“That would be too much to expect,” I told her as I turned and made for the stairs in the hall.
II
Ferdinand Pohl was speaking.
Sitting there in the office with my chair swiveled so that my back was to my desk, with Wolfe himself behind his desk to my left, I took Pohl in. He was close to twice my age. Seated in the red leather chair beyond the end of Wolfe’s desk, with his leg-crossing histing his pants so that five inches of bare shin showed above his garterless sock, there was nothing about him to command attention except an unusual assortment of facial creases, and nothing at all to love.
“What brought us together,” he was saying in a thin peevish tone, “and what brought us here together, is our unanimous opinion that Sigmund Keyes was murdered by Victor Talbott, and also our conviction—”
“Not unanimous,” another voice objected.
The voice was soft and good for the ears, and its owner was good for the eyes. Her chin, especially, was the kind you can take from any angle. The only reason I hadn’t seated her in the chair nearest mine was that on her arrival she had answered my welcoming smile with nothing but brow-lifting, and I had decided to hell with her until she learned her manners.
“Not unanimous, Ferdy,” she objected.
“You said,” Pohl told her, even more peevish, “that you were in sympathy with our purpose and wanted to join us and come here with us.”
Seeing them and hearing them, I made a note that they hated each other. She had known him longer than I had, since she called him Ferdy, and evidently she agreed that there was nothing about him to love. I was about to start feeling that I had been too harsh with her when I saw she was lifting her brows at him.