“Ça va?”
“Boy, does it va,” I told him, and took a gulp of milk. “The only question left is, what color shrouds do we like.”
IV
I made a full and honest report to Wolfe, when he came down to the office from the plant rooms at six o’clock, only because it no longer mattered. Not only did I not want to try to persuade him to lay off, I was even afraid he might. With me crammed to the gills with Dazy Perrit’s closest and fondest secrets, no kind of a brush-off would have been worth a damn. I was, if you want the facts, scared stiff. So nothing was further from my mind than trying to make Wolfe obstinate by riding him.
At seven o’clock I was telling him, “Incidentally, that Lincoln number he gave me is probably the real thing. T-bone. Chateaubriand, as Fritz calls it. Pig’s liver. Fresh pork tenderloin. Of course it will be useless to ring Tom in the morning if we’re not still in good with Dazy — and his five grand in our safe.”
Wolfe muttered at me, “Get Mr. Perrit.”
Then difficulties arose. At the third number on the list I finally got Perrit, and he said we could expect Violet at Wolfe’s office at nine o’clock that evening. It took less than twenty words, discreetly selected at both ends, with no names mentioned, to complete the conversation. Perrit could have been on a party line and no harm done. But in ten minutes he called back to say that previous engagements interfered and the visitor wouldn’t arrive until eleven-thirty. I said that was pretty late and maybe tomorrow would do. No, he said, it would be tonight, between eleven-thirty and midnight.
Wolfe, who had listened in at his desk, grunted and told me, “Get the daughter.”
“Violet? Or Beulah?”
“The daughter. Miss Page.”