socks, and so forth, including four books, one of which he may have brought along for possible reference. It was Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State. By Peter Farb. He may have supposed that a Blackfoot or Chippewa might be a suspect and he wanted to know how their minds work.
When everything was unpacked and in place in drawers and the closet, I had made a suggestion. “If it’s to be a full report, it will take hours, and you’re used to a larger room. Mine is twice the size of this, or there’s the big room, or the terrace. You would probably—”
“No,” he said.
“No? No report?”
“Not here. Last evening I was constantly aware that we might be overheard, outside through the window or inside through the door or wall. Our discussions of problems have always been in a soundproofed room, secure, no unwanted interruptions. Whereas here — there are three women on the premises, and one of them is a congenital pest. Confound it, can’t we go somewhere?”
“If you mean somewhere under a roof, no. Outdoors, almost anywhere. I know dozens of nice spots for a picnic. The storeroom shelves aren’t as full as they were a month ago, but there’s sturgeon, ham, dried beef, four kinds of cheese — we can take our pick. There’s half a roast turkey in the kitchen refrigerator. The temperature of the creek is perfect for beer.”
“How far?”
“Anywhere from a hundred yards to a hundred miles. If we take horses...”
He glared at me and asked where the storeroom was.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when we hit the trail because he spent a good twenty minutes looking over the storeroom shelves and cupboards, and anyway I had to go and tell Lily and change my shoes and pack the knapsack with the grub. When we left, by the morning terrace, Diana, there in a chair, looked up at Wolfe and put on a pout and said she would have loved to come along, and he didn’t actually growl at her.
So at a quarter past three there we were, on the rocks, with the lunch remains, including three empty beer cans, back in the knapsack, and the report delivered and questions answered. Of course the report had not been full, if “full” means nothing left out, but he had the picture, including names and connections and guests that had fizzled — a thousand details that I haven’t put in this report. The trunks of three saplings were rubbing against the edge of his rock, and he had tried twenty times to use them for a back rest, but it made his feet leave the ground and dangle, so it was no go. Now he tried it again, said, “Grrrrh,” gave up, slid forward on the rock, stood up, and started to speak but didn’t because something behind me caught his eye. He raised an arm to aim a finger and asked, “What’s that?”
I twisted around. A big gray bird had landed on a branch only twenty feet away and only six feet up. “Fool hen,” I said. “A kind of grouse that thinks everybody goes by its favorite saying, Peace on earth, good will to grouse. If I went slow and smooth, peaceful, I could walk over and pick it off.”
“Are they palatable?”
“Sure. Very tasty.”
“Then why are there any left?”
“I’ve asked about that, and apparently the feeling is that if a wild critter hasn’t got sense enough to act wild, to hell with it. So they call it fool hen. But you don’t see many of them.”
He moved, and with his hand on a tree for balance shook his right leg and then his left, to get his pants legs down. “I’m going to try something,” he said. “A telephone call. You wrote that Miss Rowan’s line might be tapped. If so, by whom? The sheriff, or the county attorney?”
“The sheriff.”
“Then I can’t use it for this call. Is there one I can use with assurance?”
I nodded. “At Lame Horse. A New York call? Saul?”