She straightened up. “It’s my honor,” she said. “It’s my family’s honor.”
Whether that came from the movies or wherever it came from, that’s exactly what she said. I suspected the movies, considering her cheap crack about me being a ten-cent Clark Gable, which was ridiculous. He simpers, to begin with, and to end with no one can say I resemble a movie actor, and if they did it would be more apt to be Gary Cooper than Clark Gable.
Anyhow, that’s what she said. And apparently she meant it, for although Wolfe went on patiently working at her he didn’t get much. She didn’t know why Harry had been fired from Hewitt’s, or where his sudden wealth had come from, or why he had carefully saved that garage job-card, or why he had been interested in the Kurume yellows, which she had never heard of, and above all she couldn’t remember anyone or anything she had seen while she was hiding in the corridor. Wolfe kept at her, and it looked as if she was in for a long hard night.
Around eleven o’clock an interruption arrived in the shape of Saul Panzer. I let him in and he went to the office. With one glance of his sharp gray eyes he added Rose to his internal picture gallery, which meant that she was there for good, and then stood there in his old brown suit — he never wore an overcoat — with his old brown cap in his hand. He looked like a relief veteran, whereas he owned two houses in Brooklyn and was the best head and foot detective west of the Atlantic.
“Miss Rose Lasher, Mr. Saul Panzer,” Wolfe said. “Archie, get me the atlas.”
I shrugged. One of his favorite ways of spending an evening was with the atlas, but with company there? Muttering, “Mine not to reason why,” I took it to him, and sat down again while he went on his trip. Pretty soon he closed it and shoved it aside, and addressed Rose:
“Was Mr. Gould ever in Salamanca, New York?”
She said she didn’t know.
“Those letters, Archie,” Wolfe said.
I got the pile and gave him half and kept half for myself and ran through the envelopes. I was nearly at the bottom when Wolfe emitted a grunt of satisfaction.