If Death Ever Slept

It was a cinch Cramer wouldn’t forget it, but evidently he decided that for the present he might as well lump it, for there wasn’t a peep out of him during those thirty hours.

I could see no point in Alan Green’s getting back into the picture, and apparently Jarrell couldn’t either, for he also reported that Alan Green was no more. He was telling the family, and also Corey Brigham, who I was and why, but was leaving the why vague. He had engaged the services of Nero Wolfe on a business matter, and Wolfe had sent me there to collect some facts he needed. He was also telling them I wouldn’t be back, but on that Wolfe balked. I was going back, and I was staying until further notice. When Jarrell asked what for, Wolfe said to collect facts. When Jarrell asked what facts, Wolfe said facts that he needed. Jarrell, knowing that if I wasn’t let in he would soon be letting Cramer in to ask about a gun, had to take it. When Wolfe had hung up and pushed his phone back I asked him to give me a list of the facts he needed.

“How the devil can I,” he demanded, “when I don’t know what they are? If something happens I want you there, and with you there it’s more likely to happen. Now that they know who you are, you are a threat, a pinch at their nerves, at least for one of them, and he may be impelled to act.”

Since it was May it might have been expected that at least some of them would be leaving town for what was left of the week end, and they probably would have if their nerves weren’t being pinched. Perhaps Jarrell had told them to stick around; anyway, they were all at the dinner table Saturday. Their attitude toward me, with my own name back, varied. Roger Foote thought it was a hell of a good joke, his asking Wolfe to investigate my past; he couldn’t get over it, and didn’t. Trella not only couldn’t see the joke; she couldn’t see me. Her cooing days were over as far as I was concerned. Wyman didn’t visibly react one way or another. Susan went out of her way to indicate that she still regarded me as human. In the lounge at cocktail time she actually came up to me as I was mixing a Bloody Mary for Lois, and said she hoped she wouldn’t forget and call me Mr. Green.

“I’m afraid,” she added, almost smiling, “that my brain should have more cells. It put you and that name, Alan Green, in a cell together, and now it doesn’t know what to do.”