Over My Dead Body

The head disappeared. It had not shown again when I heard the employee's voice calling my name. I turned. The boy was there holding a door open. He said, "This way, sir," and I followed him into an inner corridor and past three doors to one at the end, which he opened.

The room I entered was at least five times as big as the ante-room and six times as prosperous. I realized that in my one swift glance as I started to where Nat Driscoll stood at the corner of a large and elegant desk, telling him, "If you sneaked her out while I was coming in here, the cops will have her inside of a minute."

With one hand gripping the edge of the desk hard enough to bleach the knuckles, he said, "Unh." He looked as bewildered and terrified as a corpulent uncle who had been inveigled into taking a ride on the Ziparoo at Coney Island.

I looked around. "Where is she?"

He said, "Unh."

There were two doors besides the one I had entered by. I trotted across and opened one, and saw only gleaming tiles and a washbowl and sittery. I closed that and went and opened the other one, and looked into a small room with filing cabinets, a bookcase, and a de luxe secretary's desk. The secretary sat there staring at me with big round blue eyes, and a more glittering stare was bestowed on me from a chair in a corner occupied by Carla Lovchen.

She didn't say anything, just goggled at me. My elbow was grabbed from behind, and I was agreeably surprised to find that Nat Driscoll could grip like that. I pulled away, and we were both inside the small room, and I shut the door.

I demanded, "What did you figure on doing? Keeping her here till after the funeral?"

Carla asked in a low, tense voice, without altering her stare, "Where's Neya?"

"She's all right. For a while, anyhow. You were tailed to this building-"

"Tailed?"

"Shadowed. Followed by policemen. There are a dozen of them downstairs now, covering all the elevators and exits."

Driscoll dropped on to a chair and groaned. The blue-eyed secretary inquired in a cool, business-like tone:

"Are you Archie Goodwin of Nero Wolfe's office?"

"I am. Pleased to meet you." I met Carla's stare. "Did you kill Rudolph Faber?"

"No." A shiver ran over her, and she controlled it and sat rigid again.

Driscoll mumbled at me, "You mean Ludlow. Percy Ludlow."

"Do I? I don't." I fired at the secretary, "What time did Driscoll get here this morning?"

"Ask him," she said icily.