Prisoner's Base Read Free Page A

me.” I glanced at my wrist. “He’ll be coming down in three-quarters of an hour.” I left my chair. “I’ll take you up and leave you there, and when he comes down I’ll tackle him. With no tag on you it’s probably hopeless, but I may be able to persuade him to listen to you.” I picked up her jacket and turned. “It might help if he saw the cash. Sometimes the sight of money has an effect on people. Say three hundred and fifty, as you suggested? With the understanding, of course, that it’s not a deal until Mr. Wolfe accepts it.”
    Her fingers were quick and accurate as they ticked off seven new fifties from the stack she got from her purse. She had enough left. I stuck our share in my pocket, went to the hall for the suitcase and hatbox, and led the way up the stairs, two flights. The door to the south room was standing open. Inside I put the luggage down, went and pulled the cords of the Venetian blinds for light, and cranked a window open.
    She stood, taking a look around. “It’s a big room,” she said approvingly. She lifted a hand as if to touch my sleeve, but let it drop. “I appreciate this, Mr. Goodwin.”
    I grunted. I was not prepared to get on terms with her. Putting the suitcase on the rack at the foot of one ofthe twin beds, and the hatbox on a chair, I told her, “I’ll have to watch you unpack these.”
    Her eyes widened. “Watch me? Why?”
    “For the kick.” I was slightly exasperated. “There are at least a thousand people in the metropolitan area who think Nero Wolfe has lived long enough, and one or more of them might have decided to take a hand. His room, as you apparently know, is directly below this. What I expect to find is a brace and bit in the suitcase and a copperhead or rattler in the hatbox. Are they locked?”
    She regarded me to see if I was kidding, decided I wasn’t, and stepped over and opened the suitcase. I was right there. On top was a blue silk negligee, which she lifted and put on the bed.
    “For the kick,” she said indignantly.
    “It hurts me worse than it does you,” I assured her. “Just pretend I’m not here.”
    I’m not a lingerie expert, but I know what I like, and that was quite a collection. There was one plain white folded garment, sheer as gossamer, with the finest mesh I had ever seen. As she put it on the bed I asked politely, “Is that a blouse?”
    “No. Pajama.”
    “Oh. Excellent for hot weather.”
    When everything was out of the suitcase I picked it up for a good look, pressing with my fingertips on the sides and ends, inside and out. I wasn’t piling it on; among the unwanted articles that had been introduced into that house in some sort of container were a fer-de-lance, a tear-gas bomb, and a cylinder of cyanogen. But there was nothing tricky about the construction of the suitcase, or the hatbox either; and as for the contents, you couldn’t ask for a prettier or completer display of the personal requirements of a young woman for a quietand innocent week in a private room of the house of a private detective.
    I backed off. “I guess that’ll do,” I granted. “I haven’t inspected your handbag, nor your person, so I hope you won’t mind if I lock the door. If you sneaked down to Mr. Wolfe’s room and put a cyanide pill in his aspirin bottle, and he took it and died, I’d be out of a job.”
    “Certainly.” She hissed it. “Lock it good. That’s the kind of thing I do every day.”
    “Then you need a caretaker, and I’m it. How about a drink?”
    “If it isn’t too much bother.”
    I said it wasn’t and left her, locking the door with the key I had brought along from the office. Downstairs, after stopping in the kitchen to tell Fritz we had a guest locked in the south room, to ask him to take her up a drink, and to give him the key, I went to the office, took the seven fifties from my pocket, worked them into a fan, and put them under a paperweight on Wolfe’s desk.

Chapter 2
    A t one minute past six, when