That time the emergency was a face. I had been in the kitchen chinning with Fritz. Wolfe was buried in a book, we had no case and no client, and to him no woman is ever welcome in that house. Ten to one he would have refused to see her. But I had seen her scared little face and he hadn’t, and anyway he hadn’t done a lick of work for more than two weeks, and it would be up to me, not him, to find another bootblack if it came to that. So I invited her in, took her coat and put it on a hanger, escorted her to the office, and said, “Miss Elma Vassos. Pete’s daughter.” Wolfe closed his book on a finger and glared at me. She put a hand on the back of the red leather chair to steady herself. It looked as if she might crack, and I took her arm and eased her into the chair. Wolfe transferred the glare to her, and there was her face. It was a little face, but not too little, and the point was that you didn’t see any of the details, eyes or mouth or nose, just the face. I have supplied descriptions of many faces professionally, but with her I wouldn’t know where to begin. I asked her if she wanted a drink, water or something stronger, and she said no.

She looked at Wolfe and said, “You’re Nero Wolfe. Do you know my father is dead?” She needed more breath.

Wolfe shook his head. His lips parted and closed again. He turned to me. “Confound it, get something! Brandy. Whisky.”

“I couldn’t swallow it,” she said. “You didn’t know?”

“No.” He was gruff. “When? How? Can you talk?”

“I guess so.” She wasn’t any too sure. “I have to. Some boys found him at the bottom of a cliff. I went and looked at him-not there, at the morgue.” She set her teeth on her lip, hard, but it didn’t change the face. She made the teeth let go. “They think he killed himself, he jumped off, but he didn’t. I know he didn’t.”