“Head him off. Stop him. Hit him.”
“What if someone starts to scream?”
“Make her stop.”
I gave up. I like to have him depend on me, but I only have two hands and I can’t be two places at once.
The arrangement was that Saul was to follow us in his car because it would be useful for a preliminary approach. It was after ten when we rolled out of the parking lot of the Covered Porch and turned north. When I pulled off the road at a wide place, in the enemy country, the dashboard clock said twelve minutes to eleven, and it had started to snow a little. Saul’s car had stopped behind us.
I turned off the lights, got out and went back, and told him, “Half a mile on, maybe a little more, at the left. You can’t miss the big stone pillars.”
He swung his car back into the road and was off. I returned to our car and climbed in, and turned to face the rear because I thought a little cheerful conversation was called for, but Wolfe wouldn’t cooperate, and I well knew why. He was holding his breath until he learned whether Saul would bring good news or bad. Would we be able to drive right in and make ourselves at home? Or...?
The news wasn’t long in coming, and it was bad. Saul’s car came back, turned around, and parked close behind us, and Saul came to us with snowflakes whirling around him and announced, “He’s still there.”
“What happened?” Wolfe demanded peevishly.
“I turned in at the entrance, snappy, and he flashed a light at me and yelled. I told him I was a newspaperman from New York, and he said then I’d better get back where I belonged quick because it was snowing. I tried a little persuasion to stay in character, but he was in a bad humor. So I backed out.”