Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

She squeezed my arm and said, “Escamillo darling.”

I gazed straight at her and said, “Lookit. The only reason I don’t get up and ask one of our fellow passengers to change seats with me is that I am in uniform and the service has notions about dignity in public places, and I know quite well that you are capable of acting like a lunatic. I am going to read the paper.”

I unfolded the Times. She was laughing in her throat, which I had once thought was an attractive sound, and she arranged herself in her seat so that her arm was against mine.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I wish that bull had got you that day three years ago. I never dreamed, when I saw you tumbling over that fence, that it would ever come to this. You haven’t answered my letters or telegrams. So I came to Washington to find out where you were, intending to go there-and here I am. Me, Lily Rowan! Escamillo, look at me!”

“I’m reading the paper.”

“Good heavens, you’re wonderful in uniform. Very rugged. Doesn’t it impress you that I found out you were taking this plane and got on before you did? Am I a smart girl or not?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Answer me,” she said with an edge to her voice.

She was capable of anything. “Yeah,” I said, “you’re smart.”

“Thank you. I’m also smart enough to know that your being mad at me because I said that Ireland shouldn’t give up any naval or air bases is phony. My father came here from Ireland and made eight million dollars building sewers-and I’m Irish and you know it, so your going sour on me on account of that is the bunk. I think you think you’re tired of me. I have palled on you. Well?”

I kept my eyes on the paper. “I’m in the Army now, pet.”

“So you are. Haven’t I sent you forty telegrams offering to go and be near you and read aloud to you? Thinking you might be sick or something, haven’t I been three times to see Nero Wolfe to find out if he was hearing from you? Which reminds me, what the dickens is the matter with him? He refuses to see me. And he likes me.”

“He does not like you. He likes no woman.”

“Well, he likes my being interested in his orchids. And besides, I wrote him that I had a case for him and would pay him myself. He wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone.”

I looked at her. “What kind of a case?”

A corner of her mouth went up. “Like to know?”

“Go to the devil.”

“Now, Escamillo. Am I your bauble?”

“No.”