I gave up. "Okay," I said, "she'll have to find some bacalhau somewhere else. Maybe East Harlem-there's a lot of Portuguese around there. I shouldn't have mentioned it to her."

"Bacalhau?" he demanded.

"Yeah. I happened to mention we were having it for dinner, and she asked what it was and I told her, and she said salt cod couldn't possibly be fit to eat no matter how it was cooked, not even if it was an adaptation of a Portuguese recipe by you and Fritz." I shrugged. "Skip it. She may be a murderess anyhow. What's the difference if we break a precedent by turning her out hungry just at mealtime? What if I did sell her on salt cod and now have to evict her unfed? Who am I?"

I got up and picked up the seven fifties from his desk. "This," I said regretfully, "puts us back where we started. Since this is to be returned to her, I have contributed nothing to the bank account, and the situation regarding my salary check snaps back to last Friday. That leaves me no alternative." I reached to my desk for the check he had signed as replacement, took it at the middle of its top edge with thumbs and forefingers-

"Archie!" he roared. "Don't tear that!"

I still do not know what the decision would have been about the roomer upstairs if it had been left to us. Because Wolfe did not like the idea of sending anyone from his house hungry, because of his instinctive reaction to the challenge that salt cod couldn't be made edible, and because of my threat to tear up another check, the roomer was not bounced before dinner, and the tray that was prepared for the south room was inspected personally by Wolfe before Fritz took it up. But except for the preparation and dispatch of the tray, no decision was put into words; the question was ignored.