When I got downstairs, Wolfe was standing in the hall just outside the dining-room door. He waited till I approached, then turned and entered. We sat at the table.
“No company?” I inquired courteously. “Our new employer?”
“Miss Bruce went,” he said.
Fritz came in with an earthenware pot on a serving platter, deposited it on the table in front of Wolfe, and lifted the lid. Steam and smell emerged and floated with the currents of air. Wolfe sniffed, leaned forward and sniffed again.
“Creole tripe,” he said, “without the salt pork and pigs’ feet. I’m anxious to see what you think.” He inserted a serving spoon, releasing a fresh spurt of steam.
We had got started late, so it was along toward ten o’clock when we finished with coffee and went to the office. The stuff from the carton that I had piled on my desk was gone, and so was the carton. The map of Russia had been put away. The suitcase was still there on the chair. Instructed by Wolfe to put it in a safe place, I locked it in the closet, since it was too big for the safe. Wolfe was in his chair behind his desk, leaning back with his finger tips meeting at the spot where the ends of no one-yard tape measure would ever meet again. A book he was reading, Under Cover, by John Roy Carlson, was there on his desk, but he hadn’t picked it up. I took a seat at my own desk and spoke.
“I’d hate to spoil anybody’s fun,” I said, “and I don’t like to intrude a personal note, but it occurred to me some time ago that if Lawson is on the square and reports to his superiors that I called on Sergeant Bruce and kidnapped that carton, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Wolfe sighed. “You caught him hiding in a closet.”
“Even so,” I persisted.
“And surely he wouldn’t do anything that might get Miss Bruce into trouble.”