Inspector Cramer got up and walked out of the room. Wolfe winced when the door slammed.
“It’s a funny thing and a sad thing,” I observed, “that the purer our motives are, the worse insults we get. Do you remember the time—”
“That will do, Archie. Get Mrs. Hawthorne.”
I groaned. “I don’t want her.”
“I do. Get her.”
I departed. In the hall I met the maid coming to get our trays, and she informed me that Mrs. Hawthorne’s apartments were on the floor above, so I sought the stairs and mounted another flight. I knocked on the right door if the maid knew what she was talking about, the third time good and loud, but with no result. Ordinarily I would have opened the door for a look, but I didn’t like the errand I was on anyway, so I moved on to the next one and tried that. No go. I ventured across the hall and tapped on another one, beyond which there seemed to be faint hum of voices, received an invitation to come in, pushed it open and entered.
I had interrupted a conference. They stopped it to look at me. Andy Dunn and Celia Fleet were side by side on a sofa, holding hands, and seated next to them was May Hawthorne, in a faded old blue house gown, with her hair making for her right eye. I’d hate to say what she looked like. Standing in front of them was Glenn Prescott, spruce and cool-looking in a white linen suit with a yellow flower in his buttonhole that was no dianthus superbus; but beyond that I wouldn’t say. On a chair at his right was Daisy Hawthorne, in the same gray outfit, including veil, she had worn for her now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t in the living room that morning.
I bowed gracefully. “Excuse me, Mrs. Hawthorne. Mr. Wolfe asks if you will kindly come to the library.”
Prescott frowned. “I would like to have a talk with Mr. Wolfe myself. Mr. Dunn tells me he has engaged him—”
“Yes, sir. I’ll tell him you’re here. Right now he wants to see Mrs. Hawthorne — If you please?”