"I'd rather show you. Expect me in two minutes."

"What the hell, I'll come -"

"I'm in the neighborhood. Two minutes." I hung up.

I didn't stop to put on my overcoat and gloves. Two minutes of near-zero wind is a good test of your staying power. When I pushed the button in the vestibule the click came quick, and when I entered and started up the stairs Orrie called down from the top, "Hell, I could have come."

Once Nero Wolfe, showing off, said to me, "Vultus est index animi," and I said, "That's not Greek," and he said, "A Latin proverb. The face is the index of the mind." It depends on whose face and whose mind. Across from you at the poker table, Saul Panzer's face is an index of absolutely nothing. But you keep on trying, and I was still at it on Orrie Cather's face after he showed me in and took my hat and coat and we sat. I sat and eyed him until he demanded, "Can't you place me?"

I said, "Vultus est index animi."

"Good," he said. "I've often wondered. What the hell's eating you?"

"Just curiosity. Is it possible that you're playing me?"

"For God's sake. Playing you how? For what?"

"I wish I knew." I crossed my legs. "Okay, I'll report. I followed the script. I arrived at a quarter past four on the dot, pushed the button several times, got no reaction as expected, used the key you gave me, took the elevator to the fourth floor, used the other key, and entered. No one in the living room, and I went to the bedroom. I don't say someone was there, because properly speaking a corpse is not someone. It was on the floor not far from the bed. I had never seen Isabel Kerr or a picture of her, but I suppose it had been her. A pink thing with lace and pink slippers, no stockings. A couple of -"

"You're saying she was dead?"