“I’ll listen, but don’t drag it out.”
“I won’t. Please don’t waste time challenging the assumptions; I don’t intend to defend them, much less validate them. They are merely a basis of exploration, to be tested. The first is this, that Wallen found something in the car, the car that had killed two women — no, I don’t like it this way. I want a direct view, not reflections. Jimmie, turn me around, please.”
Jimmie whirled the chair a half-turn, so that Wolfe’s back was to the mirrored wall, also to me, and he was facing those seated in the chairs against the partition, with Cramer on his right and Purley on his left.
“That right, sir?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
I spoke up. “Ed isn’t here.”
“I left him in the booth,” Purley rumbled.
“Get him,” Wolfe instructed. “And Miss Stahl, where is she?”
“In her booth, lying down. With her head.”
“We want her. She can sit up, can’t she?”