“He went somewhere upstairs, I guess. He sent me to notify you.”
“Was he with you when you found it?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Up to now? Oh, three-four minutes.”
“Will you please stay at the front door while I’m upstairs? No one is to leave the house.”
“Sure, glad to.”
I went with him as far as the main hall.
Considering the size of that house and the number of its occupants, and in view of the restrictions and complications that were to begin in about six minutes with the arrival of the first contingent of city employees in a radio car, there is no telling when I would have realized what Nero Wolfe had done with that two minutes he had said he wanted, if it hadn’t been for my habit of looking in all directions. But possibly there was some faint suspicion in the back of my mind, or I wouldn’t have opened the entrance door and stepped out for a look around, and noticed that something was missing. I craned my neck for an inspection of the cars parked in that short block, and verified it. Absolutely, the sedan was gone. It wasn’t where I had parked it, and it wasn’t there at all.
But of course Wolfe hadn’t driven off in it himself, since, although theoretically he knew how to drive, he would have collapsed with terror at the mere idea. But since Naomi Karn hadn’t left the house, and therefore Orrie Cather was still on the job, Wolfe would have known that a chauffeur was available. I sent my gaze in the other direction, toward the areaway across the street where I had found Orrie. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in sight. That cinched it. If Orrie had still been around he would have had an eye on that entrance, and would have seen me, and would have made himself visible.