It was not my opinion, at that stage of affairs, that this special item of God’s second-thought bounty for man was guilty of premeditated and cold-blooded murder. Because of my interest in human nature I had found occasion, in the brief period since I had first met her, to discover that she was capable of strong feelings over a wide range of territory, and that she did not believe in limiting their expression to little hints like darting the eyes. I had never seen her scratch or pull hair, but I had known her only two months or so, and unquestionably she packed the potential. However, I felt that the Jensen-Doyle massacre, one of them a perfect stranger, did not belong in her repertory; and I knew she had acquired a different slant on the Captain Root incident since the day she called Wolfe a mongrel bloodhound.
She darted her brown eyes at me. I didn’t say she never darted, I said she didn’t stop there. “Let me,” she said, “see your right forefinger.”
I poked it at her. She rubbed its tip gently with the tip of her own. “I wondered if it had a callus. After dialing my number five times in less than five hours. Are you trying to win some kind of a bet? Or did you dream about me?” She sipped her Tom Collins, bending her head to get her lips to the straw. A strand of her hair slipped forward over an eye and a cheek, and I reached across and used the same finger to put it back in place.
“I took that liberty,” I told her, “because I wish to have an unobstructed view of your lovely phiz. I want to see if you turn pale or your eyes get glassy.”
“Overwhelmed by you so near?”
“No, I know that reaction — I correct for it. Anyhow I doubt if I’m magnetic right now because I’m sore at you for making me miss a train.”
“I didn’t phone you this time. You phoned me.”
“Okay.” I drank. “You said on the phone that you still don’t like Nero Wolfe and you wouldn’t go to see him unless you knew what for and maybe not even then. So this is what for. He wants to ask you whether you intend to kill him yourself or hire the same gang that you got to kill Jensen and Doyle. So he’ll know what to expect.”
“Mercy.” She looked my face over. “You’d better put your humor on a diet. It’s taking on weight.”
I shook my head. “Ordinarily I would enjoy playing catch with you, as you are aware, but I can’t miss all the trains. I’m not even trying to be funny, let alone succeeding. I was instructed to tell you this if necessary. Because Wolfe’s life has been threatened in the same manner as Jensen’s was, the supposition is that Jensen was murdered for revenge, for what he did to Captain Root. Because of the cutting remarks you made when Root was trapped, and your general attitude, there is a tendency to want to know what you have been doing lately. Wolfe wants to ask you. If you wonder why I didn’t start with some grade A detecting by finding out where you were last night between eleven and twelve, that wouldn’t help any because what if you hired—”