“Do so,” Wolfe muttered.
“I will not! Let him do it!” She was warming up. She turned on me again:
“Look at you, you damn stenographer! Telling me to come here and talk it over, and this is what I run into! I used to have some sense until I met you! Now what do I do? Chase off down to Washington just to find out where you are because you won’t answer my telegrams! Use enough pull to get my picture on the cover of Life just to find you’re taking an airplane and get a seat on it! Not only that, blab it all out to you because it might soften your heart! And you were too busy to make any social engagements, and I phone here fifty times, and finally I go out for a drink, and there you are dancing! If I ever do go in for murder, I know exactly where I’ll start! And on top of all that I’m enough of a sap to pack up and take a train—”
“Please!” Wolfe said peremptorily. “Miss Rowan!”
She sat back. “There,” she said in a tone of satisfaction, “I feel better. I wanted to get that off my chest in the presence of witnesses. Now if you’ll instruct him to take me somewhere and buy me a drink—”
“Please,” Wolfe said curtly, “don’t get started again. I sympathize with your resentment at the presence of the police, but it’s not my fault. None of this is my fault. I abandon any attempt to question you about Miss Amory, but I would like to ask you one or two things about Mr. Goodwin. Apparently you find him as vexatious as I do. Did I understand you to say that you went to Washington in search of him, and went to some trouble to get a seat on the airplane he was taking, and informed him of that fact?”
“Yes.”
“On Monday? Day before yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe pursed his lips. “He said that meeting was accidental. I didn’t know he had a streak of modesty in him.”