She snorted. "Me? If you mean that for a compliment, try again."
"I don't." My hand went to my breast pocket and came out with a folded paper. "This is a memorandum on office expenses prepared by Dykes, dated last May." I unfolded it. "I was going to ask you why he scribbled your home phone number on it, but now you can just say it was while he was telling you about Sue and asking your advice, so what's the use." I started to refold it.
"My phone number?" she demanded.
"Yep. Columbus three, four-six-two-oh."
"Let me see it."
I handed it to her, and she took a look. She held it to her right to get more light and looked again. "Len didn't write that," she declared.
"Why not?"
"It's not his writing."
"Whose is it? Yours?"
"No. It's Corrigan's. He writes square like that." She was frowning at me. "What is this, anyhow? Why should Corrigan be putting my phone number on this old memo?"
"Oh, forget it." I reached and took the paper from her fingers. "I thought maybe Dykes had written it and just thought I'd ask. Corrigan may have wanted to phone you about something after office hours." A rattle came from the drum, and the band slid into a trot. I put the memo in my pocket and stood up. "Skip it. Let's see how we like this."
We liked it fine.
When I got home, around two, Wolfe had gone up to bed. I slid the bolts on the front and back doors, twirled the knob of the safe, and drank a glass of milk before ascending. People are never satisfied. What was on my mind as I pulled the covers up was the contrariness of life. Why couldn't it have been Sue who danced like that instead of Blanche? If a man could figure out some way of combining -
The Sunday schedule at Wolfe's house was different since Marko Vukcic, his closest friend and the owner of Rusterman's Restaurant, had talked him into installing a pool table in the basement. It was now routine for Wolfe to spend Sunday morning in the kitchen with Fritz, preparing something special. At one-thirty Marko would arrive to help appreciate it, after which they would go to the basement for a five-hour session with the cues. I rarely took part, even when I was around, because it made Wolfe grumpy when I got lucky and piled up a big run.
That Sunday I fully expected to upset the schedule when Wolfe, having breakfasted in his room, entered the kitchen and I told him, "That notation on that letter is in the handwriting of James A. Corrigan, the senior partner."
He scowled at me a moment, then turned to Fritz. "I have decided," he said aggressively, "not to use the goose fat."
I raised my voice. "That notation on that let -"
"I heard you! Take the letter to Mr. Cramer and tell him about it."
It would have done no good to scream, not when he used that tone, so I controlled myself. "You have trained me," I said stiffly, "to remember conversations verbatim, including yours. Yesterday you said you wanted to know who we had scared and whose hand that notation resembles. I spent a whole evening and a wad of Wellman's dough finding out. To hand it to Cramer, for God's sake? What if it is Sunday? If they're scared they'll come. May I use the phone?"
His lips had tightened. "What else did you get?"
"Nothing. That's what you asked for."
"Very well. Satisfactory. Fritz and I are going to do a guinea hen, and there is barely time. If you get Mr. Corrigan down here, or even all of them, what will happen? I will show him that notation and he will deny all knowledge of it. I will ask where that letter has been, and will be told that it has been easily accessible to all of them. That will take perhaps five minutes. Then what?"
"Nuts. If you insist on playing pool instead of working on Sunday, wait till tomorrow. Why hand it to Cramer?"
"Because for its one purpose he is as good as I am - even better. It validates for them, if not for me, my assumption that someone in that firm has a guilty connection with the murder of three people. We have already scared him into this; with that letter a police inspector may scare him into something else. Take it to Mr. Cramer and don't bother me. You know quite well that for me pool is not play; it is exercise."
He strode to the refrigerator.
I had a notion to spend a couple of hours with the Sunday papers before going downtown, but decided there was no point in my being childish just because Wolfe was. Besides, with him I never knew. It could be that he merely wanted to cook and eat and play pool instead of working, but it could also be that he was pulling something fancy. He often got subtle without letting me in on it, and it wasn't impossible that there was something about that notation, or the way we got it, that made him figure it would be better to turn it over to Cramer than spring it himself. Walking the fifteen blocks to Twentieth Street with a cold March wind whipping at me from the right, I considered the matter and concluded that it might either rain or snow.
Cramer wasn't in, but Sergeant Purley Stebbins was. He gave me the chair at the end of his desk and listened to my tale. I gave it all to him except the detail of how we had learned it was Corrigan's handwriting, seeing no necessity of dragging Blanche into it. I merely told him that we had good reason to believe that it looked like Corrigan's writing. Of course he knew that Baird Archer's novel had been titled "Put Not Your Trust." He looked around for a Bible to check on the third verse of the 146th Psalm, but couldn't find one.
He was skeptical, but not about that. "You say Wolfe got this letter yesterday?" he demanded.
"Right."
"And he's done nothing about it?"
"Right."
"He hasn't asked Corrigan about it, or any of the others?"
"Right."
"Then what the hell's wrong with it?"
"Nothing that I know of. We're cooperating."
Purley snorted. "Nero Wolfe passing us a juicy item like this without first squeezing it for himself? Poop."
"If you don't like it," I said with dignity, "I'll take it back and see if I can get you something better. Would you accept a signed confession with dates and places?"
"I'll accept a signed statement from you, telling how you got this."
"Glad to, if you'll give me a decent typewriter."
What I got was what I expected, an Underwood about my age. I demanded a new ribbon, and they finally dug one up. Back at home I did a few chores in the office and then got comfortable with the Sunday papers. Wolfe came in now and then for a section to take to the kitchen. Around noon he entered, sat behind his desk, and requested a full report of my evening with Miss Duke. Evidently the guinea hen was under control. I obliged, thinking he might let me in on the strategy if that was what it was, but all I got was a nod.
That was all for Sunday, except that after dinner I got invited to the pool game and made a run of twenty-nine, and after supper I was instructed to tell Saul and Fred and Orrie to report in at eleven in the morning.
They were there when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms: Saul Panzer, small and wiry, in his old brown suit; Fred Durkin, with his round red face and spreading bald spot, in the red leather chair by right of seniority; and Orrie Gather, with his square jaw and crew cut, looking young enough to still be playing pro football. Wolfe took Fred first, then Orrie, and Saul last.
Adding what they told us to what we already knew from the police file and the girls and the firm members, including Blanche's little contribution Saturday evening, we were certainly up on Leonard Dykes. I could give you fifty pages on him, but it would leave you just where we were, so what's the use? If anyone who had known him had any idea who had killed him or why, they weren't saying. Saul and Fred and Orrie were three good men, and they hadn't got the faintest glimmer, though they had covered every possible source except Dykes's sister, who was in California. Wolfe kept them till lunchtime and then cut them loose. Saul, who hated to turn in an empty bag even more than I did, offered to spend another day or two at it on his own, but Wolfe said no.