Over My Dead Body

"Very well. Then I'm afraid- Oh, Fritz. Will you please take Mr Cramer up in the elevator and ask Theodore to show him the orchids?" He smiled at the inspector. "You haven't been up there for a long while. I'm sure you'll enjoy it."

"I'll love it," Cramer declared, and got up and followed Fritz out.

Wolfe handed me the card and I read, "John P. Barrett." The sound came of the elevator door clanging, and Wolfe said, "Bring him in."

Chapter Fifteen

The appearance of Donnybonny's father in the flesh fitted the sound of his voice on the telephone. He was the kind many people call distinguished-looking and I call Headwaiter's Dream. He was around fifty, smooth-shaven, with grey eyes that needed to look only once at something, and was wearing $485 worth of quiet clothes. He shook hands with Wolfe in a pleasant manner, as if there could never be any hurry or urgency about anything in the world.

"You're over here by the river in a corner of your own," he observed genially as he sat down.

Wolfe nodded. "Yes, I bought this place a long time ago and I'm hard to move. You must excuse me, Mr Barrett, if I say that I haven't much time to spare. I'm wedging you in. Another caller kindly went up to my plant rooms for an interlude. Mr Cramer of the police."

"Cramer?"

"Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Bureau."

"Oh." Barrett's tone was nonchalant, but his eyes, for an instant, were not. "I came to see you on account of some remarks you made last night to my son. Regarding Bosnian forests, credits held by my firm, and the Donevitch gang. That was your word, I believe-gang."

"I believe it was," Wolfe admitted. "Was there something wrong with my remarks?"

"Oh, no. Nothing wrong. May I smoke?"

Permission received, he got a cigarette from a case which boosted his freight loading from $485 up to around eight hundred berries, lit, and thanked me for the ash tray I provided.

"My son," he said in a tone of civilized exasperation, "is a little bit green. It's unavoidable that youth should arrange people in categories, it's the only way of handling the mass of material at first to avoid hopeless confusion, but the sorting out should not be too long delayed. My son seems to be pretty slow at it. He overrates some people and underrates others. Perhaps I've tried to rush it by opening too many doors for him. A father's conceit can be a very disastrous thing."

He tapped ashes from his cigarette. He asked abruptly but not at all pugnaciously, "What is it you want, Mr Wolfe?"