If I have given the impression that I not only knew what I was doing but also what I was going to do, kindly erase it. Now that my immediate objective, getting the package properly cached, was accomplished, I could proceed as I saw fit, but what would fit? No matter which direction I headed I would find both the T-men and the cops already there, jostling each other, and there was no point in getting my toes trampled. By the time the waiter brought pecan sour cream pie and coffee I had my program all planned: ring a friend to suggest a couple of hours’ dancing at the Flamingo, go to 35th Street and pack a suitcase and bring it to the hotel, keep the dancing date, take the friend home and discuss with her whatever she felt like discussing, return to the hotel, sleep nine hours, get up and have breakfast, go for a walk, and drop in on Lon Cohen at the Gazette and get the latest dope on Hattie Annis. That struck me as a fine combination of initiative, snap, and staying power.
But I didn’t get to carry it through. After attending to the first item, ringing a friend and making a dancing date, I left by the main entrance, got a taxi, gave the hackie the 35th Street number, and asked him if an extra buck for a 15-minute wait while I packed a suitcase appealed to him. He said with the meter running and I said sure. Arriving, I mounted the stoop, used my key, entered, and went to the office, intending merely to tell Wolfe where I could be reached.
He wasn’t there. Fritz was standing in the middle of the room, looking grimmer than I had ever seen him. His head jerked for a glance at me and then jerked back to watch what he was watching. It was Albert Leach. He was over by the filing cabinets, with one of the drawers open. He snapped at me: “When did you leave here and where have you been?”
Ignoring him, I asked Fritz, “How did he get in?”
“It was another man.” Fritz’s tone was as grim as his look. “I put the chain bolt on before I opened the door. He pushed a paper through the crack and I brought it to Mr. Wolfe. It was a search warrant, and Mr. Wolfe said he must be admitted. There are five of them. They have finished with the front room and dining room and kitchen and basement. Mr. Wolfe is with one of them in his room. One of them is on the third floor. Two of them are in the plant rooms. Theodore is with them.”
I glanced at my watch. 9:20. “When did they come?”
“About an hour ago. I was taking in the salad and cheese.”
“When and how did you leave here?” Leach demanded.
So he had had a man out front. “It could be like this,” I told him. “I came in and saw you at the files and didn’t recognize you, and naturally I went for you. My best is a kidney punch. You’d be back to normal in a few days. Mr. Brenner would be glad to corroborate me. Has he done the safe, Fritz?”
“Yes. Mr. Wolfe was here.”
“Too bad I missed it. I’ll be right back.”
I went outside first to pay the hackie and dismiss him. Returning, I glanced in at the office and then mounted three flights to the plant rooms. The lights were all on. It was a joke. To do a thorough job on those thousands of pots and the beds of coke, looking for something as small as a wad of bills, would have taken six men six days. The two T-men were in the potting room, going through a bale of osmundine. Theodore was perched on a stool, grinning at them.
“They looking for thripe?” he asked me.
“No,” I told him. “The Hope diamond. If they leave a mess keep track of your time cleaning it up. We’ll want to send a bill. Keep an eye on them.”
He said he would, and I left. One flight down I found no one in my room, and no visible sign of disturbance, and proceeded to the south room, which was a spare. One was there, lifting the mattress to put it back on the bed.
“That’s wrong side up,” I said.
“It’s the way it was,” he said.
“I know, but we turn it every Monday, and this is Monday. Turn it over, please.”
He straightened to look at me. “No wonder. You’re Archie Goodwin.”
“Yeah. Have you done the other room on this floor? My room?”
“I have.”
“Did you find the secret drawer?”
He bent to straighten the mattress, turning his back. Apparently he didn’t care to chat, so I left, descended another flight, and turned right. The door at the end was open, and I crossed the sill. Wolfe was in the big chair by a window, his eyes on a man who was at the shelves on the far wall, removing books to look in back of them. I approached.
“I’ve made the rounds,” I said. “Quite a crew. Leach is going through the files. The one on my floor will probably want to help me pack my suitcase. I’ll be at the Churchill, but I don’t know the room number yet.”
He growled, a low growl in his throat. “Bah,” he said.
“Yes, sir. I agree.”
“How much longer will they be?”
“I couldn’t say. Ten minutes or an hour or all night. I can ask Leach.”
“No. Ask him nothing and tell him nothing. Your post is in the hall until they go. There are five of them.”
“Yeah, I counted.”
“Let me know when they have left. I have phoned Mr. Parker. He will learn in the morning their grounds for getting the search warrant. As they leave ask each of them if he has taken anything, in Fritz’s presence.” He turned his head to glare at the man by the shelves, who had dropped a book.
I would have preferred to roam around, keeping in touch with the various sectors of the operation, making comments as they occurred to me, but in the circumstances it seemed best to humor him, so I went down to the office and used the phone to cancel the dancing date. Then, telling Fritz to stay put and disregarding questions from Leach, not even looking at him, I stepped to the hall for patrol duty.
It was 10:28 when they left — that is, when they were actually out and I had closed the door. The last quarter of an hour had been spent in a conference in the office of the whole quintet and in Leach trying to think of a question I would reply to. Having found that I wouldn’t even tell him if it was still snowing, having gone up to Wolfe’s room and found the door locked, and having got no response when he knocked, he came back down, collected his gang from the office, and herded them out. I went and buzzed Wolfe’s room on the house phone to notify him, and then to the kitchen for a glass of milk. When I returned to the office Wolfe was there, telling Fritz to bring beer. Ordinarily ten o’clock is his beer deadline, but this was an emergency.
He sat and sent his eyes around, to the book shelves, the globe, the safe, the files, and me. “Is there any chance,” he asked, “that we can be heard?”
“Very slim if any.” I stood with the milk. “Fritz was here all the time. Not unless they invented something new last week.”
“You did your errand?”