Champagne for One

I didn’t jump. Wolfe likes to find me in the office when he comes down, and if I’m not there it stirs his blood a little, which is good for him, so I waited until the elevator door opened and his footsteps came down the hall and on in. I have never understood why he doesn’t make more noise walking. You would think that his feet, which are no bigger than mine, would make quite a business of getting along under his seventh of a ton, but they don’t. It might be someone half his weight. I gave him enough time to cross to his desk and get himself settled in his custom-built oversize chair, and then went. As I entered he grunted a good morning at me and I returned it. Our good mornings usually come then, since Fritz takes his breakfast to his room on a tray, and he spends the two hours from nine to eleven, every day including Sunday, up in the plant rooms with Theodore and the orchids.

When I was at my desk I announced, "I didn’t deposit the cheques that came yesterday on account of the weather. It may let up before three."

He was glancing through the mail I had put on his desk. "Get Dr Vollmer," he commanded.

The idea of that was that if I let a little thing like a cold gusty March rain keep me from getting cheques to the bank I must be sick. So I coughed. Then I sneezed. "Nothing doing," I said firmly. "He might put me to bed, and in all this bustle and hustle that wouldn’t do. It would be too much for you."

He shot me a glance, nodded to show that he was on but was dropping it, and reached for his desk calendar. That always came second, after the glance at the mail.

"What is this phone number?" he demanded. "Mrs Robilotti? That woman?"

"Yes, sir. The one who didn’t want to pay you twenty grand but did."

"What does she want now?"

"Me. That’s where you can get me this evening from seven o’clock on."

"Mr Hewitt is coming this evening to bring a Dendrobium and look at the Renanthera. You said you would be here."

"I know, I expected to, but this is an emergency. She phoned me this morning."

"I didn’t know she was cultivating you, or you her."

"We’re not. I haven’t seen her or heard her since she paid that bill. This is special. You may remember that when she hired you and we were discussing her, I mentioned a piece about her I had read in a magazine, about the dinner party she throws every year on her first husband’s birthday. With four girls and four men as guests? The girls are unmarried mothers who are being rehabil-"