Plot It Yourself

Sometimes he self-propels his seventh of a ton up one flight of stairs to his room, but that night he used the elevator. When he had gone I took the three stories to my desk and spent half an hour studying paragraphing, and though Lily Rowan told me once that I am about as subtle as a sledge hammer-at a moment when her diction was not determined and controlled by rational processes in full consciousness-I saw what Wolfe meant. I put the stories in the safe and then considered the problem of the table-load of paper. The statuses and functions of the inhabitants of that old brownstone on West 35th Street are clearly understood. Wolfe is the owner and the commandant. Fritz Brenner is the chef and housekeeper and is responsible for the condition of the castle with the exception of the plant rooms, the office, and my bedroom. Theodore Horstmann is the orchid-tender, with no responsibilities or business on the lower floors. He eats in the kitchen with Fritz. I eat in the dining room with Wolfe, except when we are not speaking; then I join Fritz and Theodore in the kitchen, or get invited somewhere, or take a friend to a restaurant, or go to Bert’s diner around the corner on Tenth Avenue and eat beans. My status and function are whatever a given situation calls for, and the question who decides what it calls for is what occasionally creates an atmosphere in which Wolfe and I are not speaking. The next sentence is to be, “But the table-load of paper, being in the office, was clearly up to me,” and I have to decide whether to put it here or start a new paragraph with it. You see how subtle it is. Paragraph it yourself.

I stood surveying the stacks of paper. Scattered through them were assorted items of information about the four claimants. Assuming that one of them had written the stories, which was the most likely candidate? I ran over them in my mind.