Prisoner's Base

During the eighty-hour period from ten minutes to two Friday morning, when Sarah Jaffee phoned me that her keys were missing, until nine o'clock Monday morning, when I phoned Wolfe from the office of the police commissioner, I had maybe five hours' sleep, not more.

The first two hours of those eighty I spent in the apartment of the late Sarah Jaffee, mostly-after some grownups had arrived and rescued me from Casey-seated at the table in the alcove where I had breakfasted with Sarah Wednesday morning, answering questions put to me by a captain named Olmstead from Manhattan Homicide West, who was a comparative stranger. The third strangling of course had the whole department sizzling, and the scientists had a high old time that night in that apartment. The murderer's use of the bronze tiger bookend and the cord, which had been cut from a Venetian blind in the alcove, showed that he had not confined his movements to the foyer, and there wasn't a square inch anywhere in the place that didn't get powdered for prints and inspected with a glass under a strong light.

At 4:30 a.m. I was transported to the Nineteenth Precinct station on East Sixty-seventh Street, put into an upstairs room with a lieutenant and another dick with a stack of stenographer's notebooks, and told to give a complete account of the meeting in Wolfe's office, including all words and actions of everyone there. That took four hours, and during the fourth and last the three of us disposed of a dozen ham sandwiches, six muskmelons, and a gallon of coffee, paid for by me. When it was over I got permission to use a phone and called Wolfe.

"I'm calling from a desk phone in a police station," I told him, "and a lieutenant is at my elbow and a sergeant is on an extension, so don't say anything incriminating. I am not under arrest, though I am technically guilty of breaking and entering because I knocked the glass out of a door and went in. Except for that I have nothing to report, and I don't know when I'll be home. I have given them a complete account of last night in our office, and they'll certainly be after you for one."

"They already have been. Lieutenant Rowcliff will be here at eleven o'clock, and I have agreed to admit him. Have you had breakfast?"

He wouldn't overlook that. I told him yes.