I must say he didn’t act delighted, when I ushered her in from the hall around three o’clock that afternoon. He didn’t even apologize for not getting up from his chair to greet her, though I admit no reasonable person would have expected any such effort after one glance at his dimensions.
“You,” he muttered pettishly, “are the woman who came here once and tried to bribe me to play the clown.”
She plopped into the red leather chair I placed for her, got a handkerchief out of her large green handbag, and passed it across her forehead, the back of her neck, and her throat. She was one of those people who don’t look much like their pictures in the paper, because her eyes made her face and made you forget the rest of it when you looked at her. They were black and bright and gave you the feeling they were looking at you when they couldn’t have been, and they made her seem a lot younger than the forty-seven or forty-eight she probably was.
“My God,” she said, “as hot as this I should think you would sweat more. I’m in a hurry because I’ve got to see the Mayor about a Defense Pageant he wants me to handle, so I haven’t time to argue, but your saying I tried to bribe you is perfectly silly. Perfectly silly! It would have been a marvelous party with you for the detective, but I had to get a policeman, an inspector, and all he did was grunt. Like this.” She grunted.
“If you have come, madam, to—”
“I haven’t. I don’t want you for a party this time. I wish I did. Someone is trying to ruin me.”
“Ruin you? Physically, financially—”
“Just ruin me. You know what I do. I do parties—”
“I know what you do,” Wolfe said curtly.
“Very well. My clients are rich people and important people, at least they think they’re important. Without going into that, they’re important to me. So what do you suppose the effect would be — wait, I’ll show it to you—”