“Okay. Be here at six o’clock and you will be received. Six o’clock today, P.M. Will you?”
She admitted that she would. I made a couple of other calls and did some miscellaneous chores. But I found that my jaw was getting clamped tighter and tighter on account of an irritating noise. Finally I spoke to the occupant of Wolfe’s chair. “What kind of cookies are those?”
“Ginger snaps.” Evidently the husky croak was his normal voice.
“I didn’t know we had any.”
“We didn’t. I asked Fritz. He doesn’t seem to know about ginger snaps, so I walked over to Ninth Avenue and got some.”
“When? This morning?”
“Just a little while ago.”
I turned to my phone, buzzed the plant rooms, got Wolfe, and told him, “Mr. Hackett is sitting in your chair eating ginger snaps. Just a little while ago he walked to Ninth Avenue and bought them. If he pops in and out of the house whenever he sees fit, what are we getting for our hundred bucks?”
Wolfe spoke to the point. I hung up and turned to Hackett and spoke to the point. He was not to leave the house except as instructed by Wolfe or me. He seemed unimpressed and unconcerned, but nodded good-naturedly.
“All right,” he said, “if that’s the bargain I’ll keep it. But there’s two sides to a bargain. I was to be paid daily in advance, and I haven’t been paid for today. A hundred dollars net.”