Black Orchids Read Free Page B

doubtful smile.
    I asked her, “You lost, sister?”
    “No,” she said, and the smile got confident. “I’m waiting for someone.”
    “Me?”
    “Nothing like you.”
    “That’s good. It could have been me a week ago, but now I’m booked.”
    I went on.
    Upstairs I found that Wolfe had stayed put, and W. G. Dill was still with him. Apparently the question of tracking down the gazook who had spoiled Dill’s exhibit had been settled one way or the other, for they were arguing about inoculated peat and sterile flasks for germination. I sat down on a vacant spot on a bench. After a while Dill departed and Wolfe went back to the glass case and started peering again, and a few minutes later here came Lewis Hewitt, with his topcoat over his arm. He glanced around as if he was looking for something and asked Wolfe:
    “Did I leave my stick here?”
    “I haven’t seen it. Archie?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Damn it,” Hewitt said. “I do leave sticks around, but I wouldn’t like to lose that one. Well. Do you want to inspect one of those beauties?”
    “Very much. Even without an inspection, I’d like to buy one.”
    “I imagine you would.” Hewitt chuckled. “Plehn offered ten thousand for one the other day.” He took a key from his pocket and leaned over the case. “I’m afraid I’m going to be regarded as a miser, but I can’t bear to let one go.”
    “I’m not a commercial grower,” Wolfe said ingratiatingly. “I’m an amateur like you.”
    “I know,” Hewitt conceded, lifting out one of the pots as if it was made of star bubbles and angels’ breath, “but, my dear fellow, I simply couldn’t part with one.”
    From there on the scene was painful. Wolfe was so damn sweet to him I had to turn my head away to conceal my feelings. He flattered him and yessed him and smiled at him until I expected any minute to hear him offer to dust off his shoes, and the worst of it was, it was obvious he wasn’t getting anywhere and wasn’t going to. When Hewitt went on and on with a discourse about ovules and pollen tubes, Wolfe beamed at him as if he was fascinated and, finally, when Hewitt offered to present him with a couple of C. hassellis, Wolfe thanked him as if they were just what he asked Santa Claus for, though he had twenty specimens as good or better under his own glass. At a quarter past four I began to fidget. Not only would I have liked to give Wolfe a kick in the fundament for being such a sap, but also I wanted to conduct him past the woodland glade and prove to him that he was wrong when he said my affianced was too long from the knees down, and the big scene would end at four thirty, when Anne would flip water out of the pool onto her co-picnicker to wake him from his nap. That always got a big laugh.
    So I was relieved when they started off. Ordinarily Wolfe would have had me carry the two pots of C. hassellis, but he toted them himself, one in each hand, to show Hewitt how precious he thought they were. The big toad-eater. But the worst was yet to come. We went by the back stairs, and, at my suggestion, along the corridor on the floor below, and there on the floor at the base of the door to Rucker and Dill’s exhibit, I saw an object I recognized. I halted and told Hewitt:
    “There’s your cane.”
    Hewitt stood and looked at it and demanded, “How in the name of heaven did it get there?”
    And by gum, Wolfe told me to pick it up for him! I should have resigned on the spot, but I didn’t want to make a scene in front of Hewitt, so I stopped and grabbed it. There was a piece of green string looped on the crook and I brushed it off and extended the crook end toward Hewitt, controlling an impulse to jab him in the ribs. He thanked me democratically and we went on.
    “Curious,” Hewitt said. “I certainly didn’t leave it there. Very odd.”
    A door ahead of us opened and a man emerged. The door had a card on it, UPDEGRAFF NURSERIES, and the man was the twig-snitcher, Fred Updegraff. At sight