Before Midnight

That was the sight that met four pairs of eyes when Oliver Buff, Patrick O'Garro, Rudolph Hansen, and Talbot Heery stepped from an elevator into the reception room.

"Good morning, gentlemen!" Wolfe sang out, in about as nasty a tone as I had ever known him to use.

They headed for us.

Chapter 21

It rarely gets you anywhere, practically never, but you always do it. When four men enter a room and one of them sees six men grouped in front of a cabinet which has in it a bottle of poison out of which he has recently shaken a spoonful onto a piece of toilet paper, to be used for killing a man, you try to watch all their faces like a hawk for some sign of which one it is. That time it was more useless than usual. They had all had a hard and probably sleepless night, and maybe hadn't been to bed at all. They looked it, and certainly none of them liked what he saw. Three of them--Buff, O'Garro, and Hansen --all spoke at once. They wanted to know who and what and why and when, oblivious of the presence of a customer who was seated across the room.

Wolfe was incisive. "It would be better, I think, to retire somewhere. This is rather public."

"Who are these men?" Buff demanded. "They are working for the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa, through me. They are now--"

"Get them out of here!"

"No. They're guarding an object in that cabinet. I intend shortly to tell the police to come and get the object, and meanwhile these four men will stay. They're all armed, so I--"

"Why, goddam you--" O'Garro blurted, but Hansen gripped his arm and said, "Let's go inside," and turned him around. Buff seemed about to choke, but controlled it, and led the way, with his partner and lawyer following, then Heery, then Wolfe, and then me. As I passed through the door to the corridor I turned for a glance at the four sentries, and Orrie winked at me.

The executive committee room was much more presentable than it had been before, with everything in order. The second the door was shut O'Garro started yapping, but Hansen got his arm again and steered him around to a chair at the far side of the big table, and took one there himself, so they had the windows back of them. Wolfe and I took the near side, with Heery at one end, on Wolfe's left, and Buff at the other, on my right.

"What's this object in a cabinet?" O'Garro demanded as Wolfe sat. "What are you trying to pull?"

"It will be better," Wolfe said, "if you let me describe the situation. Then we can--"