Before Midnight

I returned to the front room and found Younger on a chair by a window with a sheet of paper in each hand, one presumably being the verses. "You're not the only one," I told him. "Mrs. Wheelock got it too, and came to show it to Mr. Wolfe. She's in there with him now. He has the books, and they've checked the answers, and it's not a gag."

He squinted at me. "She got--just like this?"

"I haven't seen it, but of course it is."

"And they've checked it?"

"Right."

He stood up. "I want to see hers. Where is she?"

"You will." I looked at my wrist. "In one minute and twenty seconds."

"I'll be damned. Then it's not a frame. That was one thing I thought, that someone was trying to frame me, but I couldn't see how. She got it in the mail this morning?" I told him she would no doubt be glad to supply all details, and right at the deadline crossed to open lie door to the office and invited him in. He brushed on by, went straight to Mrs. Wheelock, and demanded, "Where's the one you got?"

I went and took his elbow, called his attention to Wolfe, steered him to a chair, and told Wolfe, "Mr. Younger wants details. Is hers like his and when did she get it and so on."

Wolfe lifted a sheet of paper from his desk blotter. Younger popped up from his chair and went to him. I joined them, and so did Mrs. Wheelock. It didn't take much comparing to see that hers was a carbon copy of his. The envelopes, including the postmarks, were the same except for the names. When Younger had satisfied himself on those points he picked up one of the books, Casanova's Memoirs, and opened it. Mrs. Wheelock told him that wasn't necessary, they were the right answers, no question about it. She didn't look as if she had changed her attitude to the food at the Churchill, but the fire back of her dark deep-set eyes was shining through in her excitement. Younger went ahead anyway, finding a page in the book, and we were still grouped at Wolfe's desk when the phone rang.

I went to my desk to answer it, and got from the receiver the same old refrain. "I want to speak to Mr. Wolfe. This is Talbott Heery."

But the lid was off, maybe. I told Wolfe, and he took bis instrument, and I kept mine.

"This is Nero Wolfe. Yes, Mr. Heery?"