After dinner that evening we were all hard at it in the office. Fritz and Theodore were unfolding Gazettes, finding the right page and tearing it out, and carrying off the leavings. I was banging away at my machine, three pages an hour. Wolfe was at his desk, concentrating on a methodical and exhaustive study of three years of Dazzle Dan. It was well after midnight when he pushed back his chair, arose, stretched, rubbed his eyes, and told us, “It’s bedtime. This morass of fatuity has given me indigestion. Good night.”
Wednesday morning he tried to put one over. His routine was breakfast in his room, with the morning paper, at eight; then shaving and dressing; then, from nine to eleven, his morning shift up in the plant rooms. He never went to the office before eleven, and the detective business was never allowed to mingle with the orchids. But that Wednesday he fudged. While I was in the kitchen with Fritz, enjoying griddle cakes, Darst’s sausage, honey, and plenty of coffee, and going through the morning papers, with two readings for the Gazette’s account of Wolfe’s enforced retirement, Wolfe sneaked downstairs into the office and made off with a stack of Dazzle Dan. The way I knew, before breakfast I had gone in there to straighten up a little, and I am trained to observe. Returning after breakfast, and glancing around before starting at my typewriter, I saw that half of a pile of Dan was gone. I don’t think I had ever seen him quite so hot under the collar. I admit I fully approved. Not only did I not make an excuse for a trip up to the roof to catch him at it, but I even took the trouble to be out of the office when he came down at eleven o’clock, to give him a chance to get Dan back unseen.
My first job after breakfast had been to carry out some instructions Wolfe had given me the evening before. Manhattan office hours being what they are, I got no answer at the number of Levay Recorders, Inc., until 9:35. Then it took some talking to get a promise of immediate action, and if it hadn’t been for the name of Nero Wolfe I wouldn’t have made it. But I got both the promise and the action. A little after ten two men arrived with cartons of equipment and tool kits, and in less than an hour they were through and gone, and it was a neat and nifty job. It would have taken an expert search to reveal anything suspicious in the office, and the wire to the kitchen, running around the baseboard and on through, wouldn’t be suspicious even if seen.
It was hard going at the typewriter on account of the phone ringing, chiefly reporters wanting to talk to Wolfe, or at least me, and finally I had to ask Fritz in to answer the damn thing and give everybody a brush-off. A call he switched to me was one from the DA’s office. They had the nerve to ask me to come down there so they could ask me something. I told them I was busy answering Help Wanted ads and couldn’t spare the time. Half an hour later Fritz switched another one to me. It was Sergeant Purley Stebbins. He was good and sore, beefing about Wolfe having no authority to break the news about losing his license, and it wasn’t official yet, and where did I think it would get me refusing to cooperate with the DA on a murder when I had discovered the body, and I could have my choice of coming down quick or having a PD car come and get me. I let him use up his breath.
“Listen, brother,” I told him, “I hadn’t heard that the name of this city has been changed to Moscow. If Mr. Wolfe wants to publish it that he’s out of business, hoping that someone will pass the hat or offer him a job as doorman, that’s his affair. As for my cooperating, nuts. You have already got me sewed up on two charges, and on advice of counsel and my doctor I am staying home, taking aspirin and gargling with prune juice and gin. If you come here, no matter who, you won’t get in without a search warrant. If you come with another warrant for me, say for cruelty to animals because I opened that window, you can either wait on the stoop until I emerge or shoot the door down, whichever you prefer. I am now hanging up.”
“If you’ll listen a minute, damn it.”
“Good-by, you double-breasted nitwit.”
I cradled the phone, sat thirty seconds to calm down, and resumed at the typewriter. The next interruption came not from the outside but from Wolfe, a little before noon. He was back at his desk, analyzing Dazzle Dan. Suddenly he pronounced my name, and I swiveled.
“Yes, sir.”
“Look at this.”