Over My Dead Body

"Well, that's all we wanted to know." He got up. "At present. Thank you very much."

"You're quite welcome. Good-day, sir."

I followed him out, to open the front door for America and make sure he was on the proper side of it when it was closed again. Wolfe could get sentimental about it if he wanted to, but I don't like any stranger nosing around my private affairs, let alone a nation of 130 million people. When I returned to the office he was sitting back with his eyes closed.

"You see what happens," I told him bitterly. "Just because you rake in two fat fees and the bank account is momentarily bloated, in the space of three weeks you refuse nine cases. Not counting the poor little immigrant girl with a friend who likes diamonds. You refuse to investigate anything for anybody. Then what happens? America gets suspicious because it's un-American not to make all the money you can, and sticks a senior G-man on you, and now, by God, you're going to have to investigate yourself! You don't need-"

"Archie. Shut up." His eyes opened. "You're a liar. Since when have you been a sixty-fourth Indian?"

Before I could parry his counter-attack, Fritz appeared to announce lunch. I knew it was to be warmed-over duck scraps, so I was off at the gun.

Chapter Two

During meals Wolfe ordinarily excludes business not only from his conversation but also from his mind. But that day it appeared that his thoughts were straying from the food, though I didn't see how they could have been on business, since there was none on hand. He did his share of demolition to the remains of three ducks-his old friend Marko Vukcic had dined with us the day before-but there was an air of absent-mindedness in his ardour as he tore the backbones apart and scraped the juicy shreds off with his gleaming white teeth. It somewhat prolonged the operations, so that it was after two o'clock when we finished with the coffee and waddled back to the office. That is, he waddled, I strode.

Then, instead of resuming with the catalogues or playing with some other of his toys, he leaned back and clasped his hands over the duck repository and shut his eyes. It wasn't a coma, for several times during the hour he sat there I saw his lips push in and out, so I knew he was hard at work on something.

Suddenly he spoke.

"Archie. What made you say that girl wanted to borrow a book?"

So he hadn't been able to get his mind off the Montenegrin females. I waved a hand. "Persiflage. Chaff."

"No. You said she asked if I had read it."