“Yeah? What for? You through with him?”
“Naw, I haven’t even started. A little before nine o’clock this evening he got here in his car. Not knowing there was anyone here because the lights were out, he tried to pry open a window to get in. When Saul Panzer asked him what he wanted, he said he left his umbrella here last fall and drove out to get it. Maybe it’s in your lost and found room at headquarters; you’d better take him there to look and see. Material witness would do it.”
Rowcliff grunted. “You were ready with another one all right. When did you think this up?”
“I didn’t have to. Fact is stranger than fiction. You shouldn’t be always suspecting everybody. If you want me to I’ll call them out and you can ask them; they were all three here. I would say that an umbrella that’s worth going in a window after is worth asking questions about.”
“Uh-huh. And you were calling this guy Jerry and trying to smuggle him out. Where to? How would you like to come down and look over some umbrellas yourself?”
That disgusted me. I wasn’t any too pleased anyhow, letting go of Gebert. I said, “Poop and pooh. Both for you. You sound like a flatfoot catching kids playing wall ball. Maybe I wanted the glory of taking him to headquarters myself. Or maybe I wanted to help him escape from the country by putting him on a subway for Brooklyn, where I believe you live. You’ve got him, haven’t you, with a handle I gave you to hold him by? Poops and poohs for all of youse. It’s past my bedtime.”
I strode through the cordon, brushing them aside like flies, went to the roadster and got in, backed out through the gate, circling into the road and missing the fender of the troopers’ chariot by an inch, and rolled off the ruts and bumps. I was so disgruntled with the complexion of things that I beat my former time between Brewster and 35th Street by two minutes.
Of course I found the house dark and quiet. There was no note from Wolfe on my desk. Upstairs, in my room, whither I carried the glass of milk I had got in the kitchen, the pilot light was a red spot on the wall, showing that Wolfe had turned on his switch so that if anyone disturbed one of his windows or stepped in the hall within eight feet of his door, a gong under my bed would start a hullabaloo that would wake even me. I hit the hay at 2:19.
Chapter 14
I swiveled my chair to face Wolfe. “Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. This may strike a chord. That lawyer Collinger said that they are proceeding with McNair’s remains as instructed in his will. Services are being held at nine o’clock this evening at the Belford Memorial Chapel on 73rd Street, and tomorrow he’ll be cremated and the ashes sent to his sister in Scotland. Collinger seems to think that naturally the executor of McNair’s estate will attend the services. Will we go in the sedan?”