At Manhattan Homicide West on Twentieth Street I was hoping to be assigned to Lieutenant Rowcliff so I could try once more to make him mad enough to stutter, but I got a college graduate named Eisenstadt who presented no challenge. All he wanted was facts, and I dished them out, withholding, naturally, that I had entered the room. It took less than an hour, including having my statement typed and signed, and I declined his pressing invitation to stick around until Inspector Cramer got in. I told him another fact, that I was a citizen in good standing, or fair at least, with a known address, and could be found if and when needed.
Back at the office Wolfe was yawning at a book. The yawn was an act. He wanted to make it clear to me that losing a fee of five grand was nothing to get riled about. I had a choice: either proceed to rile him or go up to bed. They were equally attractive, and I flipped a quarter and caught it. He didn’t ask me what I was deciding because he thought I wanted him to. It was heads, and I told him my session at Homicide wasn’t worth reporting, said good night, and mounted the two flights to my room.
In the morning, at breakfast in the kitchen, with Fritz supplying me with hot griddle cakes and the paper propped in front of me, I saw that I had given Lon not one inch but two. He had stretched it because it was exclusive. Aside from that, there was a pile of miscellaneous information, such as that Karnow had an Aunt Margaret named Mrs. Raymond Savage, and she had a son Richard, and a daughter Ann, now married to one Norman Horne. There was a picture of Ann, and also one of Caroline, not very good.
I seldom see Wolfe in the morning until eleven, when he comes down from the plant rooms, and that morning I didn’t see him at all. A little after ten a call came from Sergeant Stebbins to invite me to drop in at the District Attorney’s office at my earliest inconvenience. I don’t apologize for taking only four minutes to put weights on papers on my desk, phone up to Wolfe, and get my hat and go, because there was a chance of running into our former clients, and they might possibly be coming to the conclusion that they hadn’t had enough of Wolfe after all.
I needn’t have been in such a hurry. In a large anteroom on an upper floor at 155 Leonard Street I sat for nearly half an hour on a hard wooden chair, waiting. I was about ready to go over to the window and tell the veteran female that another three minutes was all I could spare when another female appeared, coming from a corridor that led within. That one was not veteran at all, and I postponed my ultimatum. The way she moved was worthy of study, her face invited a full analysis, her clothes deserved a complete inventory, and either her name was Ann Savage Horne or the Gazette had run the wrong picture.
She saw me taking her in, and reciprocated frankly, her head tilted a little to one side, came and sat on a chair near mine, and gave me the kind of straight look that you expect only from a queen or a trollop.
I spoke. “What’s that stole?” I asked her. “Rabbit?”
She smiled to dazzle me and darned near made it. “Where did you get the idea,” she asked back, “that vulgarity is the best policy?”
“It’s not policy; I was born vulgar. When I saw your picture in the paper I wondered what your voice was like, and I wanted to hear it. Talk some more.”
“Oh. You’re one up on me.”