Chapter 12
I had a nice piece of leather of my own, not as big as Paul Chapin’s treasure box, but fancier. Sitting at my desk around five o’clock that Wednesday afternoon, killing time waiting for a visitor who had phoned, I took it out of my inside breast pocket and looked at it; I had only had it a couple of weeks. It was brown, ostrich-skin, and was tooled in gold all over the outside. On one side the tooling was fine lines about half an inch apart, with flowers stemming out from them; the flowers were orchids; the workmanship was so good that you could tell Wolfe had given the guy a Cattleya to work from. The other side was covered with Colt automatics, fifty-two perfect little gold pistols all aiming at the center. Inside was stamped in gold: A. G. from N. W. Wolfe had given it to me on October 23rd, at the dinner-table, and I didn’t even know he knew when my birthday was. I carried my police and fire cards in it, and my operator’s license. I might have traded it for New York City if you had thrown in a couple of good suburbs.
When Fritz came and said Inspector Cramer was there I put it back in my pocket.
I let Cramer get eased into a chair and then I went upstairs to the plant-rooms. Wolfe was at the potting-bench with Horstmann, spreading out some osmundine and leaning over to smell it; a dozen or so pots of Odontoglossums, overgrown, were at his elbow. I waited until he looked around, and I felt my throat drying up.
“Well?”
I swallowed. “Cramer’s downstairs. The rugged Inspector.”
“What of it? You heard me speaking to him on the telephone.”
“Look here,” I said, “I want this distinctly understood. I came up here only for one reason, because I thought maybe you had changed your mind and would like to see him. Yes or no will do it. If you give me a bawling out it will be nothing but pure childishness. You know what I think.”
Wolfe opened his eyes a little wider, winked the left one at me, twice, and turned to face the potting-bench again. All I could see was his broad back that might have been something in a Macy Thanksgiving Day parade. He said to Horstmann:
“This will do. Get the charcoal. No sphagnum, I think.”