Fer-De-Lance

It seemed to me he got only one thing out of the girl, and that wasn't much, only an admission that she had removed something from Maffei's room that very morning. Wednesday. Little pieces of paper from his bureau drawer with mucilage on the back, and printed on the front S.S. LUCIA and S.S. FIORENZA. Of course they were steamship luggage stickers. From the newspaper file I learned that the Lucia had sailed on the 18th of May and the Fiorenza on the 3rd of June. Evidently Maffei had decided on Italy not once, but twice, and had given it up both times. Anna had taken them, she said, because they were pretty colors and she wanted to paste them on the box she kept her clothes in. During dinner, which the three of us ate together in the dining-room, he let Anna alone entirely and talked to me, mostly about beer, but with the coffee he moved us back to the office and went at it again. He doubled back and recovered the ground, he darted around at random on things so irrelevant and inconsequential that anyone who had never seem him pull a rabbit out of that hat before would have been sure he was merely a nut. By eleven o'clock I was through, yawning and ready to give up, and I was exasperated that he showed not the slightest sign of impatience or discouragement.

Then all at once he hit it.

"So Mr. Maffei never gave you any presents?"

"No, sir. Except the box of chalk I told you about. And the newspapers, if you call that a present."

"Yes. You said he always gave you his morning paper. The Times."

"Yes, sir. He told me once he took the Times for the classified ads. You know, the job ads."

"Did he give you his paper Monday morning?"

"He always gave it to me in the afternoon. Monday afternoon, yes, sir."

"There was nothing peculiar about it that morning, I suppose."

"No, sir."

Apparently Wolfe caught some faint flicker in her eye, some faint movement that I missed. Anyway he insisted.

"Nothing peculiar about it?"

"No, sir. Except-of course, the cut-out."

"The cut-out?"

"A piece cut out. A big piece."

"Did he often cut out pieces?"

"Yes, sir. Mostly the ads. Maybe always the ads. I used the papers to take the dirt up in and I had to watch for the holes."

"But this was a big piece."

"Yes, sir."

"Not an advertisement then. You will pardon me, Miss Fiore, if I do not say ad. I prefer not to. Then it wasn't an advertisement he cut out of Monday's paper."

"Oh no, it was on the front page."

"Indeed. Had there ever been a piece cut out on the front page before?"

"No, sir. I'm sure not."