"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."
"Bosnian forests."
"All of that to be deleted. If he wants a transcript of our talk with Madame Zorka, furnish it; he's welcome to it. He has resources for investigating those people and for finding Madame Zorka. If he wants to see me, eleven o'clock."
"Your daughter's coming at eleven."
"Then noon for Mr Cramer if he wants it." He swallowed more orange juice. "Phone Seven Seas Radio and ask if they have anything for me. If they haven't tell them to rush it to me when it comes. Make an appointment for me to talk with Mr Hitchcock in London at nine o'clock."
"Do you want a record-"
"No. Who is downstairs?"
"No one has come yet. They ought to be here any minute."
"When Saul comes, put the envelope in the safe. I'll see them as soon as I'm through talking to Mr Hitchcock. Send Saul up first, then Fred, then Orrie. Have you had your breakfast?"
"You know damn well I haven't."
"Good heavens. Get it."
I went down to the kitchen and did that, after first calling Seven Seas Radio and arranging for a wire to London at nine. With my breakfast I consumed portions of the Times, specializing on the report of the Ludlow murder. They had my name spelled wrong, and they were pretty stale for a paper that had gone to press at midnight, for they said that the police were looking for me. As Cramer had predicted, they had the low-down on Ludlow's being an agent of the British Government, but there wasn't any hint of Montenegro or Bosnian forests or Balkan princesses. On an inside page there was a spread of pictures and a two-column piece about the murder in Paris that the col de mart had figured in some years before.