So I was on deck, at the rail, when we shoved off, and had a good look at the city stretching along the strip at the edge of the water and climbing the hills. The hills might have impressed me more if I hadn’t just returned from a jaunt in Montenegro. By the time we had cleared the outer harbor and were in open water most of my fellow passengers had gone below for lunch, and I decided that now was as good a time as any for getting a certain point settled.
I went back down to the cabin and told Wolfe, “It’s lunchtime. You’ve decided to stay put in this cabin all the way across, and you may be right. It’s not likely that there’s anyone on board who would recognize you, but it’s possible, and if it happened and it got around, as it would, the best that could result would be that you’d have to write another script. But we’re going to see a lot of each other in the next twelve days, not to mention the last six, and I think it would be bad policy for us to eat all our meals together in this nook.”
“So do I.”
“I’ll eat in the dining room.”
“By all means. I’ve already given Peter Zov my order for lunch.”
“What?” I stared. “Zov?”
“Certainly. He’s our steward.”
“Good God. He’ll bring all your meals and you’ll eat them?”
“Yes. It will be trying, and it won’t help my digestion, but it will have its advantages. I’ll have plenty of opportunities to discuss our plans.”
“And if he gets ideas and mixes in some arsenic?”