But she slid back again until enough of her fanny was on the chair so she could sit instead of squat, and said so the words could be heard: “The police are after me!” “I’ll shoot the first six and then start throwing rocks. How far back are they?”
She bounced out of the chair and was on my lap before I could even brace myself, requesting me for the second time to put my arms around her, and it seemed less trouble to comply than to argue with her. I gathered her in and held her, and she encircled my neck, twisting her body around so as to make the contact more comprehensive. There have been occasions on which I have held a creature like that and as time passed she has begun to tremble, but this time it was the other way around. She was trembling at first, but gradually it tapered off, and after a while she was warm and quiet against me, with her face burrowing into the side of my neck, which I kept relaxed for her.
Finally she lifted the face an inch to murmur at my ear, “I was so scared I was going to go jump off a pier. I always have been scared of the cops, ever since I can remember, I guess because they came and arrested my brother when I was a little kid.” She kept close against me. “When I got home and the janitor and Isabel-she’s the girl that lives across the hall-when they told me the police had been there three times and they might come back any minute-no, hold me tight, I don’t mind if it’s hard to breathe-I didn’t even go in my room, I just scooted. I ran towards the subway, I don’t know where I thought I was going, and after I got on an uptown express I remembered about Nero Wolfe, so I got off at Thirty-third Street and came here to see him. And you were here! How did that happen? Now you ought to kiss me.” I held her firm enough to keep her from changing position. “I never kiss people before noon except the one I had breakfast with. Then you just got home?” “Yes. Then let’s eat breakfast. Oh, I know how you happened to be here! That piece in the paper! Your name’s Archie Goodwin and you’re Nero Wolfe’s brilliant lieutenant!” “Right. Here you are in the house you didn’t want to come to with me, and look at you. Where were you Friday night and Saturday and Saturday night?” She bit me on the neck.
“Ouch,” I said. “That’s where your husband hit me before I got him. Where were you?” She kissed where she had bit.
“Come on, girlie,” I said realistically.
“You’re going to tell the cops or else, so you might as well practice on me.” That was a mistake. She actually started to tremble. I squeezed all the breath out of her to make her stop and told her with authority, “I go through cops like the wind through Wall Street and it’s quite possible I can arrange to be with you when they are. If so, I ought to know what the score is. Where were you?” She was scared again, and I had to quiet her down and then drag it out of her.
The way she told it, she had gone home early Friday evening to her room-and-bath in Greenwich Village, around nine o’clock, because the man who had taken her out to dinner had got a completely false idea of their program for the evening. She had been asleep for hours when the bell-ringing and door-knocking started, hadn’t answered at first because she was too startled and had suspected it was her dinner host, and later, having crept to the door and heard the caller questioning the girl across the hall, had crawled back into bed and shivered, awake, until morning, afraid of cops. Between six and seven she had got up, dressed, packed a bag, sneaked out, taken the subway to Washington Heights, and gone to the apartment where her husband lived with his parents. The parents had advised her to let the police know where she was so they could come and ask their questions and have it over with, but they hadn’t insisted on it, and it looked as if she had picked a good hole until late Saturday night, or Sunday morning rather, when the husband had got the notion of doing some insisting on a purely personal matter and had gone to her bedroom with that in mind. That situation had developed to a point where the whole household was up and around, and she would have been ordered out into a snowstorm if it had been snowing. She had dressed and packed her bag and got out, and after a spell of random subway riding had collected enough spunk to go to her own address for a reconnaissance.
The news that it had indeed been the cops, and they had been there three times, had finished the spunk, and here she was.
It took a while to tell it. When she got to the end we were no longer glued together, but she was still perched on my lap.
I was irritated. “Damn it,” I said, “you haven’t got a thing for the very hours they’re after, from ten to twelve Friday night. In bed alone, when you could easily have had a witness. Virtue never pays. Did your husband tell you he had been down to headquarters?” “Yes, he told me all about it.” “Did he admit I lammed him?” “Yes,1 wish I had stayed.” “At present you have more important wishes to wish. You’re in for it, girlie, but I’ll see what I can do. What do you like for breakfast? Juice, oatmeal, eggs, ham-” “I like everything except fish. But could I have a bath first? My bag’s in the hall.” That meant that by the time she was through eating it would probably be eleven o’clock and Wolfe would be finished with the plants and downstairs, so when I took her up to the spare room, the south one on the same floor as mine, I first saw that towels and other luxuries were in place and then gave her the kiss to which I had morally committed myself, just to have that out of the way. This time the trembling came where it belonged. I returned to the office, got Wolfe on the house phone and told him about our guest, and then went to the kitchen and arranged with Fritz for her breakfast.
In spite of the companionship record Rosa and I were building up, and in spite of her dimples and her wholehearted way of making me feel at home, I had not adopted the idea that there was nothing much to her character but truth and innocence. It was not vet settled that our professional connection with the death of Moore was ended, and the death of Naylor certainly went with it; therefore I saw no reason why Wolfe shouldn’t do a little work for a change and spend his two hours between plant time and lunch time on one of his thorough exploring jobs with Rosa as the jungle. I sold the idea, stated somewhat differently, to her as she ate breakfast.
It started off nicely, shortly after eleven, with Wolfe behind his desk in the office and Rosa in the red leather chair. She was wearing a very informal cherry-colored rayon something.
“That’s a frightful combination,” Wolfe growled. “That garment and that chair.” “Oh, I’m sorry!” She moved to a yellow one, the one Saul Panzer liked.
That put them on a basis of mutual understanding, and the prospect for an interesting conversation looked bright, but it didn’t get very far. Wolfe had covered nothing but some preliminary details, such as precisely the kind of work an assistant chief filer does, when the doorbell rang. Formerly on occasions calling for discretion, as for instance a fugitive from justice sitting in the office, I had had to finger the curtain back enough to make a slit to see through, but recently we had had a one-way glass panel installed. I still had to persuade myself each time, looking through, that I could see him but he couldn’t see me. Having done so, I returned to the office and told Wolfe: “It’s Mr. Cross. Do you want to see him?” “No. Tell him I’m busy.” “He might have an orchid for you.” I was displeased and allowed my voice to show it.