The young man flushed, but did not move. “You won't go?” he demanded.

“I will not.”

“Twenty blocks, eight minutes, your own car.”

“Confound it, no.”

Frost frowned at him. He muttered to himself, “They don't come any stubborner.”

He reached to his inside coat pocket and pulled out some papers, selected one and unfolded it and glanced at it, and returned the others. He looked at Wolfe:

“I've spent most of two days getting this thing signed. Now, wait a minute, hold, your horses. When Molly Lauck was poisoned, a week ago today, it looked phony from the beginning. By Wednesday, two days later, it was plain that the cops were running around in circles, and I came to you. I know about you, I know you're the one and only. As you know, I tried to get McNair and the others down here to your office and they wouldn't come, and I tried to get you up there and you wouldn't go, and I invited you to go to hell. That was five days ago. I've paid another detective three hundred dollars for a lot of nothing, and the cops from the inspector down are about as good as Fanny Brice would be for Juliet.

Anyhow, it's a tough one, and I doubt if anyone could crack it but you. I decided that Saturday, and during the weekend I covered a lot of territory.” He pushed the paper at Wolfe. “What do you say to that?”

Wolfe took it and read it. I saw his eyes go slowly half-shut, and knew that whatever it was, its effect on his irritation was pronounced. He glanced over it again, looked at Llewellyn Frost through slits, and then extended the paper toward me. I got up to take it. It was typewritten on a sheet of good bond, plain, and was dated New York City, March 28, 1936: