Nero Wolfe said, “Not interested, not involved, and not curious.”
He was a sight, as he always was when propped up in bed with his breakfast tray. The custom was for Fritz to deliver the tray to his room on the second floor at eight o’clock. It was now eight-fifteen, and already down the gullet were the peaches and cream, most of the unrationed bacon, and two-thirds of the eggs, not to mention coffee and the green tomato jam. The black silk coverlet was folded back, and you had to look to tell where the yellow percale sheet ended and the yellow pajamas began. Few people except Fritz and me ever got to see him like that, but he had stretched a point for Inspector Cramer, who knew that from nine to eleven he would be up in the plant rooms with the orchids and unavailable.
“In the past dozen years,” Cramer said in his ordinary growl, without any particular feeling, “you have told me, I suppose, in round figures, ten million lies.”
The commas were chews on his unlighted cigar. He looked the way he always did when he had been working all night — peevish and put upon but under control, all except his hair, which had forgotten where the part went.
Wolfe, who was hard to rile at breakfast, swallowed toast and jam and then coffee, ignoring the insult.
Cramer said, “He came to see you yesterday morning, twelve hours before he was killed. You don’t deny that.”
“And I have told you what for,” Wolfe said politely. “He had received that threat and said he wanted to hire my brains. I declined to work for him and he went away. That was all.”
“Why did you decline to work for him? What had he done to you?”
“Nothing.” Wolfe poured coffee. “I don’t do that kind of work. A man whose life is threatened anonymously is either in no danger at all, or his danger is so acute and so ubiquitous that his position is hopeless. My only previous association with Mr. Jensen was in connection with an attempt by an Army captain named Peter Root to sell him inside Army information for political purposes. Together we got the necessary evidence and Captain Root was court-martialed. Mr. Jensen was impressed, so he said, by my handling of that case. I suppose that was why he came to me when he wanted help.”
“Did he think the threat came from someone connected with Captain Root?”