Plot It Yourself

It meant that when Fritz had taken Wolfe’s breakfast tray up to his room he had been told that I was wanted, and he would not break eggs until he heard me coming down again. I will not gulp orange juice, so after a second sip I took it along-up a flight, left to the door standing open at the end of the hall, and in. Wolfe, barefooted, a yellow mountain in his pajamas, was in his next-to-favourite chair at the table by a window, spooning raspberry jam onto a griddle cake. I returned his greeting and went on, “Copies of The Moth That Ate Peanuts and Barrage at Dawn are probably available at the publishers’, but it might take days to dig up the magazines with Jane Ogilvy’s poems. Also will the books be enough for Alice Porter and Simon Jacobs, or will you want some stories too?”

He grunted. “No special sagacity was required.”

“No, sir. I’m not swaggering. It’s just that I’m hungry and wanted to save time.”

“You have. First the books. No stories may be needed. Jane Ogilvy’s poems would almost certainly be worthless; I have read three of them. A writer of gimcrack verse chooses words only to scan and rhyme, and there is no paragraphing.”

I sipped orange juice. “If they want to know why we want the books, do I explain?”

“No. Evade.” He forked a bite of cake and jam.

“What if Harvey calls?”

“We have nothing to report. Possibly later. I want those books.”

“Anything else?”

“No.” He lifted the fork and opened his mouth.

When I got back to the kitchen Fritz had broken the eggs and was stirring. I sat at the table by the wall, propped the morning Times on the rack, and sipped orange juice. Fritz asked, “A good case?”

For him a good case is one which will not interfere with meals, will not last long enough to make Wolfe cranky, and will probably produce a nice fat fee. “So-so,” I told him. “All we have to do is read a couple of books. Maybe.”

He put the skillet on. “That Miss Bonner is helping?”

I grinned at him. He regards every woman who enters the house as a potential threat to his kitchen, not to mention the rest of his precinct, and he was particularly suspicious of Dol Bonner, Dol being short for Theodolinda, the only female owner and operator of a detective agency in New York. “No,” I said, “she came yesterday on a personal matter. Mr Wolfe keeps phoning her to ask her to dinner, and she wants me to get him to stop annoying her.”