“Nevertheless,” Wolfe asked, “wouldn’t you think him an insufferable nuisance as a cohabitant?”
On the contrary, Fritz declared, he would be most welcome.
After dinner, feeling that the newly formed Canine Canonizing League needed slowing down, I first took Nero out for a brief tour and, returning, escorted him up the two flights to my room and left him there. I had to admit he was well behaved. If I had wanted to take on a dog in town it could have been him. In my room I told him to lie down, and he did, and when I went to the door to leave, his eyes, which were the color of caramel, made it plain that he would love to come along, but he didn’t get up.
Down in the office Wolfe and I got at the lists. They were special offerings from orchid growers and collectors from all over the world, and it was quite a job to check the thousands of items and pick the few that Wolfe might want to give a try. I sat at his desk, across from him, with trays of cards from our files, and we were in the middle of it, around ten-thirty, when the doorbell rang. I went to the hall and flipped a light switch and saw out on the stoop, through the one-way glass panel in the door, a familiar figure — Inspector Cramer of Homicide.
I went to the door, opened it six inches, and asked politely, “Now what?”
“I want to see Wolfe.”
“It’s pretty late. What about?”
“About a dog.”
It is understood that no visitor, and especially no officer of the law, is to be conducted to the office until Wolfe has been consulted, but this seemed to rate an exception. Wolfe had been known to refuse an audience to people who topped inspectors, and, told that Cramer had come to see him about a dog, there was no telling how he might react in the situation as it had developed.
I considered the matter for about two seconds and then swung the door open and invited cordially, “Step right in.”