“The sun will be up in two hours,” Theodore said through his teeth.
“I know. We need men.”
When we got to the office we phoned Lewis Hewitt and G. M. Hoag for help before we called the police. Anyway, by that time a prowl car had come.
Chapter 6
Six hours later I pushed my chair back from the dining table, stretched all the way, and allowed myself a good thorough yawn without any apology, feeling that I had earned it. Ordinarily I have my breakfast in the kitchen with Fritz, and Wolfe has his in his room, but that day wasn’t exactly ordinary.
A gang of fourteen men, not counting Theodore, was up on the roof cleaning up and salvaging, and an army of glaziers was due at noon. Andy Krasicki had come in from Long Island and was in charge. The street was roped off because of the danger from falling glass. The cops were still nosing around out in front and across the street, and presumably in other quarters too, but none was left in our house except Captain Murdoch, who, with Wolfe, was seated at the table I was just leaving, eating griddlecakes and honey.
They knew all about it, back to a certain point. The people who lived in the house directly across the street were away for the summer. On its roof they had found a hundred and ninety-two shells from an SM and a tommy gun, and they still had scientists up there collecting clues to support the theory that that was where the assault had come from, in case the lawyer for the defense should claim that the shells had been dropped by pigeons. Not that there was yet any call for a lawyer for the defense, since there were no defendants. So far there was no word as to how they had got to the roof of the unoccupied house. All they knew was that persons unknown had somehow got to that roof and from it, at 2:24 A.M., had shot hell out of our plant rooms, and had made a getaway through a passage into Thirty-sixth Street, and I could have told them that much without ever leaving our premises.
I admit we weren’t much help. Wolfe didn’t even mention the name of Sperling or Rony, let alone anything beginning with Z. He refused to offer a specific guess at the identity of the perpetrators, and it wasn’t too hard to get them to accept that as the best to be had, since it was quite probable that there were several inhabitants of the metropolitan area who would love to make holes not only in Wolfe’s plant rooms but in Wolfe himself. Even so, they insisted that some must be more likely to own tommy guns and more willing to use them in such a direct manner, but Wolfe said that was irrelevant because the gunners had almost certainly been hired on a piece-work basis.
I left the breakfast table as soon as I was through because there were a lot of phone calls to make — to slat manufacturers, hardware stores, painters, supply houses, and others. I was at it when Captain Murdoch left and Wolfe took the elevator to the roof, and still at it when Wolfe came down again, trudged into the office, got himself lowered into his chair, leaned back, and heaved a deep sigh.
I glanced at him. “You’d better go up and take a nap. And I’ll tell you something. I can be just as stubborn as you can, and courage and valor and spunk are very fine things and I’m all for them, but I’m also a fairly good bookkeeper. If this keeps up, as I suppose it will, the balance sheet will be a lulu. I have met Gwenn socially and therefore might be expected to grit my teeth and stick; but you haven’t, and all you need to do is return his retainer. What I want to say is that if you do I promise never to ride you about it. Never. Want me to get the Bible?”