“No, thanks. I had some lovely sandwiches.” I got the jug from the refrigerator and poured a glass of milk. “What time did he go to bed?”
“Soon after eleven. He said he was tired. He ate with me in the kitchen, not to have a light in the dining room, because he said the police were after him. Is he in danger, Archie? Is it perhaps that we—”
“Sure he’s in danger. Gulosity. Forget it. What the dickens is that thing?”
I went closer to inspect it: a branch of something a foot long, with a dozen twigs on it, a lot of little dark green leaves, and many tiny thorns that looked sharp, there on top of the low cabinet in a vase of water. Fritz said he didn’t know what it was; that Fred Durkin had brought it and Wolfe had put it in the vase, with some remark about ripening the seeds.
“Oh,” I said, “then it must be a clue. Fred’s a wonder for collecting clues. I’ll bet a nickel those little stickers are Haw thorns. So it’s a haw. Haw haw. What time did Fred report?”
“About half past ten. He had quite a few clues in a bag. And Saul came a little earlier and talked with Mr. Wolfe. Also Johnny telephoned.” Fritz glanced at the pad which he kept beside the phone. “At 10:46 — Oh, here, something for you—” He took a piece of paper from under the pad and handed it to me.
I looked at it.
Archie : I am not at home. N. W.
I tossed it in the trash basket. “Haw haw haw haw,” I observed, and went up to bed.
In the morning I half expected a summons to the bedroom when Fritz returned from delivering the breakfast tray, but there was none. I thought, all right, if the big buffalo wants to pretend it’s just another Sunday morning I can too, and settled down in the kitchen to enjoy my anchovy omelet with a half a dozen pictures and three full pages of text regarding the Dunn-Hawthorne-Stauffer-Karn affair in the morning paper. Someone in Rockland County had talked, and the suspicion of foul play in Hawthorne’s death was also loose, so it was a regular picnic.