“No, sir! What—”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt, but what happened?”
I saw movement in the direction of the corner where Theodore’s room was, and a sound came of glass falling and breaking.
“You got a light?” I called.
“No, the doggone lights are all—”
“Then stay still, damn it, while I get a light.”
“Stand still!” Wolfe roared.
I beat it down to the office. By the time I got back up again there were noises from windows across the street, and also from down below. We ignored them. The sight disclosed by the flashlights was enough to make us ignore anything. Of a thousand panes of glass and ten thousand orchid plants some were in fact still whole, as we learned later, but it certainly didn’t look like it that first survey. Even with the lights, moving around through that jungle of jagged glass hanging down and protruding from plants and benches and underfoot wasn’t really fun, but Wolfe had to see and so did Theodore, who was okay physically but got so damn mad I thought he was going to choke.
Finally Wolfe got to where a dozen Odontoglossum harryanum, his current pride and joy, were kept. He moved the light back and forth over the gashed and fallen stems and leaves and clusters, with fragments of glass everywhere, turned, and said quietly, “We might as well go downstairs.”