"Okay. Eleven o'clock tomorrow morning. What time do you go to work?"

"I won't go tomorrow."

He looked at his wristwatch. "Just ten hours. If I could-there on that couch? I won't need covers or anything. I won't disturb anything. I won't make any noise."

So he was really wide open, or thought he was. The couch, in the corner beyond my desk, was perfectly sleepable, as I knew from experience, having spent quite a few nights on it in emergencies, and on the other side of the projecting wall that made the comer was an equipped bathroom. But leaving anyone loose all night in the office, with the ten thousand items in the files and drawers, many of them with no locks, was of course out of the question. There were four alternatives: persuade him to tell me, go up and wake Wolfe, give him a bed, or bounce him. The first might take an hour, and I was tired and sleepy. The second was inadvisable. If I bounced him, and he couldn't come at eleven in the morning because he was dead, the next time Wolfe lunched or dined in the little upstairs room at Rusterman's he would be served by a new waiter, and that would be regrettable. Also, of course, I would be sorry.

I looked at him. Should I frisk him? Was there any chance that he had it in for Wolfe personally for some reason unknown to me, or that he had been hired by one of the thousand or so people who thought it would be a better world with no Nero Wolfe? Of course it was possible, but if so, this complicated stunt wasn't the way to do it. It would have been much simpler and surer for Pierre just to put something in a sauce, in anything, the next time Wolfe went there for a meal. Anyway, not only had Pierre seen me at dose quarters; I had seen him. I said, "My pajamas would be too big for you."

He shook his head. "I'll keep my clothes on. Usually I sleep with nothing on."