“This,” she said, “is just a clipping of your advertisement.” She returned it to the bag. “This is a check made out to you for five hundred dollars.”
“May I see it, please?”
“I don’t — not yet. It has my name on it.”
“So I would guess.”
“I want to ask you — some things before I give you my name.”
“What things?”
“Well, I — about the boy. The boy I asked to get a cop.” Her voice wouldn’t have been bad at all, in fact I might have liked it, if it hadn’t been so jumpy. She was getting more nervous instead of less. “I want to see him. Will you arrange for me to see him? Or it would be — just give me his name and address. I think perhaps that would be enough for the five hundred dollars — I know you charge high. Or I might want — but first tell me that.”
Wolfe invariably kept his eyes, when they were open, directly at the person he was talking to, but it had struck me that he was giving this visitor a specially keen inspection. He turned to me. “Archie. Please look closely at the scratch on her cheek.”
I got up to obey. She had alternatives: sit and let me look, cover her face with her hands, or get up and go; but before she had time to choose I was there, bending over, with my eyes only a foot from her face.
She started to say something, then checked it as I straightened up and told Wolfe, “Made with something with a fine sharp point. It could have been a needle, but more likely a small scissors point.”