Chapter 1

IT WOULD NOT BE strictly true to say that Wolfe and I were not speaking that Monday morning in May.

We had certainly spoken the night before. Getting home-home being the old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street owned by Wolfe, and occupied by him and Fritz and Theodore and me-around two a.m., I had been surprised to find him still up, at his desk in the office, reading a book. From the look he gave me as I entered, it was plain that something was eating him, but as I crossed to the safe to check that it was locked for the night I was supposing that he had been riled by the book, when he snapped at my back, “Where have you been?”

I turned. “Now really,” I said. “On what ground?”

He was glaring. “I should have asked, where have you not been. Miss Rowan has telephoned five times, first shortly after eight o’clock, last half an hour ago. If I had gone to bed she wouldn’t have let me sleep. As you know, Fritz was out for the evening.”

“Hasn’t he come home?”

“Yes, but he must be up to get breakfast and I didn’t want him pestered. You said you were going to the Flamingo Club with Miss Rowan. You didn’t. She telephoned five times. So I, not you, have spent the evening with her, and I haven’t enjoyed it. Is that sufficient ground?”

“No, sir.” I was at his desk, looking down at him. “Not for demanding to know where I’ve been. Shall we try it over? I’ll go out and come in again, and you’ll say you don’t like to be interrupted when you’re reading and you wish I had let you know I intended to teach Miss Rowan a lesson but no doubt I have a good explanation, and I’ll say I’m sorry but when I left here I didn’t know she would need a lesson. I only knew it when I took the elevator up to her penthouse and found that there were people there whom she knows I don’t like. So I beat it. Where I went is irrelevant, but if you insist I can give you a number to call and ask for Mrs. Schrebenwelder. If her husband answers, disguise your voice and say-”