From her tone and expression it seemed pretty plain that she didn’t intend to do anything her boy Pete wouldn’t have wanted her to do, and therefore we had a problem. With Purley’s deep suspicion that Wolfe, not to mention me, would rather be caught dead than with nothing up his sleeve, he sure wasn’t going to bow out. But without hesitation he arose, said, “I’ll go to the kitchen,” and headed for the door.
My surprise lasted half a second, until I realized where he was going. In the alcove at the rear end of the hall, across from the kitchen, there was a hole in the wall that partitioned the alcove from the office. On the office side the hole was covered with a trick picture, and from the alcove side, when you slid a panel, you could see and hear movements and sounds from the office. Purley knew all about it.
As Purley disappeared I thought it just as well to warn Wolfe. “The picture.”
“Certainly,” Wolfe said peevishly. He looked at Mrs. Drossos. “Well, madam?”
She was taking nothing for granted. She got up and went to the open door to look both ways in the hall, shut the door, and returned to her seat. “You know Pete got killed.”
“Yes, I know.”
“They told me, and I ran down to the street, and there he was. He was unconscious but he wasn’t dead. They let me ride in the ambulance with him. That was when he told me. He opened—”
She stopped. I was afraid it was going to bust, and so was she, but after sitting for half a minute without a muscle moving she had it licked and could go on. “He opened his eyes and saw me, and I put my head down to him. He said — I think I can tell you just what he said — he said, ‘Tell Nero Wolfe he got me. Don’t tell anybody but Nero Wolfe. Give him my money in the can.’”
She stopped and was rigid again. After a full minute of it Wolfe nudged her. “Yes, madam?”
She opened her bag, of black leather that had seen some wear but was good for more, fingered in it, extracted a small package wrapped in paper, and arose to put the package on Wolfe’s desk.