She got up and moved.
“Very well,” Prescott conceded. “I’ll be here or below in the music room with Mr. Dunn.”
I opened the door for Daisy to precede me, and followed her downstairs and let her into the library. Wolfe, greeting her, made his customary excuse for failing to arise as she crossed to the chair Cramer had vacated. She said, in her high-pitched voice with a distortion too faint to be called an impediment of speech:
“I don’t know what you expect to learn from me. Do you think I can tell you anything?”
“No, Mrs. Hawthorne, I don’t,” Wolfe told her politely. “I doubt if anyone here is going to tell me anything. I’m just shuffling around in the dark with my hand in front of my face. If you will tell me briefly—” He frowned, turning. “Come in!”
It was the butler. “A man to see you, sir. Durkin.”
“Please send him up at once.”
I expected this to be diverting enough to take my mind off the veil, for more than three hours had passed since I had phoned Fred to come to 67th Street at once. But as it turned out, the diversion came from another quarter. Fred started talking loud and fast as he came through the door:
“The reason I’m late, Mr. Wolfe, after Archie phoned I thought I’d just lie there a minute and get things straight in my mind, and after the night I’ve had I wouldn’t have been much good anyway, and now I’m—”
“You went to sleep again,” said Wolfe ominously.