“Because you have a legitimate interest in the proper handling of the firm’s affairs. Because you were Priscilla’s oldest friend, and formerly her closest one. Who do you think killed her?”
“I don’t know. I wish you — don’t do this!”
“This is what I came for. It may amount to nothing. The police may get it fast, today or tomorrow, and if so that settles it. But they may never get it, that has been known to happen, and a week or a month from now may be too late for Mr. Wolfe to start on it, and anyhow his client won’t wait. We can’t march in as the cops can. We have to have some way of getting at those people, we have to get a foot in, and this will do it. I’ll tell you, Mrs. Jaffee, I’m not going to contribute any cracks about your accepting dividend checks, but it is true that that business has been supporting you in pretty good style for a long time, and this isn’t much for it to ask in return, especially since you can be darned sure Priscilla Eads would be asking it too if she could talk. It won’t take—”
I stopped because only a sap goes on talking to someone who is walking out on him. As she left the divan and started off she said nothing, but she sure was walking out. At an arch at the far end of the room she turned and spoke. “I won’t do it! I won’t do that!”
She was gone. A moment later the sound came of a door closing — not slamming, but firmly closing. After standing and considering a little, and deciding that I was out of ammunition for that target at that time and place, I moved in the opposite direction to the one she had taken, to the entrance foyer. Crossing it, my eye caught the hat on the table and the coat on the back of the chair.
What the hell, I thought, and picked them up and took them along.
Chapter 8
It was going on noon when, having made three stops en route, I paid off my hackie at the corner of Twenty-ninth and Lexington and walked east. The first stop had been at a drugstore to phone Wolfe and report lack of progress; the second had been at the Salvation Army depot to donate the coat and hat; and the third had been at the restaurant where, according to Lon Cohen, Andreas Fomos was employed as a waiter. Informed that Fomos was taking the day off, I had proceeded to his residence.
Not with any high expectations. My main hope had been to escort Sarah Jaffee to Thirty-fifth Street for a session with Wolfe and Nathaniel Parker, the only lawyer Wolfe has ever sent orchids to, arranging details about the injunction. Having flubbed that one, this stab at Fomos, as instructed by Wolfe, struck me as a damn poor substitute motion. So it was not with any enthusiasm for the errand, but merely as routine through long training, that as I approached the number on East Twenty-ninth Street I cased the area with a sharp and thorough eye, and, focusing on a spot across the street, recognized something. Crossing over, I entered a dingy and cluttered shoe-repair shop, and confronted a man seated there who, at my approach, had lifted a newspaper so as to hide his face from view.
I addressed the newspaper distinctly. “Get Lieutenant Rowcliff. I think I’m going to impersonate an officer of the law. I feel it coming.”