But she wasn’t actually as calm as she sounded. Her hands were clasped tight together and she had started a swallowing marathon. She didn’t even try to resume the conversation, but just sat, and all signs indicated the same outcome. The outcome arrived in something like a minute. It started with her shoulders going up and down in a minor convulsion, and then her head went forward and her hands went up to cover her face, and the regulation sounds began to come.
“Good God,” Wolfe muttered in a tone of horror, and got to his feet and went. In a moment, above the sounds Beulah was making, I heard the bang of his elevator door. I merely sat and waited, thinking it was natural for me to understand better than he did the most desirable and effective course of action when a young woman began to cry. After all, I thought, I see a good deal more of them than he does.
Time passed by. I was deciding the moment had come for a sympathetic hand on her shoulder when her face came up and she blurted, “Why haven’t you got sense enough to go too?”
It didn’t faze me. “I have,” I said politely, “but I was waiting for the noise to die down enough for you to hear me tell you that if you don’t want to go in the room where Morton is in your present condition, the room at the front on that floor is mine, is unlocked, and has a bathroom with a mirror.”
I left her alone with it. On the way out I warned Theodore what was going on in the potting room and advised him to find jobs elsewhere. On my floor I stopped in my room to make sure about clean towels in the bathroom and general appearances. As I returned to the hall the door of the south room opened and Morton was there.
“Where’s Miss Page?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”
“She’s up looking at orchids,” I told him en route. “Relax. Lunch in ten minutes.”
Down in the office Wolfe was sitting at his desk, looking harassed.
I crossed to mine, sat, and told him, “They want a shoulder to cry on, but with her fianće under the same roof I didn’t think it would be fitting. Morton is pacing—”
The phone rang. I answered it, and heard a voice I had been expecting to hear all day. I told Wolfe Inspector Cramer would like to speak to him. He got on and I stayed on.