“How long will it take? You’ll finish today?”
“I hope to. I want to, but I don’t know.”
He regarded me, started to say something, decided not to, and pressed a button. Instantly the shebang leaped forward like a bronco out of a chute, missing my feet by maybe eight inches with one of its big balloon tires as it swept by. Huck was steering with a lever. Stopping beside the door to the hall, he reached for the knob and pulled the door wide, and the chair circled and passed through. I was on my feet and following when his bellow came.
“Herman! Come down here!”
I know now what had put the whole household on the alert — Paul Thayer, Huck’s nephew, had let it out that I was Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin — but I didn’t know then, and it was a little spectacular to see them coming at us from all directions — Dorothy Riff from a door on that floor, Mrs. O’Shea up the stairs from below, and Lewent and Sylvia Marcy down the stairs from above — none of them bothering with the elevator. They stopped flurrying when they saw Huck sitting composed in his chair and me standing beside him at graceful ease, and approached in no apparent agitation.
Lewent standing was exactly the same height as Huck sitting. He asked as he came, “You want me, Theodore?”
The girls were closing in.
“Yes, I do,” Huck told his brother-in-law. “Mr. Goodwin has described the situation to me, and I want you to hear what I say to Mrs. O’Shea and Miss Marcy and Miss Riff.” His eyes moved to his womenfolk. “I suppose you have heard of a private detective named Nero Wolfe. Mr. Lewent went to see him this morning and engaged him to investigate something, and he has sent Mr. Goodwin here to make inquiries. Mr. Goodwin wishes to question you three ladies. You will answer at your discretion, as you please and think proper. That’s all I have to say. I want to make it clear that I am imposing no restriction on what Mr. Goodwin asks or what you answer, but I also wish you to understand that this is a private inquiry instigated by Mr. Lewent, and you are free to judge for yourselves what is fitting and relevant.”
I didn’t care for it a bit. You might have thought he knew what I was there for and was making damn sure I wouldn’t get it. Not by a flicker of an eyelash had he given any ground for a decent guess as to which one had him hooked.