“I’ll count three,” I said. “One, two, three.” With an open palm I slapped him on the right cheek, and as he rocked I straightened him up with one of the left. The second one was a little harder, but not at all vicious. I turned and moved, not in haste, back among the trees. When I got to the other edge of the clump Madeline was beside me.
“That didn’t impress me much,” she declared, in a voice that wanted to tremble but didn’t. “He’s not exactly Joe Louis.”
I kept moving. “These things are relative,” I explained. “When your sister called Mr. Wolfe a cheap filthy little worm I didn’t even shake a finger at her, let alone slap her. But the impulse to wipe his sneer off would have been irresistible even if he hadn’t said a word and even if he had been only half the size. Anyway, it didn’t leave a mark on him. Look what your mother did to me, and I wasn’t sneering.”
She wasn’t convinced. “Next time do it when I’m not there. Who did scratch you?”
“Paul Emerson. I was just getting even. We’ll never find that card case if you don’t help me look.”
An hour later we were side by side on the grass at the edge of the brook, a little below the bridge, discussing lunch. Her polite position was that there was no reason why I shouldn’t go to the house for it, and I was opposed. Lunching with Mrs. Sperling and Jimmy, whom I had caught technically breaking and entering, with Webster Kane, whom Wolfe had called a liar, and with Emerson, whom I had just smacked on both cheeks, didn’t appeal to me on the whole. Besides, my errand now looked hopeless. I had covered, as well as I could with company along, all the territory from the house to the bridge, and some of it beyond the bridge, and I could take a look at the rest of it on the way out.
Madeline was manipulating a blade of grass with her teeth, which were even and white but not ostentatious. “I’m tired and hungry,” she stated. “You’ll have to carry me home.”
“Okay.” I got to my feet. “If it starts me breathing fast and deep don’t misunderstand.”
“I will.” She tilted her head back to look up at me. “But first why don’t you tell me what you’ve been looking for? Do you think for one minute I’d have kept panting around with you all morning if I had thought it was only a card case?”
“You haven’t panted once. What’s wrong with a card case?”