Wolfe’s eyes came to me. “Archie. You will look around. All contiguous premises except this room, which you can leave to me.”
“Anything in particular?” I asked.
“No. You have good eyes and a head of sorts. Use them.”
“I could wait to phone the police,” Chisholm suggested, “until you—”
“No,” Wolfe snapped. “In ten minutes you can have ten thousand men looking for Mr. Ferrone, and it will cost you ten cents. Spend it. I charge more for less.”
Chisholm went, through the door at the left, with Doc Soffer at his heels. Since Wolfe had said “all contiguous premises,” I thought I might as well start in that direction, and followed them, across a hall and into another room. It was good-sized, furnished with desks, chairs, and accessories. Beaky Durkin was on a chair in a corner with his ear to a radio turned low, and Doc Soffer was heading for him. Chisholm barked, “Shut that damn thing off!” and crossed to a desk with a phone. Under other circumstances I would have enjoyed having a look at the office of Art Kinney, the Giants’ manager, but I was on a mission and there was too big an audience. I about-faced and back-tracked. As I crossed the clubroom to the door in the far wall, Wolfe was standing by the open door of the refrigerator with a bottle of Beebright in his hand, holding it at arm’s length, sneering at it, and Mondor was beside him. I passed through, and was in a room both long and wide, with two rows of lockers, benches and stools, and a couple of chairs. The locker doors were marked with numbers and names too. I tried three; they were locked. After going through a doorway to the left, I was in the shower room. The air in there was a little damp, but not warm. I went to the far end, glancing in at each of the shower stalls, was disappointed to see no pillbox that might have contained sodium phenobarbital, and returned to the locker room.
In the middle of the row on the right was the locker marked “Ferrone.” Its door was locked. With my portable key collection I could have operated, but I don’t take it along to ball games, and nothing on my personal ring was usable. It seemed to me that the inside of that locker was the one place that needed attention, certainly the first on the list, so I returned to the clubroom, made a face at Wolfe as I went by, and entered Kinney’s office. Chisholm had finished phoning and was seated at a desk, staring at the floor. Beaky Durkin and Doc Soffer had their ears glued to the radio, which was barely audible.
I asked Chisholm, “Have you got a key to Ferrone’s locker?”
His head jerked up, and he said aggressively, “What?”
“I want a key to Ferrone’s locker.”