Free Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07 by Over My Dead Body

instinctively, but I merely repeated, “Catching a cat,” and kept going, on through two more doors and then up to the sidewalk.
    I was, of course, on 49th Street. My impulse was to hoof it around a couple of corners to 48th Street and get the roadster, but it was parked only a few yards from the entrance to Miltan’s, so I voted unanimously for discretion and hopped into a taxi. On its cushion, bumping along downtown on Park Avenue, I maintained the discretion by not attempting to explore my overcoat pocket, considering that if things got complicated and aggravating enough the taxi driver might be asked questions about what he had seen in his mirror. So I just sat and let him bump me down to 35th Street and cross-town to the number of Wolfe’s house.
    As I passed through the front hall I tossed my hat on a hook but kept my overcoat on. In the office, Wolfe sat at his desk, and in front of him was the metal box that was kept on a shelf in the safe, to which he alone had a key, and which he had never opened in my presence. I had always supposed that it contained papers too private even for me, but for all I knew it might have been stuffed with locks of hair or the secret codes of the Japanese army. He put something into it and shut the lid and frowned at me.
    “Well?” he demanded.
    I shook my head. “No soap. I might have been able to bring her if I had had a chance to exert my charm, but on account of circumstances beyond my control—”
    “Circumstances forcing you to return here alone?”
    “Not exactly forcing, no, sir. You may remember that on the phone I mentioned a bird named Percy Ludlow who said that your daughter was getting his cigarettes out of his coat at his request. Well, somebody murdered him.”
    Wolfe glared. “I am not in a mood for buffoonery.”
    “Neither am I. I ruined my coat falling off of a fence on purpose. At two minutes after six, Miss Lovchen and Miss Tormic were upstairs giving fencing lessons and various other people were doing other things. Miss Tormic was supposed to be giving a lesson to Percy Ludlow. I was downstairs in the office with Mr. and Mrs. Miltan. We heard yells and ran up two flights into a commotion of assorted people. In the fencing room at the end we found Percy Ludlow on the floor with an épée running through him from front to back and eight inches beyond. Miltan stayed there on guard and his wife went to the office to phone for the police and I took charge of the front door. The first two cops on the scene were radio patrol, the next three were precinct bums, and the homicide squad arrived around 6:24.”
    “Well?”
    “That’s all.”
    “All?” Wolfe was as nearly speechless as I had ever seen him. “You—” He sputtered. “You were right there, inside there, and you deliberately ran away—”
    “Wait a minute. Not deliberately. A cop relieved me at the door and another one took me with him to the office, where the inmates had gathered. I happened to be standing near the rack where I had hung my coat and I noticed that the pocket was bulging open on account of something in it. When I had hung the coat up the pocket had been empty. Maybe someone had merely mistaken it for the wastebasket. Onthe other hand, there was a murderer in the room, and Miss Tormic had presumably been fencing with the victim, and I was there as the representative of Miss Tormic. The attitude that might be adopted by the homicide squad in face of those facts would certainly be distasteful, in case there was a general search and the object in my pocket wasn’t wastepaper. So I descended to the basement and left by the back door and fell over a fence and took a taxi.”
    “And what was the object?”
    “I don’t know.” I removed my coat and spread it on his desk. “I thought it would be more fun to look at it with you. To the tips of my fingers it felt like a piece of canvas.” I was widening the mouth of the pocket and peeping in. “Yep, it’s canvas.” I inserted