Wolfe flapped a hand. “I’ll get to Marko. As for me, no one has ordained you as my monitor. I make my contributions to the cause of freedom — they are mostly financial — through those channels and agencies that seem to me most efficient. I shall not submit a list of them for your inspection and judgment. I refused to contribute to Marko’s project because I distrusted it. Marko was himself headstrong, gullible, oversanguine, and naïve. He had—”
“For shame! He’s dead, and you insult—”
“That will do!” he roared. It stopped her. He went down a few decibels. “You share the common fallacy, but I don’t. I do not insult Marko. I pay him the tribute of speaking of him and feeling about him precisely as I did when he lived; the insult would be to smear his corpse with the honey excreted by my fear of death. He had no understanding of the forces he was trying to direct from a great distance, no control of them, and no effective check on their honor or fidelity. For all he knew, some of them may be agents of Tito, or even of Moscow—”
“That isn’t true! He knew all about them — anyway, the leaders. He wasn’t an idiot, and neither am I. We do check on them, all the time, and I — Where are you going?”
Wolfe had shoved his chair back and was on his feet. “You may not be an idiot,” he told her, “but I am. I was letting this become a pointless brawl when I should have known better. I’m hungry. I was in the middle of dinner when the news came of Marko’s death. It took my appetite. I tried to finish anyway, but I couldn’t swallow. With an empty stomach, I’m a dunce, and I’m going to the kitchen and eat something.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “It’s nearly two o’clock. Will you join me?”
She shook her head. “I had dinner. I couldn’t eat.”
“Archie?”
I said I could use a glass of milk and followed him out. In the kitchen Fritz greeted us by putting down his magazine, leaving his chair, telling Wolfe, “Starving the live will not profit the dead,” and going to open the refrigerator door.
“The turkey,” Wolfe said, “and the cheese and pineapple. I’ve never heard that before. Montaigne?”
“No, sir.” Fritz put the turkey on the table, uncovered it, and got the slicer and handed it to Wolfe. “I made it up. I knew you would have to send for me, or come, and I wished to have an appropriate remark ready for you.”