The book is the new edition, the third edition, of Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged, published by the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts. He considers it subversive because it threatens the integrity of the English language. In the past week he has given me a thousand examples of its crimes. He says it is a deliberate attempt to murder the�I beg your pardon. I describe the situation at length because he told me to bring you in there, 2 and it will be bad. Even if he hears what you say, his mental processes are stultified. Could you come back later? After lunch he may be human.' She was staring up at me. 'He's burning up a dictionary9' 'Right. That's nothing. Once he burned up a cook-book because it said to remove the hide from a ham end before putting it in the pot with lima beans. Which he loves most, food or words, is atossup.' 'I don't want to come back.' She stood up. 'I want to see him now. I must see him now.' The trouble was, if I persuaded her to put it off she might not show again. When she had phoned for an appointment it had looked as if we were going to have Matthew Blount for a client, and, judging from the newspapers and the talk around town, he could use plenty of good detective work; and he could pay for it, even at Nero Wolfe's rates. So I didn't want to shoo her out, and also there was her face�not only the turned-down corners of her mouth, but the look in her eyes. There is trouble in the eyes of nearly everyone who comes to that office, but hers were close to desperate. If I eased her out she might go straight to some measly agency with no genius like Wolfe and no dog like me. 'Okay, but I told you,' I said, and went to my desk for my notebook, stepped to the door to the front room, and opened it. She came, 3 leaving her coat, pallid mink, on the back of the chair. I moved up chairs for us, but with Wolfe so close to the fireplace I couldn't put her directly facing him.