“What about?”
“My brain. It must be leaking or I would never have let myself in for this.”
He grunted and hung up. I dialed another number, got Lily Rowan, and told her I had decided I’d rather stay home and do crossword puzzles than keep my weekend date with her. She finally wormed it out of me that I was stuck on a case, if you could call it that, and said she would hold her breath until I rang her again.
Back at the house, admitted by the viqueen, I asked her where Miss Riff was. She didn’t know. Miss Marcy? She didn’t know. Mr. Lewent? She didn’t know. I thanked her warmly and made for the stairs, wondering where the hell the client had got to. Probably sound asleep, and I resented it. On the third floor I knocked good and loud on his door, waited five seconds, turned the knob, and entered. I darned near walked on him. He was lying just inside, barely clear of the swing of the door, flat on his back, with one leg bent a little and the other one straight. I closed the door, squatted, unbuttoned his vest, and got a hand inside his shirt. Nothing. His head was at a queer angle. I slipped my fingertips under it, and at the base of the skull, or rather where there should have been a base, there was no resistence to pressure at all. The smashed edge of the skull was halfway up. But I couldn’t feel any break in the skin, and there was no blood on my fingers.
I stood up and looked down at him, with my hands shoved in my pants pockets and my jaw set. After enough of that I stepped to where the little hall ended and the room proper began, and sent my eyes around slowly and thoroughly. Then I went and knelt by Lewent’s head, with my knees spread, gripped his shoulders, and raised his torso till it was erect. There was nothing under him. I had a good look at the back of his head, then let him back down as before, got up and went and took his ankles and lifted his legs, and made sure there was nothing under that half of him. I moved to the door, held my ear to the crack for ten seconds, heard nothing, opened it and slipped through and pulled it shut, headed for the stairs, descended to the ground floor, and, no one appearing, let myself out.
At the drugstore on Madison Avenue I got dimes for a half-dollar before I went to the phone booth.
4
When Wolfe heard my voice on the phone he was peevish on principle, since I’m not supposed to disturb him when he is up in the plant rooms, and this was the second time in twenty minutes. I was peevish too, but not on principle.
“Hold it,” I told him. “I am about to ask a favor. Twenty minutes ago I reported no progress, but I was wrong. We can’t possibly disappoint our client, because he’s dead. Murdered.”
“Pfui.”