“Yes.”
“Never. Never! He’s a murderer himself.”
“I think, counselor, you’re a little free with words. I know you have been under a strain, but what if you were seriously challenged?”
“All right. But don’t think you can get me to agree to come to Wolfe’s office. I won’t!”
Nevertheless, he did. He didn’t come right out and say it, even after he had fully realized that his choice was between that and a summons from a judge to appear and wrangle in public, but he pleaded that he couldn’t possibly commit his four associates to such a meeting without consulting them, and he wasn’t sure how soon he could get in touch with them. He wanted the afternoon until six o’clock, but Parker said nothing doing. The limit was three-thirty. Parker would proceed to draft the application and have everything in readiness, including a date with a judge, and he would keep the date if by half-past three he had not received word that the Softdown quintet would be at Wolfe’s office at nine o’clock that evening.
Parker cradled the phone and straightened up, all seventy-six inches of him. “They’ll come,” he said confidently but not jubilantly. “Damn you, Wolfe. I have theater tickets.”
“Use them,” Wolfe told him. “I won’t need you.”
Parker snorted. “With my client here defenseless? Between them, one of them presumptively a murderer, and you — you a wild beast when you are smelling prey? Ha!” He turned. “Mrs. Jaffee, one of my functions as your attorney is to keep you away, as far as practicable, from dangerous persons and influences, and these two men together represent all the perils and pitfalls of all the catalogues. Will you have lunch with me?”
They left together. That made me proud of her some more from another angle — or should I say curve? — because Nat Parker, a bachelor, was well and widely known for his particular taste in women and did not invite one to lunch absentmindedly; and I was not jealous. I had too good a head start, since there was no more coat and hat in her foyer for him to cart off to the Salvation Army.
Now, of course, Wolfe was committed. He didn’t move a finger toward a book or crossword puzzle or any of his other toys. Until lunch time he sat leaning back with his eyes closed, his lips moving now and then, pushing out and pulling in, and I left him to his misery, which I knew was fairly acute. When the going gets really hot and we’re closing in, he can get excited as well as the next one, though he refuses to show it, but on this one he was still trying to get set for some kind of a start, and I had to admit he was working on it. Before lunch I phoned Pan-Atlantic and was told that Flight 193 was expected in early, around two-thirty; and I called Irby to tell him that if he could get Eric Hagh to our place by half-past three he should bring him, but otherwise make it six o’clock.