Free Might as Well Be Dead by Nero Wolfe

the latter part of the year, the period when she was cottoning to Molloy, or thought she was, and was making up her mind to marry him. She would have preferred to let the incidents of that period stay where they were, down in the cellar. I won’t say it hurt me as much as it did her, since with me it was strictly business, but it was no picnic. Finally she said she didn’t think she could go on, and I said we had barely started.
    “Then tomorrow?” she asked. “I don’t know why, but this seems to be tougher than it was with the police and the District Attorney. That seems strange, since they were enemies and you’re a friend—you are a friend, aren’t you?”
    It was a trap, and I dodged it. “I want what you want,” I told her.
    “I know you do, but I just can’t go on. Tomorrow?”
    “Sure. Tomorrow morning. But I’ll have some other errands, so it will have to be with Mr. Wolfe. Could you be at his office at eleven o’clock?”
    “I suppose I could, but I’d rather go on with you.”
    “He’s not so bad. If he growls just ignore it. He’ll dig up something quicker than I would, in order to get rid of you. He doesn’t appreciate women, and I do.” I got out a card and handed it to her. “There’s the address. Tomorrow at eleven?”
    She said yes, and got up to see me to the door, but I told her that with a friend it wasn’t necessary.

Chapter 7
    W HEN I GOT BACK to 35th Street it was half-past six and the conference was in full swing.
    I was pleased to see that Saul Panzer was in the red leather chair. Unquestionably Johnny Keems had made a go for it, and Wolfe himself must have shooed him off. Johnny, who at one time, under delusions of grandeur, had decided my job would look better on him or he would look better on it, no matter which, but had found it necessary to abandon the idea, was a pretty good operative but had to be handled. Fred Durkin, big and burly and bald, knows exactly what he can expect of his brains and what he can’t, which is more than you can say for a lot of people with a bigger supply. Orrie Cather is smart, both in action and in appearance. As for Saul Panzer, I thoroughly approve of his preference for free-lancing, since if he decided he wanted my job he would get it—or anybody else’s.
    Saul, as I say, was in the red leather chair, and the others had three of the yellow ones in a row facing Wolfe’s desk. I got greetings and returned them, and circled around to my place. Wolfe remarked that he hadn’t expected me so early.
    “I tired her out,” I told him. “Her heart was willing but her mind was weak. She’ll be here at eleven in the morning. Do you want it now?”
    “If you got anything promising.”
    “I don’t know whether I did or not. We were at it nearly two hours, and mostly it was just stirring up the dust, but there were a couple of things, maybe three, that you might want to hear. One day in the fall of nineteen fifty-two, she thinks it was October, a man called at the office, and there was a row that developed into combat. She heard a crash and went in, and the caller was flat on the floor. Molloy told her he would handle it, and she returned to the other room, and pretty soon the caller came out on his feet and left. She doesn’t know his name, and she didn’t hear what the row was about because the door between the rooms was shut.”
    Wolfe grunted. “I hope we’re not reduced to that. And?”
    “This one was earlier. In the early summer. For a period of about two weeks a woman phoned the office nearly every day. If Molloy was out she left word for him to call Janet. If Molloy was in and took the call he told her he couldn’t discuss the matter on the phone and rang off. Then the calls stopped and Janet was never heard from again.”
    “Does Mrs. Molloy know what she wanted to discuss?”
    “No. She never listened in. She wouldn’t.”
    He sent me a sharp glance. “Are you bewitched again?”
    “Yes, sir. It took four seconds, even