Over My Dead Body

"Not exactly forcing, no, sir. You may remember that on the phone I mentioned a bird named Percy Ludlow who said that your daughter was getting his cigarettes out of his coat at his request. Well, somebody murdered him."

Wolfe glared. "I am not in a mood for buffoonery."

"Neither am I. I ruined my coat falling off of a fence on purpose. At two minutes after six Miss Lovchen and Miss Tormic were upstairs giving fencing lessons and various other people were doing other things. Miss Tormic was supposed to be giving a lesson to Percy Ludlow. I was downstairs in the office with Mr and Mrs Miltan. We heard yells and ran up two flights into a commotion of assorted people. In the fencing room at the end we found Percy Ludlow on the floor with an йpйe running through him from front to back and eight inches beyond. Miltan stayed there on guard and his wife went to the office to phone for the police and I took charge of the front door. The first two cops on the scene were radio patrol, the next three were precinct bums, and the homicide squad arrived around six twenty-four."

"Well?"

"That's all."

"All?" Wolfe was as nearly speechless as I had ever seen him. "You-" He sputtered. "You were right there, inside there, and you deliberately ran away-"

"Wait a minute. Not deliberately. A cop relieved me at the door and another one took me with him to the office where the inmates had gathered. I happened to be standing near the rack where I had hung my coat and I noticed that the pocket was bulging open on account of something in it. When I had hung the coat up the pocket had been empty. Maybe someone had merely mistaken it for the waste-basket. On the other hand, there was a murderer in the room, and Miss Tormic had presumably been fencing with the victim, and I was there as the representative of Miss Tormic. The attitude that might be adopted by the homicide squad in face of those facts would certainly be distasteful, in case there was a general search and the object in my pocket wasn't waste paper. So I descended to the basement and left by the back door and fell over a fence and took a taxi."

"And what was the object?"