Fer-De-Lance

I said, "You see how it is about your dress in this low seat? Nobody can see you anyway except your face and there's nothing wrong with that. What do you say we drive around Central Park? It's a beautiful morning."

"Oh yes."

I didn't say anything and she didn't either for about ten blocks and then she said again, "Oh yes."

She was certainly having a swell time. I went on up the Avenue and into the Park at Sixtieth. Up the west side to a Hundred and Tenth, across to Riverside Drive, up to Grant's Tomb where I circled around and turned downtown. I don't think she glanced at the trees or the grass or the river once; she kept looking at people in other cars. It was five minutes to eleven when I drew up in front of Wolfe's house.

Mrs. Ricci had already telephoned twice. Fritz had a funny look when he told me about it. I settled that at once by calling her up and giving her a piece about obstructing justice. I didn't know how much of it she heard with her yelling, but it seemed to work; I didn't hear another peep out of her before noon, when I left to take Anna home.

Wolfe came in while I was phoning Mrs. Ricci watched him stopping to tell the girl good morning his way to the desk. He was elegant with women. He had some sort of a perverted idea about them that I've never caught the hang of, but every time I had ever seen him with one he was elegant. I couldn't describe how he did it because I couldn't make it out myself; was hard to see how that enormous lump of flesh a folds could ever be called elegant, but he certainly was. Even when he was bullying one of them, like the time he sweated the Diplomacy Club business out Nyura Pronn. That was the best exhibition of squeezing a sponge dry I've ever seen.

He started softly with Anna Fiore. After he had flipped through the mail, he turned and looked at her a minute before he said, "We no longer need to indulge in any conjectures as to the whereabouts of your friend Carlo Maffei. Accept my condolences. You have viewed the body?"

"Yes, sir."

"It is a pity, a real pity, for he did not seek violence, he got in its path by misadventure. It is curious how slender a thread the destiny of a man may hang-for example, that of the murderer of Carlo Maffei may hang on this, Miss Fiore: when and under what circumstances did you see a golf club in Maffei's room?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yes. It will be easy to tell us now. Probably my question the other day recalled the occasion to your mind."

"Yes, sir."

"It did?"