My whirl around was checked for a second by her hold on my hand. For her size and sex she had muscle. I suppose to Norman Horne, approaching from behind me, it could have looked as if I were holding her, instead of her me, but even so it must have been obvious that I was turning, and he might have held his fire until I could at least see it coming. As it was, I was off balance when he plugged me on the side of the jaw, and I went clear down, sprawling. Added to the four touchdowns he had scored for Yale against Princeton, that made five.
“He was trying to force me—” Ann was saying with her sense of humor.
Probably I would have scrambled to my feet and departed, since Wolfe wouldn’t have appreciated my letting my personal feelings take charge when I was on a job, if it hadn’t been for Horne’s attitude. He was glaring down at me, with his fists ready, and it was doubtful if he would wait till I got farther up than on my knees. So I did a quick double roll, sprang all the way up, and faced him. He came at me wide open, as if I had been a dummy, and swung. There wouldn’t have been the slightest excuse for my missing the exact spot for a dead kidney punch, and I didn’t. Air exploded out of him, and he crumpled, not sprawling, but in a compact heap. Then he sort of settled to get comfortable.
His attractive wife took a couple of steps toward him, stopped to look at me, and said, “I’ll be damned.”
“You will if they consult me,” I told her emphatically, turned, went to the foyer and got my hat, and let myself out. On the way down in the elevator I felt my jaw and took a look at it in the mirror, and decided I would live.
I got home just at the dinner hour, seven-thirty, and since it takes an earthquake to postpone a meal in that house, and no mention of business is permitted at the table, my full report of the afternoon had to wait. If the main dish had been something like goulash or calves’ brains probably nothing unusual in my technique would have been apparent, but it was squabs, which of course have to be gnawed off the bones, and while I was working on the second one Wolfe demanded, “What the deuce is the matter with you?”
“Nothing. What?”
“You’re not eating, you’re nibbling.”
“Yeah. Broken jaw. With the compliments of Ann Horne.”
He stared. “A woman broke your jaw?”