“Good. Then I’ll make one little suggestion. See that the Frosts, all of them, are acquainted with the terms of Mr. McNair’s will immediately. You needn’t bother about Mr. Gebert; I surmise that if the Frosts know it he soon will. You are in a better position than I am to do this without trumpets.”
“Right. Anything else?”
“That’s all. Except that if you do find the box I wouldn’t advise you to tack its contents to your bulletin board. I imagine they will need to be handled with restraint and delicacy. The person who put those coated poison tablets in the bottle of aspirin is fairly ingenious.”
“Uh-huh. Anything else?”
“Just better luck elsewhere than you have had here.”
“Thanks. I’ll need that all right.”
He departed.
Wolfe rang for beer. I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk and came back to the office with it and stood by the window and started sipping. A glance at Wolfe had showed me that things were at a standstill, because he was sitting up with his eyes open, turning the pages of a Richardt folder which had come in the morning mail. I shrugged negligently. After I had finished the milk I sat at my desk and sealed the envelopes containing checks, and stamped them, went to the hall for my hat and moseyed out and down to the corner to drop them in a mailbox. When I got back again Wolfe was still having recess; he had taken a laeliocattleya luminosa aurea from the vase on his desk and was lifting the anthers to look at the pollinia with his glass. But at least he hadn’t started on the atlas. I sat down and observed:
“It’s a nice balmy spring day outdoors. April second. McNair’s mourning day. You said yesterday it was ghoulish. Now he’s a ghoul himself.”
Wolfe muttered indifferently. “He is not a ghoul.”