Fer-De-Lance

For a moment Wolfe was silent, then I heard him breathe and he said, "Turn her around, Archie." I took the arm of her chair and whirled it around with her in it. Wolfe looked at her and said, "How sure are you, Miss Fiore, that the paper was cut out like that?"

"I know it was, sir. I'm sure."

"Did you see the piece he had cut out? In his room, in the wastebasket perhaps, or in his hand?"

"No, I never saw it. It couldn't have been in the wastebasket because there isn't any."

"Good. If only all reasons were as good as that. You may go home now, Miss Fiore. You have been a good girl, good and patient and forbearing, and unlike most of the persons I avoid meeting by staying inside my house, you are willing to confine your tongue to its proper functions. But will you answer just one more question? I ask it as a favor."

The girl was completely tired out, but there was enough life left in her to let the bewilderment show in her eyes. She stared at him. Wolfe said, "Just one more question. Have you ever at any time seen a golf club in Carlo Maffei's room?"

If he was looking for a climax he got it, because for the first time in all these hours the girl shut up on him. It was funny how plain you could see it happen. For an instant she just looked, then when the question had clicked what little color she had left her till she was dead white and her mouth dropped half open; she looked absolutely like an idiot, and she began to tremble all over.

Wolfe bored at her, quiet. "When did you see it?"

All of a sudden she shut her lips tight, and her hands in her lap closed into fists. "No, sir." It was just a mumble. "No, sir, I never did."

Wolfe looked at her a second, then he said, "All right. It's quite all right, Miss Fiore." He turned to me. "Take her home."

She didn't try to stand up till I went over and touched her shoulder. Then she put her hands on the arms of the chair and got to her feet. He had certainly got her somehow, but she didn't seem exactly scared, just caved in. I got her jacket from the back of a chair and helped her put it on. As she started for the door I turned to say something to Wolfe, and couldn't believe my eyes. He was raising himself out of his chair to stand up! Actually. I had at one time seen him refuse to take that trouble for the departure from that room of a woman worth twenty-million American dollars who had married an English duke. But anyway I said what I had started to say: "I told her I'd give her a dollar."