Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

She nodded. “I usually get home a little before five-thirty. And take a bath, and start cooking dinner. This time of year, grandmother gets home from the Square around seven, and I have dinner ready for her. Sometimes Roy or Leon eats with us.”

“Could you eat early tomorrow and come to Nero Wolfe’s house at seven o’clock? And tell him about the trouble you’re in? Tell him all about it?”

She frowned at me, hesitating. I covered her hand, on the tablecloth, with mine. “Look, sister,” I said, “it’s possible that you’re headed for something terrible yourself. I’m not trying to pretend-”

I stopped because I felt a presence, and I felt eyes. I glanced up, and there were the eyes looking down at me, one on each side of Lily Rowan’s pretty little nose.

I tried to grin at her. “Why-hello there-”

“You,” Lily said, in a tone to cut my throat. “On duty, huh? You louse!”

I think she was going to smack me. Anyhow, it was obvious that she wasn’t going to care what she did, and intended to proceed without delay, so it was merely a question of who moved first and fastest. I was out of my chair, on my feet across the table from her, in half a second flat, with a gesture to Ann, and Ann passed that test too, a fairly tough one, with flying colors. As fast as I moved she was with me, and before even Lily Rowan could get any commotion started we had my cap from the hat-check girl and were out on the sidewalk.

As the taxi rolled away with us I patted Ann’s hand and said, “Good girl. Apparently she was upset about something.”

“She was jealous,” Ann chuckled. “My lord, she was jealous. Lily Rowan jealous of me!”

When I left her at 316 Barnum Street, it was agreed that she would be at Nero Wolfe’s place at 7:00 the next day. Even so, as the taxi took me back to 35th Street, I was not in a satisfactory frame of mind, and it wasn’t improved by finding pinned to my pillowcase a note which said:

Dear Archie, Miss Rowan telephoned four times, and when I told her you were not here she said I was a liar. I am sorry there is no bacon or ham or pancake flour or anything like that in the house.

Fritz

Chapter 6