I stood and let the conviction seep into my soul. “I can’t say it any better than that,” I muttered bitterly to myself. “Normal people aren’t supposed to understand what geniuses are up to. If only I had sunk my toe in his fundament as he went through those curtains.”
A siren sounded from around the corner, a little green car came curving into 67th, jerked to a stop at the curb, and two men in uniform hopped out and started for me. I had left the door ajar, and swung it open for them to enter.
That was the beginning of as dreary and unprofitable a six-hour stretch as I’ve ever struggled through. By midnight I was ready to bite holes in the windows. On account of the kind of individuals involved, by their being on the premises if by nothing else, the whole damn city and county payroll showed up sooner or later, from the commissioner and the district attorney on down. Wherever you stepped it was on a toe. As far as picking up any items for myself was concerned, I had about as much chance as a poodle in a pack of bloodhounds. Throughout the entire session, about every ten minutes someone came up to me and asked me where Nero Wolfe was. That alone got so obnoxious I had to grit my teeth to keep from slugging some high official.
Soon after the first squad men arrived, Lieutenant Bronson had me in the music room. That interview was brief and unimportant; about all he wanted was the details of our finding the body. I gave it to him complete and straight. I wouldn’t have minded keeping our knowledge of Daisy’s addiction to eavesdropping for the firm’s private use, in case it should come in handy, but I had to give a reason for my looking behind the bar, and it was too risky to invent one, since he had already had a talk with Dunn, and Dunn had probably told him just how it was. So I did too. When it was over he chased me upstairs. I was to remain and so forth. The first thing he asked me, and the last, was “Where’s Wolfe?”
I went in the library and saw there was no one there but Ritchie of the Cosmopolitan Trust, sitting looking glum and offended, and a dick I didn’t know, so I went out again. Prescott came trotting down the hall, saw me, stopped beside me, glanced around, and asked in an undertone, “Where’s Wolfe?”
“I don’t know. Don’t ask me again. I don’t know.”
“He must have—”
“I don’t know!”
“Don’t talk so loud. We’ve got to keep Gene Davis out of this.” He was urgent, pleading. “No one saw him but Wolfe and you and me. I’m sure if Wolfe were here I could convince him. They mustn’t know Gene was here. When they ask you—”
“Not a chance. You’d better compose your faculties. The butler let him in.”