“I don’t blame you. Please open the door.”
That was one of the times I would have resigned on the spot but for the practical certainty that he would have given the job to Johnny Keems out of pure cussedness. I am not a softy. I once smacked a dainty little Cuban lassie out of her senses when she came to the office with a dagger in her sock, with the intention of presenting it to Nero Wolfe point first because he had draped a smuggling job around the neck of her blackeyed boy friend. But as I followed Wolfe back into the library and obeyed his instructions by taking a chair the other side of our version of Daisy Hawthorne, I was gulping down repugnance till I could feel it sticking in my throat.
However, I did it. I mean I tried to. First Wolfe asked a few questions and got her to talk a little. As near as I could tell, her voice, high-pitched, with a strain in it that gave you the feeling that it wasn’t coming from a mouth, was exactly the same as it had been in the office the day before. I decided it was either Daisy herself or the best mimic I had ever heard; and it was in my mind, naturally, that while a great actress isn’t necessarily a fine mimic, by public repute April Hawthorne was. Wolfe tried another trick, asking her what time it was, but when she looked at her wrist watch she did so with exactly the same slant to her head, using the left eye apparently, as the previous day when she had read the paper he gave her.
Wolfe asked me to hand him the notes I had taken of the interview with the others. I got up and started for him. When I was even with her chair I stumbled and lurched against her and grabbed to keep from falling, and what I got hold of was the lower edge of the veil. I knew it was anchored and would take a good jerk, and since it had to be done I was going to do it right, but I simply wasn’t prepared for what happened. A hurricane hit me. An awful screech split the air, and thirty wildcats flew at my face, which wasn’t protected by any veil, with all their claws working. Being stubborn, I was going on through and die fighting, but Wolfe called my name sharply and I jammed on the brake. She was ten feet away, and I never have been able to figure out how she got there and performed mayhem simultaneously.
“You clumsy fool,” said Wolfe. “Apologize.”
“Yes, sir.” I looked at the veil, as intact as if I’d never touched it. “I stumbled. I’m very sorry, Mrs. Hawthorne.”
“The door,” said Wolfe. “That scream must have alarmed people.”
As I reached it I heard hurried footsteps outside, and, opening it, saw Andy Dunn and his father looking white and startled, trotting toward me, and in the background Celia Fleet’s white shirt and blouse and the faded blue gown May Hawthorne was sporting. I sang out, “Okay! Sorry! I slipped and fell and scared Mrs. Hawthorne! Excuse it please!”
They said something which I shut off by closing the door almost in their faces. Apparently my explanation satisfied them that we hadn’t bumped Daisy off and the scream wasn’t her expiring cry, for they didn’t enter to investigate. I looked around for a mirror and didn’t see one. My face felt as if someone had scattered gunpowder on it and touched a match.
“You’d better find a bathroom and wash that blood off,” said Wolfe curtly. “Then please go down to the living room and get the notes you left there. Look them over and see if they’re what I want.”