Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

I learned things. He had been in the fancy, as he put it, since boyhood. Mrs. Leeds had built the loft for him and kept him going, and now Miss Leeds was carrying on. His birds had won a total of 116 diplomas in young bird races and 63 diplomas in old bird races. One year his Village Susie, a Blue Check Grooter, had returned first in the Dayton Great National, with 3,864 birds, 512 lofts competing. He had lost fourteen birds in the big smash in the Trenton 300-mile special last year. The best racing pigeons in the world, in his opinion, were the Dickinson strain of Sion-Stassarts-Dusky Diana was one.

I couldn’t get him off it. As the clock on the wall crept along toward 6:00 I began to think I’d have to pick him up and carry him outdoors, since Wolfe would come in from training soon after 6:00 and I didn’t want him there. But that problem was solved for me. At 5:55 the doorbell rang, and Roy got up and said he would be going, and followed me out to the front. I pulled the curtain aside for a look, and what did I see on the stoop but Lily Rowan, and she had seen me.

I slipped the chain in the socket so the door would only open four inches, let it come that far, and announced through the crack:

“Air raid alarm. Go home and get under the bed. I’m on-”

Her hand came in through the crack, her arm nearly up to the elbow.

“Shut it on that,” she said savagely. “Let me in.”

“No, girlie, I-”

“Let me in! Do you want me to yell it for the whole neighborhood-”

“Yell what?”

“There’s been a murder!”

“You mean there will be a murder. Some day-”

“Archie! You damned idiot! I tell you Ann Amory has been murdered! If you don’t-”

There was a noise from Roy at my elbow. I pushed him aside, slipped the chain off, let Lily through, shut the door, and got her by the shoulders, gripping her good.

“Spill it,” I told her. “If you think you’re putting on a charade-”

“Quit hurting me!” she spat. Then she was quiet. “All right, keep on hurting me. Go on. Harder.”

“Spill it, my love.”