Plot It Yourself

“In the lockout. I won’t be much help if you refuse to tell me what you intend to do.”

“Pfui.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I would like to say that I have a little self-esteem too, of course not in the same class as yours, and it needs attention. Yesterday Purley Stebbins asked me, and I quote, ‘Why the hell did you set the guy up like that and then come here today and expect to find him whole?’ That was the first time a Homicide man has ever asked me a question I couldn’t answer. If I had told him because you were a jackass and so was I, he would have wanted to include it in my signed statement.”

He grunted. He hadn’t opened his eyes.

“So we’re to go ahead,” I said. “Lunch is about ready, and business is out at the table, and you like to rest your brain during digestion, so you might give me instructions now. Where do we start?”

“I have no idea.”

“It might be a good plan to get one, since you intend to anticipate the police. I suppose I could call on the committee members separately and ask for suggestions-”

“Shut up.”

So we were back to normal.

When Wolfe went up to the plant rooms at four o’clock I still had no instructions, but I wasn’t biting nails. During the hour and a half since lunch he had picked up his current book four times, read a paragraph, and put it down again; he had turned on the television three times and turned it off; he had counted the bottle caps in his desk drawer twice; and he had got up and walked over to the big globe and spent ten minutes studying geography. So, since he was hard at work, there was no point in needling him.