Wolfe gave up trying to get what they didn’t have. He leaned back, compressed his lips, closed his eyes, and tapped with his forefingers on the ends of his chair arms. Carl and Tina looked at each other a while, then she got up and went to him, started combing his hair with her fingers, saw I was looking, began to blush, God knows why, and went back to her chair.
Finally Wolfe opened his eyes. “Confound it,” he said peevishly, “it’s impossible. Even if I had a move to make I couldn’t make it. If I so much as stir a finger Mr. Cramer will start yelping, and I have no muzzle for him. Any effort to—”
The doorbell rang. During lunch Fritz had been told to leave it to me, so I arose, crossed to the hall, and went front. But not all the way. Four paces short of the door I saw, through the one-way glass panel, the red rugged face and the heavy broad shoulders. I wheeled and returned to the office, not dawdling, and told Wolfe, “The man to fix the chair.”
“Indeed.” His head jerked up. “The front room.”
“I could tell him—”
“No.”
Carl and Tina, warned by our tone and tempo, were on their feet. The bell rang again. I moved fast to the door to the front room and pulled it open, telling them, “In here quick. Step on it.” They obeyed without a word, as if they had known me and trusted me for years, but what choice did they have? When they has passed through I said, “Relax and keep quiet,” shut the door, glanced at Wolfe and got a nod, went to the hall and to the door, opened it, and said morosely, “Hello. What now?”
“It took you long enough,” Inspector Cramer growled, crossing the threshold.
IV
Wolfe can move when he wants to. I have seen him prove it more than once, as he did then. By the time I was back in the office, following Cramer, he had scattered in front of him on his desk pads of paper, pencils, and a dozen folders of plant germination records for which he had had to go to the filing cabinet. One of the folders was spread open, and he was scowling at us above it. He grunted a greeting but not a welcome. Cramer grunted back, moved to the red leather chair, and planted himself in it.