Fer-De-Lance

He nodded. "I’ve been trying flying and landing at night. A couple of times in May, and again that Monday. Skinner would know; he helped me off and I had him wait till I got back to make sure the lights would be in order. It’s quite a trick, very different from the daytime."

"What time did you go up?"

"Around six o’clock. Of course it wasn’t dark until nearly nine, but I wanted to be ahead of the twilight."

"You got well ahead of it all right. When did you get back?"

"Ten or a little after. Skinner would know that too; we fooled around with the timer till midnight."

"Did you go up alone?"

"Completely." Manuel Kimball smiled at me with his lips, but it appeared to me that his eyes weren’t co-operating. "You must admit, Mr. Goodwin, that I’m being pretty tolerant. What the devil has my flying Monday night or any other night got to do with you? If I wasn’t so curious I might have reason to be a little irritated. Don’t you think?"

"Sure." I grinned. "I’d be irritated if I was you. But anyway I’m much obliged. Routine, Mr. Kimball, just the damn routine." I got up and shook a leg to get the cuff of my trousers down. "And I am much obliged and I appreciate it. I should think it would be more fun flying at night than in the daytime."

He was on his feet too, polite. "It is. But do not feel obliged. It is going to distinguish me around here to have talked to Nero Wolfe’s man."

He called the fat butler to bring my hat.

Half an hour later, headed south around the curves of the Bronx River Parkway, I was still rolling him over on my mind’s tongue. Since there was no connection at all between him and Barstow or the driver or anything else, it could have been for no other reason than because he made me nervous. And yet Wolfe said that I had no feeling for phenomena! The next time he threw that at me I would remind him of my mysterious misgivings about Manuel Kimball, I decided. Granted, of course, that it turned out that Manuel had murdered Barstow, which I had to confess didn’t seem very likely at that moment.

When I got home, around half-past eight, Wolfe had finished dinner. I had phoned from the drugstore on the Urand Concourse, and Fritz had a dish of flounder with his best cheese sauce hot in the oven, with a platter of lettuce and tomatoes and plenty of good cold milk. Considering mv thin lunch at the Barstows’ and the hour I was getting my knees under the table, it wasn’t any too much. I cleaned it up. Fritz said it seemed good to have me busy and out working again.