“When?”
“When I went to let Mrs. Chapin in.”
“Did Mrs. Chapin take them?”
“No, sir. That’s when I noticed them, when she picked them up. She picked them up and then put them down again.”
“You didn’t go back later and get them?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
That settled that. I thanked Mrs. Burton, and left. I wanted to tell her that before tomorrow noon we would have definite news for her that might help a little, but I thought Wolfe had already done enough discounting for the firm and I’d better let it ride.
It was after three when I got back to the office, and I got busy on the phone. There were eight names left for me, that Wolfe hadn’t been able to get. He had told me the line to take, that we were prepared to mail our bills to our clients, the signers of the memorandum, but that before doing so we would like to explain to them in a body and receive their approval. Which again spoke fairly well for Wolfe’s nerve, inasmuch as our clients knew damn well that it was the cops who had grabbed Chapin for Burton’s murder and that we had had about as much to do with it as the lions in front of the library. But I agreed that it was a good line, since the object was to get them to the office.
I was doing pretty well with my eight, having hooked five of them in a little over half an hour, when, at a quarter to four, while I was looking in the book for the number of the Players’ Club, on the trail of Roland Erskine, the phone rang. I answered, and it was Wolfe. As soon as I heard his voice I thought to myself, uh-huh, here we go, the party’s up the flue. But it didn’t appear that that was the idea. He said to me:
“Archie? What luck at Mrs. Burton’s?”