“Bosh.” Wolfe straightened in his chair and his hand went forward by automatism, but there was no beer there. He sent a sharp glance at me to see if I noticed it, and sat back again. “I can’t be an accessory after a fact that never existed. I am acting on the assumption that you are not criminally involved either in larceny or in murder. If you are, say so and get out. If you are not, go to bed. Fritz will show you your room.” He pushed the button. “Well?”
“I’ll go to bed.” She brushed her hair back. “I don’t think I’ll sleep.”
“I hope you will, even without appetite for it. At any rate, you won’t walk the floor, for I shall be directly under you.” The door opened, and Wolfe turned to it “Fritz. Please show Miss Fox to the south room, and arrange towels and so on. In the morning, take her roses to her with breakfast, but have Theodore slice the stems first. And by the way. Miss Fox, you have nothing with you. The niceties of your toilet you will have to forego, but I believe we can furnish a sleeping garment. Mr. Goodwin owns some handsome silk pajamas which his sister sent him on his birthday, from Ohio. They are hideous, but handsome. I’m sure he won’t mind. I presume, Fritz, you’ll find them in the chest of drawers near the window. Unless … would you prefer to get them for Miss Fox yourself, Archie?”
I could have thrown my desk at him. He knew damn well what I thought of those pajamas. I was so sore I suppose it showed in my cheeks, because I saw Fritz pull in his lower lip with his teeth. I was slower on the come-back than usual, and I never did get to make one, for at that instant the doorbell rang, which was a piece of luck for Nero Wolte. I got up and strode past them to the hall.
I was careless for two reasons. I was taking it for granted it was Saul Panzer, back from planting Hilda Lindquist in seclusion; and the cause of my taking something for granted when I shouldn’t, since that’s always a bad thing to do in our business, was that my mind was still engaged with Wolfe’s vulgar attempt to be funny. Anyhow, the fact remains that I was careless. I whirled the lock and took off the bolt and pulled the door open.
They darned near toppled me off my pins with the edge of the door catching my shoulder. I saved myself from falling and the rest was reHex.
There were two of them, and they were going right on past in a hurry. I sprang back and got in front and gave one of them a knee in the belly and used a stiff-arm on the other. He started to swing, but I didn’t bother about i4 I picked up the one that had stopped my knee and just used him for a whisk broom and depended on speed and my 180 pounds. The combination swept the hall out. We went through the door so fast that the first guy stumbled and fell down the stoop, and I dropped the one I had in my arms and turned and pulled the door shut and heard the lock click. Then I pushed the bell-button three times. The guy that had fallen down the stoop, the one who had tried to plug me, was on his feet again and coming up, with words.
“We’re officers—”
“Shut up.” I heard footsteps inside, and I called through the closed door. “Fritz? Tell Mr. Wolfe a couple of gentlemen have called and we’re staying out on the porch for a talk. And hey! Those things are in the bottom drawer.”
Chapter 8
I said, “What do you mean, officers? Army or navy?”
He looked down at me. He was an inch taller than me to begin with, and he was stretching it. He made his voice hard enough to scare a schoolgirl right out of her socks. “Listen, bud. I’ve heard about you. How’d you like to take a good nap on some concrete?”
The other officer was back on his ankles too, but he was a short guy. He was built something like a whisk broom, at that. I undertook to throw oil on the troubled waters. Ordinarily I might have enjoyed a nice rough cussingmatch, but I wanted to find out something and get back inside. I summoned a friendly grin.
“What the hell, how did I know you bad badges? Okay, thanks, sergeant. All I knew was the door bumping me and a cyclone going by. Is that a way to inspire confidence?”
“All right, you know we’ve got badges now.” The sergeant humped up a shoulder and let it drop, and then the other one. “Let us in. We want to see Nero Wolfe.”
“I’m sorry, he’s got a headache.”
“We’ll cure it for him. Listen. A friend of mine warned me about you once. He said the time would come when you would have to be taken down. Maybe that’s the very thing I came here for. But so far it’s a matter of law. Open that door or I’ll open it myself. I want to see Mr. Wolfe on police business.”
“There’s no law about that. Unless you’ve got a warrant.’
“You couldn’t read it anyhow. Let us in.”
I got impatient. “What’s the use wasting time? You can’t go in. The floor’s just been scrubbed. Wolfe wouldn’t see you anyhow, at this time of night. Tell me what you want like a gentleman and a cop, and I’ll see if I can help you.”
He glared at me. Then he put his hand inside to his breast pocket and pulled out a document, and I had a feeling in my knees like a steering wheel with a shimmy. If it was a search warrant the jig was up right there. He unfolded it and held it for me to look, and even in the dim light from the street lamp one glance was enough to start my heart off again. It was only a warrant to take into custody. I peered at it and saw among other things the name Ramsey Muir, and nodded.
The sergeant grunted, “Can you see the name? Clara Fox.”
“Yeah, it’s a nice name.”
“We’re going in after her. Open up.”
I lifted the brows. “In here? You’re crazy.”
“All right, we’re crazy. Open the door.”
I shook my head, and got out a cigarette, and lit up. I said, “Listen, sergeant. There’s no use wasting the night in repartee. You know damn well you’ve got no more right to go through that door than a cockroach unless you’ve got a search warrant. Ordinarily Mr. Wolfe is more than willing to cooperate with you guys; if you don’t know that, ask Inspector Cramer. So am I. Hell, some of my best friends are cops. I’m not even sore because you tried to rush me and I got excited and thought you were mugs and pushed you. But it just happens that we don’t want company of any kind at present.”
He grunted and glared. “Is Clara Fox in there?”
“Now that’s a swell question.” I grinned at him. “Either she isn’t, in which case I would say no, or she is and I don’t want you to know it, in which case would I say yes? I might at that, if she was somewhere else and I didn’t want you to go there to look for her.”
“Is she in there?”
I just shook my head at him.
“You’re harboring a fugitive from justice.”
“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.”
The short dick, the one I had swept the hall with, piped up in a tenor, “Take him down for resisting an officer.”
I reproved him. “The sergeant knows better than that. He knows they wouldn’t book me, or if they did I read about a man once that collected enough to retire on for false arrest.”
The big one stood and stared into my frank eyes for half a minute, then turned and descended the stoop and looked up and down the street. I didn’t know whether he expected to see the Russian Army or a place to buy a drink. He called up to his brother in arms, “Stay here, Steve. Cover that door. I’ll go and phone a report and probably send someone to cover the rear. When that bird turns his back to go in the house give him a kick in the ass.”
I waved at him, “Good night, sergeant,” pushed the button three shorts, took my key from my pocket, unlocked the door, and went in. If that tenor had tickled me I’d have pulled his nose. I slid the bolt in place. Fritz was standing in the middle of the hall with my automatic in his hand. I said, “Watch out, that thing’s loaded.”