I stooped and unfastened the coat and flung it open. Wolfe got to his feet, walked around the desk and stood frowning down at her.
"She has no stockings on."
"Right."
"What's that thing she's wearing? A dress?"
"Oh heavens, no. I think it's a drinking gown."
"And you think she's shamming?"
"I do."
"Well." He turned and called, "Fritz!" Fritz was right there. Wolfe told him, "Bring a dozen ice cubes."
I knelt down beside the patient and felt her pulse and then pried open her eyelid and took a look at the iris, and announced that it would be perfectly safe to proceed with the experiment. Wolfe, looking down at me, nodded gravely. Fritz appeared with the dish of ice cubes and Wolfe told him to give them to me. I took a cube and laid it on her cheek and it slid off. I picked it up and carefully placed it at the base of her neck, in a little depression where the shoulder began, and it stayed nicely. Then I gently but firmly lifted her arm, held it up with my left hand, and with my right hand got another cube and as modestly as possible worked it under the edge of the red robe until it was snug in her armpit, and let the arm down.
The reaction was so sudden and violent, it startled me into spilling the rest of the cubes all over the rug, and her knees in my belly nearly spilled me too. She didn't stop at sitting up, but scrambled to her feet, with Wolfe retreating to make room for her. She shook herself, more of a spasm than a shake, and the ice cube emerged from under the hem of the gown to the floor. She goggled around at us, perceived a chair, and sank into it.
"What-what-"she stammered.
"Wrong line," I told her. "Say, 'Where am I?' "
She groaned and pressed both palms against her forehead. Wolfe, having waited until Fritz had retrieved all the cubes, moved back to his chair and lowered his fundament. He regarded her sourly for a full minute of silence and then spoke to me.
"And what," he demanded resentfully, "would you suggest that we do with her?"
"Search me. It was you that wanted her."
"I don't want her like that."
"Send her home." I added emphatically, "In a taxi."
"We can't send her home. The police are looking for her, and one will be posted at her door, and I want to talk to her first."
"Go ahead and talk to her."
"I want to ask her some questions. Is she capable of coherence?"
"Capable, yes. But I doubt if she'll cohere, with ice or without. Go on and try it."
He looked at her. "Madame Zorka, I am Nero Wolfe. I would like to discuss something with you. When were you last in Yugoslavia?"
With her face covered with her hands, she shook her head, moaned, and muttered something not even as intelligible as gibblezook.
"But, madame," Wolfe said patiently, "I'm sorry you don't feel well, but that is a very simple question." Then he spouted some lingo at her, a couple of sentences, that may have been words, but not to me. She didn't even shake her head.
"Don't you understand Serbo-Croat?" he demanded.
"No," she muttered. "Zat I do not onderstand."
He kept at it for a solid hour. When he wanted to be, he could be as patient as he was big, and apparently on that occasion he wanted to be. I took it all down in my notebook, and I never filled as many pages with less dependable information. There was no telling, when he got through, whether she had ever been in Yugoslavia, how and when she had acquired the name Zorka, or whether she had actually ever been born or not. It seemed to be tentatively established that she had once resided in a hotel in Paris, at least for one night, that the couturiиre enterprise had been installed within the year on the street floor of the Churchill with the help of outside capital, that her native tongue was not Serbo-Croat, that she was not on intimate terms with Neya Tormic or Carla Lovchen, that she had known Percy Ludlow only slightly, and that she had taken up fencing to keep her weight down, and was not an expert. Wolfe did succeed in extorting an admission that she had made the phone call to our office, but it was an empty triumph: she couldn't remember what she had said! She just simply couldn't remember.
At twenty minutes past four Wolfe arose from his chair with a sigh and said to me, "Put her to bed in the south room, above mine, and lock the door."
She arose too, steadying herself with her hand on the edge of his desk, and declared, "I want to go home."
"The police are there laying for you. As I told you, I have informed them of your phone call. They'll take you to headquarters and be much more insistent than I have been. Well?"
"All right," she groaned.
"Good-night, madame. Good-night, Archie." He stalked out.
It was two flights to the floor above his, and I was in no mood to elevate her that far by brute force, so I trotted up and got the elevator after he had ascended, and took it down and got her. Fritz, half asleep and half displeased, went along to make sure that the bed was habitable and that towels and accessories were at hand; and for the honour of the house he brought with him the vase of cattleyas from Wolfe's desk. She may have had no nightie or slippers or toothbrush, but by golly she had orchids. Fritz turned the bed down and, me steering her, she got seated on the edge of it.
Fritz said, "She's forlorn."
"Yep." I asked her, "Do you want me to help you off with your coat or anything?"
She shook her head.
"Shall I open the window?"
Another shake.
We left her there. From the outside I locked the door and put the key in my pocket. It was ten to five, and a dingy November dawn was feebly whimpering, "Let there be light," at my windows when I finally hit the mattress.
At eight o'clock in the morning, bathed and dressed but bleary-eyed and grouchy, I took a pot of coffee up to her. When my third and loudest knock got no response, I used the key and went in. She wasn't there. The bed was just as Fritz had turned it down. The window on the left, the one that opened on to the fire escape, was standing wide open.
Chapter Twelve
I descended a flight to Wolfe's room, tapped on the door, and entered. He was in bed, propped up against three pillows, just ready to attack the provender on the breakfast table which straddled his mountainous ridge under the black silk coverlet. This was orange juice, eggs au beurre noir, two slices of broiled Georgia ham, hashed brown potatoes, hot blueberry muffins, and a pot of steaming cocoa.
He snapped at me, "I haven't eaten!"
"Neither have I," I said bitterly. "I'm in no better humour than you are, so let's call it a tie. I just went up to take our guest some coffee-"
"How is she?"
"I don't know."
"Is she asleep?"
"I don't know."
"What the devil-"
"I was starting to tell you and you interrupted me. Please don't interrupt. She's gone. She didn't even lie down. She went by the window and the fire escape, and presumably found her way to 34th Street by the passage we use sometimes. Since she descended the fire escape, she went right past that window"-I pointed-"facing you, and it must have been daylight."
"I was asleep."
"So it seems. I thought maybe with a woman in the house, and possibly a murderess, you might have been on the qui vive-"
"Shut up."
He took some of the orange juice, frowned at me half a minute, and took some more.
"Phone Mr Cramer. Give him everything."
"Including my trip to the love nest?"
He grimaced. "Don't use terms like that when my stomach's empty. Including everything about Madame Zorka, Mr Barrett, and Miss Reade, except the subject of my threat to Mr Barrett."