She paused. Her clasped hands loosened and then tightened again.
“I’m burning my bridges,” she said, “but I can deny all this if I have to. I went and kept a cocktail date, and then phoned Doris’s number to ask if our dinner date was still on, considering the visit of the bank account. There was no answer, so I went back to her apartment and rang the bell, and there was no answer to that either. It was a self-service elevator place, no doorman or hallman, so there was no one to ask anything. Her maid found her body the next morning. The papers said she had been killed the day before. That man killed her. There wasn’t a word about him — no one had seen him enter or leave. And I didn’t open my mouth! I was a lousy coward!”
“And today all of a sudden there he is, looking at orchids?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a pretty good script,” I acknowledged. “Are you sure—”
“It’s no script! I wish to God it was!”
“Okay. Are you sure he knows you recognized him?”
“Yes. He looked straight at me, and his eyes—”
She was stopped by the house phone buzzing. Stepping to my desk, I picked it up and asked it, “Well?”
Nero Wolfe’s voice, peevish, came. “Archie!”