Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“Oh,” she said. She gazed at me. Finally she shook her head. “I don’t-I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why not? You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I am.”

“Didn’t you intend to tell the lawyer you asked Lily to send you to?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Nero Wolfe is worth ten lawyers. Any ten.”

“But you’re not Nero Wolfe. You’re just a handsome young man in a uniform.” She shook her head again. “Really I couldn’t.”

“You’re wrong, sister. I’m handsome, but I’m not just handsome. However, we’ve got all night. Say we try this. We’ve both had dinner. Say we go somewhere and dance. Between dances I’ll explain to you how bright I am, and try to win your confidence, and get you to drink as much as possible to loosen your tongue. That might get us somewhere.”

She laughed. “Where would we go to dance?”

“Anywhere. The Flamingo Club.”

I told the driver.

She turned out to be a pretty fair dancer, but not much at bending the elbow. The dinner mob already had the place nearly filled, but I declared a priority on a table in a corner that was being held for some deb’s delight, and when he turned up with his Abigail Spriggs alumna I just stared him out of it into the jungle. Ann and I got along fine. Socially the evening was absolutely okay, but fundamentally I was there on business and from that angle it was close to a washout.

Not that I didn’t gather information. I learned that the pigeon I had seen in the coop was a Sion-Stassart pigeon named Dusky Diana, the holder of nine diplomas and the mother of four 500-mile winners, and Roy Douglas had paid $90 for her, and she had hit a chimney three days ago in a gust of wind while out exercising, and was being nursed. Also that there had been a feud between Miss Leeds’ mother and Mrs. Chack, Ann’s grandmother, dating from the 19th century, which Mrs. Chack and Miss Leeds were carrying on. The cause of the feud was that Chack fed squirrels and Leeds fed pigeons, both using Washington Square as a base of operations. They were both there every morning soon after dawn, staying a couple of hours, and again in the late afternoon. Mrs. Chack could stay later than Mrs. Leeds, often until after dark, because pigeons went to bed earlier than squirrels, and it was Mrs. Chack’s daily triumph when the enemy had to give up and go home. The bitterest and deepest aspect of the feud was that Mrs. Chack had accused Miss Leeds’ mother of poisoning squirrels on December 9, 1905, and tried to have her arrested. That date had not been forgotten and never would be.