Champagne for One

"Yes, he’s coming. I couldn’t get ours. I got- What good is a doctor if she’s dead?"

"Nobody is dead until a doctor says so. It’s a law." Some of the others were jabbering, and I turned and raised my voice. "You people might as well rest your legs and there are plenty of chairs, but stay away from the one the bag is on. If you want to leave the room I can’t stop you, but I advise you not to. The police might misunderstand it, and you’d only have more questions to answer." A buzzer sounded and Hackett was going, but I stopped him. "No, Hackett, you’d better stay, you’re one of us now. Mr Johnson will let them in."

He was doing so. There was no sound of the door opening because doors on mansions do not make noises, but there were voices in the reception hall, and everybody turned to face the arch. In they came, a pair, two precinct men in uniform. They marched in and stopped, and one of them asked, "Mr Robert Robilotti?"

"I’m Robert Robilotti," he said.

"This your house? We got-"

"No," Mrs Robilotti said. "It’s my house."

Chapter Four

When I mounted the seven steps of the stoop of the old brownstone at twelve minutes after seven Wednesday morning and let myself in, I was so pooped that I was going to drop my topcoat and hat on the hall bench, but breeding told, and I put the coat on a hanger and the hat on a shelf and went to the kitchen.

Fritz, at the refrigerator, turned and actually left the refrigerator door open to stare at me.

"Behold!" he said. He had told me once that he had got that out of his French-English dictionary, many years ago, as a translation of voila.

"I want," I said, "a quart of orange juice, a pound of sausage, six eggs, twenty griddle cakes, and a gallon of coffee."

"No doughnuts with honey?"

"Yes. I forgot to mention them." I dropped on to the chair I occupy at breakfast, groaning. "Speaking of honey, if you want to make a friend who will never fail you, you might employ the eggs in a hedgehog omelet, with plenty- No. It would take too long. Just fry ’em."

"I never fry eggs." He was stirring a bowl of batter. "You have had a night?"

"I have. A murder with all the trimmings."

"Ah! Terrible! A client, then?"