“I’ll see if I can pry him loose,” I said, and went to the hall and through to the kitchen.
The outlook was promising for getting Wolfe to come and attend to business, because he had not yet got his hands in the hash. The mixture, or the start of it, was there in a bowl on the long table, and Fritz, at one side of the table, and Wolfe, at the other, were standing there discussing it. They looked around at me as I would expect to be looked at if I busted into a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
“They’re here,” I announced. “Janet and Maryella.”
From the expression on his face as his mouth opened it was a safe bet that Wolfe was going to instruct me to tell them to come back tomorrow, but he didn’t get it out. I heard a door open behind me and a voice floated past:
“Ah heah yawl makin’ cawned beef ha-a-sh....”
That’s the last time I try to reproduce it.
The owner of the voice floated past me too, right up beside Wolfe. She leaned over to peer into the bowl.
“Excuse me,” she said, which I couldn’t spell the way she said it anyhow, “but corned beef hash is one of my specialties. Nothing in there but meat, is there?”
“As you see,” Wolfe grunted.
“It’s ground too fine,” Maryella asserted.