The Second Confesion

Saul and I followed soon after. On our way down in the elevator he asked, “Did any of that stick at all?” “Not on me. You?” “Nope. It was hard to keep my face straight.” “Do you think I should have kept on trying?” He shook his head. “There was nothing to pry him loose with. You saw his eyes and his jaw.” Before leaving I had gone to the bathroom for another look at my face, and it was a sight. But the blood had stopped coming, and I don't mind people staring at me if they're female, attractive, and between eighteen and thirty; and I had another errand in that part of town. Saul went with me because there was a bare possibility that he could help. It's always fun to be on a sidewalk with him because you know you are among those present at a remarkable performance. Look at him and all you see is just a guy walking along, but I honestly believe that if you had shown him any one of those people a month later and asked him if he had ever seen that man before, it would have taken him not more than five seconds to reply, “Yes, just once, on Wednesday, June twenty-second, on Madison Avenue between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets.” He has got me beat a mile.

As it turned out he wasn't needed for the errand. The building directory on the wall of the marble lobby told us that the offices of Murphy, Kearfot and Rony were on the twenty-eighth floor, and we took the express elevator. It was the suite overlooking the avenue, and everything was up to beehive standard. After one glance I had to reconsider my approach because I hadn't expected that kind of a set-up. I told the receptionist, who was past my age limit and looked good and tough, that I wanted to see a member of the firm, and gave my name, and went to sit beside Saul on a leather couch. Before long another one, a good match for the receptionist only older, appeared to escort me down a hall and into a corner room with four big double windows.

A big broad-shouldered guy with white hair and deep-set blue eyes, seated at a desk even bigger than Wolfe's, got up to shake hands with me.

“Archie Goodwin?” he rumbled cordially, as if he had been waiting for this for years. “From Nero Wolfe's office? A pleasure. Sit down. I'm Aloysius Murphy.