I sat at my desk and dialed a number. None of my closest friends or enemies was there, but I got a sergeant I knew named Rowley, and asked him, “On the Keyes case, do you need anything you haven’t got?”
“Huh?” He always sounded hoarse. “We need everything. Send it C.O.D.”
“A guy told me you had it on ice.”
“Aw, go to bed.”
He was gone. I sat a moment and then dialed again, the number of the Gazette office. Lon Cohen had gone home, but one of the journalists told me that as far as they knew the Keyes case was still back on a shelf, collecting dust.
I crumpled Wolfe’s message and tossed it in the wastebasket, muttered, “The damn fat faker,” and went up to bed.
XIII
In the Thursday morning papers there wasn’t a single word in the coverage of the Keyes case to indicate that anyone had advanced even an inch in the hot pursuit of the murderer.
And I spent the whole day, from ten to six, driving to Lewis Hewitt’s place on Long Island, helping to select and clean and pack ten dozen yearling plants, and driving back again. I did no visible fuming, but you can imagine my state of mind, and on my way home, when a cop stopped me as I was approaching Queensboro Bridge, and actually went so low as to ask me where the fire was, I had to get my tongue between my teeth to keep myself from going witty on him.
While I was lugging the last carton of plants up the stoop I had a surprise. A car I had often seen before, with PD on it, rolled up to the curb and stopped behind the sedan, and Inspector Cramer emerged from it.