“Not much.” I cleared my throat. “I guess I’ll have to explain something. My association with Miss Dickey was not intimate.” I stopped. It wasn’t easy.

“Choose your own adjective. I meant no innuendo.”

“It’s not a question of adjectives. Miss Dickey is a good dancer, exceptionally good, and for the past couple of months I have been taking her here and there, some six or eight times altogether. Monday evening at the Flamingo Club she asked me to do her a favor. She said Bottweill was giving her a runaround, that he had been going to marry her for a year but kept stalling, and she wanted to do something. She said Cherry Quon was making a play for him, and she didn’t intend to let Cherry take the rail. She asked me to get a marriage-license blank and fill it out for her and me and give it to her. She would show it to Bottweill and tell him now or never. It struck me as a good deed with no risk involved, and, as I say, she is a good dancer. Tuesday afternoon I got a blank, no matter how, and that evening, up in my room, I filled it in, including a fancy signature.”

Wolfe made a noise.

“That’s all,” I said, “except that I want to make it clear that I had no intention of showing it to you. I did that on the spur of the moment when you picked up your book. Your memory is as good as mine. Also, to close it up, no doubt you noticed that today just before Bottweill and Mrs. Jerome joined the party Margot and I stepped aside for a little chat. She told me the license did the trick. Her words were, ‘Perfect, simply perfect.’ She said that last evening, in his office, he tore the license up and put the pieces in his wastebasket. That’s okay, the cops didn’t find them. I looked before they came, and the pieces weren’t there.”