He was on his back with his head toward me and his feet toward the closet door in the right wall. I shoved some glass slivers off the windowsill, climbed through, saw no pieces of glass on the rug, and crossed to him. He had no face left. I had never seen anything like it. It was about what you would get if you pressed a thick slab of pie dough on a man's face and then squirted blood on the lower half. Of course he was dead, but I was squatting to make sure when something hit the door three hard knocks, and I went and slid the bolt and opened it and there was Wolfe. He keeps one of his canes in the stand in the downstairs hall and the other four on a rack in his room, and he was gripping the biggest and toughest one with a knob the size of my fist, which he says is Montenegrin applewood.

I said, "You won't need that," and sidestepped to give him room.

He crossed the sill, stood, and sent his eyes around.

I said, "Pierre Ducos, Rusterman's. He came just after I got home and said a man was going to kill him and he had to tell you. I said if it was urgent he could tell me or he could come and tell you at eleven o'clock. He said a car had tried to run him down and -" "I want no details."

"There aren't any. He wanted to wait for you there on the couch, and of course that wouldn't do, so I brought him up here and told him to stay put and went to my room, and in a few minutes I felt it and heard it and went. He had bolted the door, and-" "Is he dead?"