So the next morning I had Nero Wolfe braving the elements — the chief element for that day being bright warm March sunshine. I say I had him, because I had conceived the persuasion which was making him burst all precedents. What pulled him out of his front door, enraged and grim, with overcoat, scarf, gloves, stick, something he called gaiters, and a black felt pirate’s hat size 8 pulled down to his ears, was the name of Winold Glueckner heading the signatures on the letter — Glueckner, who had recently received from an agent in Sarawak four bulbs of a pink Coellogyne pandurata, never seen before, and had scorned Wolfe’s offer of three thousand bucks for two of them. Knowing what a tough old heinie Glueckner was, I had my doubts whether he would turn loose of the bulbs no matter how many murders Wolfe solved at his request, but anyhow I had lit the fuse.
Driving from the house on 35th Street near the Hudson River — where Wolfe had lived for over twenty years and I had lived with him — to the address on 52nd Street, I handled the sedan so as to keep it as smooth as a dip’s fingers. Except for one I couldn’t resist; on Fifth Avenue near Forty-third there was an ideal little hole about two feet across where I suppose someone had been prospecting for the twenty-six dollars they paid the Indians, and I maneuvered to hit it square at a good clip. I glanced in the mirror for a glimpse of Wolfe in the back seat and saw he was looking bitter and infuriated.
I said, “Sorry, sir, they’re tearing up the streets.”
He didn’t answer.
From what Llewellyn Frost had told me the day before about the place of business of Boyden McNair Incorporated — all of which had gone into my notebook and been read to Nero Wolfe Monday evening — I hadn’t realized the extent of its aspirations in the way of class. We met Llewellyn Frost downstairs, just inside the entrance. One of the first things I saw and heard, as Frost led us to the elevator to take us to the second floor, where the offices and private showrooms were, was a saleswoman who looked like a cross between a countess and Texas Guinan, telling a customer that in spite of the fact that the little green sport suit on the model was of High Meadow Loom hand-woven material and designed by Mr. McNair himself, it could be had for a paltry three hundred. I thought of the husband and shivered and crossed my fingers as I stepped into the elevator. And I remarked to myself, “I’ll say it’s a sinister joint.”
The floor above was just as elegant, but quieter. There was no merchandise at all in sight, no saleswomen and no customers. A long wide corridor had doors on both sides at intervals, with etchings and hunting prints here and there on the wood paneling, and in the large room where we emerged from the elevator there were silk chairs and gold smoking stands and thick deep-colored rugs. I took that in at a glance and then centered my attention on the side of the room opposite the corridor, where a couple of goddesses were sitting on a settee. One of them, a blonde with dark blue eyes, was such a pronounced pippin that I had to stare so as not to blink, and the other one, slender and medium-dark, while not as remarkable, was a cinch in a contest for Miss Fifty-second Street.
The blonde nodded at us. The slender one said, “Hello, Lew.”
Llewellyn Frost nodded back. “ ’Lo, Helen. See you later.”
As we went down the corridor I said to Wolfe, “See that? I mean, them? You ought to get around more. What are orchids to a pair of blossoms like that?”
He only grunted at me.