“But you—” She stiffened, staring at him. “You don’t mean — those pictures — not really—”
“Not the pictures. The picture. Just one of them. From it I deduce, among other things, that if you go back to that house you’re apt to get killed. And you’re certainly going to be needed, so — Yes, Fritz?”
Fritz, having closed the door behind him, advanced halfway to the desk and spoke:
“A caller, sir. Mr. John Charles Dunn. A gentleman and three ladies are with him.”
Chapter 16
There was an instant’s silence and then Sara Dunn popped out of her chair and pretended she was a cyclone.
At that, she was young and active, and might have presented difficulties if her hands had been free to continue with my face where Daisy had left off the day before, but she was using them to collect snapshots. She had the envelope containing the film and the discards in one hand, and was reaching for the remaining six with the other, when I gathered her in. I did it promptly and neatly, with my left arm clamping both her arms and her body above the waist, and my right hand smothering her mouth and nose and pushing the back of her head into my ribs. She couldn’t even kick, because my knees had her legs pinned against the desk.
Wolfe asked, “Are you hurting her?”
“Not to speak of.”
He grunted, got up and came around the desk, and retrieved the envelope from her left hand. There wasn’t much grip in her fingers on account of the pressure on her arm. Then he collected the six pictures she hadn’t got hold of, dropped them into the envelope, crossed to the safe, put the envelope in a drawer, and closed the safe door.