I stopped. I had him. He did not lift his eyes from the page, his head did not move, there was no stirring of his massive frameilin the specially constructed enormous chair behind his desk: but I saw his right forefinger wiggle faintly – his minatory wand, as he once called it – and I knew I had him. He said: i "Archie. Shut up."

I grinned. "Not a chance, sir. Great God, am I just going to sit here until I die? Shall I phone Pinkertons and ask if they want a hotel room watched or something? If you keep a keg of dynamite around the house you've got to expect some noise sooner or later. That's what I am, a keg of dynamite. Shall I go to a movie?" N»

Wolfe's huge head tipped forward a, sixteenth of an inch, for him an emphatic nod. "By all means. At once." ip 1(I got up from my chair, tossed the newspaper halfway across the room to my desk, turned around, and sat down again.

"What was wrong with my analogies?" I demanded.

Wolfe turned another page. "Let us say," he murmured patiently, "that as an analogist you are supreme. Let us say that."

"All right. Say we do. I'm not trying to pick a quarrel, sir. Hell no. I'm just breaking under the strain of trying to figure out a third way of crossing my legs.

I've been at it over a week now." It flashed into my mind that Wolfe could never be annoyed by that problem, since his legs were so fat that there was no possibility of them ever getting crossed by any tactics whatever, but I decided not to mention that. I swerved. ‹I stick to it, if a book's dirty it's dirty, no matter if the author had a string of purposes as long as a rainy day.