“I don’t have to. Neither do you. As I said before, Mr. Root will be put on trial for the murder of Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle, not for his antics here in my house. And I wish you would take him somewhere else. I’ve seen enough of him.”
“I can’t say I blame you,” Cramer grinned, which was rare. He stood up. “Let’s go, Mr. Root.”
After letting them out and watching Cramer and Purley manipulating Hackett-Root down the steps to the sidewalk and into the police car, I shut the door without bothering about the bolt and returned to the office. Jane and Jensen were standing side by side in front of Wolfe’s desk, just barely not holding hands, beaming down at him.
“... more than neat,” Jensen was saying. “It was absolutely brilliant.”
“I still can’t believe it,” Jane declared. “It was wonderful.”
“It was merely a job,” Wolfe murmured, as if he knew what modesty was.
Nobody paid any attention to me. I sat down and yawned. Jensen seemed to be hesitating about something, then abruptly got it out.
“I owe you money. I came here Wednesday to engage you to investigate my father’s murder. Later, when the police got the crazy idea that I was involved in it, I was even more anxious to engage you, but still you wouldn’t see me, and now of course I understand why. I may not be in debt to you legally, but I am morally, and it will be a great satisfaction to pay it. I haven’t my checkbook with me, so I’ll have to mail you one — say, five thousand dollars?”
Wolfe shook his head. “I accept pay only from clients, as arranged in advance. If you send me a check I’ll have to return it. If you have to send one in order to sleep, send it to the National War Fund.”
I managed to keep my face straight. As for Wolfe’s renunciation, his income for the year had already reached a point where out of an additional five grand he would have been able to keep about one-fifth. As for Jensen’s generosity, if it is okay for males at one age to climb trees and turn somersaults in the presence of females, why isn’t it okay for them at another age to wave checkbooks? The way Jane was looking at him reminded me of the way a fifth-grade girl looked at me once, out in Ohio, when I chinned myself fourteen times.