Champagne for One

He came like a lamb. He had thrown away his discard and made his draw and his bets, and was ready for the show-down. I opened the door for him, held it for Mrs Usher to enter, closed it, and returned to my desk. She went to the red leather chair, so Wolfe had to swivel to face her. Another item of Saul’s report on her had been that she liked men, and there were indications that men probably liked her-the way she handled her hips when she walked, the tilt of her head, the hint of a suggestion in her eyes, even now, when she was under pressure and when the man she was looking at was not a likely candidate for a frolic. And she was forty. At twenty she must have been a treat.

Wolfe breathed deep again. Exertion right after a meal was pretty rugged. "Of course, madam," he said, "my reason for speaking with you and Mr Byne separately is transparent: to see if your account will agree with his. Since you have had no opportunity for collusion, agreement would be, if not conclusive, at least persuasive."

She smiled. "You use big words, don’t you?" Something in her tone and her look conveyed the notion that for years she had been wanting to meet a man who used big words.

Wolfe grunted. "I try to use words that say what I mean."

"So do I," she declared, "but sometimes it’s hard to find the ones I want. I don’t know what Mr Byne told you, but all I can do is tell you the truth. You want to know how I happened to be with him there tonight, isn’t that it?"

"That’s it."

"Well, I phoned him this morning and said I wanted to see him and he said he would meet me there at Tom’s Joint, I had never heard of it before, at a quarter past seven. So I went. That’s not very thrilling, is it?"

"Only moderately. Have you known him long?"