“All of them?”
“Certainly. I thought I told you that. Anyhow, they all know. Everybody knows everything around this place. They thought I ought to get rid of it, and now I wish I had. You understand, Goodwin, all there is to this — I just want to know where the damn thing is, I want to know who took it, and I’ll handle it myself from there. I told Wolfe that.”
“I know you did.” I got up and went to his side of the desk, at his left, and pulled a drawer open. “In here?”
“Yes.”
“The rear compartment?”
“Yes.”
I reached to my holster for the Marley, broke it, removed the cartridges and dropped them into my vest pocket, put the gun in the drawer, shut the drawer, and returned to my chair.
“Okay,” I said, “get them up here. We can ad lib it all right without any rehearsing.”
He looked at me. He opened the drawer for a peek at the gun, not touching it, and pushed the drawer to. He shoved the tray away, leaned back, and began working on his upper lip with the jagged yellow teeth.
“I’m going to have to get my nerve up,” he said, as if appealing to me. “I’m never much good until late afternoon.”