ONE At twenty-seven minutes past eleven that Monday morning in February, Lincoln's Birthday, I opened the door between the office and the front room, entered, shut the door, and said, 'Miss Blount is here.' Without turning his head Wolfe let out a growl, yanked out some more pages and dropped them on the fire, and demanded, 'Who is Miss Blount?' I tightened my lips and then parted them to say, 'She is the daughter of Matthew Blount, president of the Blount Textile Corporation, who is in the coop charged with murder, and she has an appointment with you at eleventhirty, as you know. If you're pretending you've forgotten, nuts. You knew you couldn't finish that operation in half an hour. Besides, how about the comments I have heard you make about book burners?' 'They are not relevant to this.' He yanked out more pages. 'I am a man, not a government or a committee of censors. Having paid fortyseven dollars and fifty cents for this book, and having examined it and found it subversive and intolerably offensive, I am destroying it.' He dropped the pages on the fire. 'I'm in no mood to listen to a woman. Ask her to come after lunch.' 'I have also heard you comment about people who dodge appointments they have made.' Pause. More pages. Then: 'Very well. Bring her here.' I returned to the office, shutting the door, crossed to the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe's desk where I had seated the caller, and faced her. She tilted her head back to look up at me. She was a brownie, not meaning a Girl Scout�small ears and a small nose, big brown eyes, a lot of brown hair, and a wide mouth that would have been all right with the corners turned up instead of down. 'I'd better explain,' I told her. 'Mr Wolfe is in the middle of a fit. It's complicated. There's a fireplace in the front room, but it's never lit because he hates open fires. He says they stultify mental processes. But it's lit now because he's using it. He's seated in front of it, on a chair too small for him, tearing sheets out of a book and burning them.