Over My Dead Body

"To hell with books. I am fully aware that you've got some kind of a line on this thing and I haven't; I knew that as soon as I heard about Goodwin. If it ever did any good to look at your face, I'd look at it while I'm telling you that the commissioner just informed me that he had a phone call ten minutes ago from the British Consul-General. The consul stated that he was shocked and concerned to learn of the sudden and violent death of a British subject named Percy Ludlow and he hoped that no effort would be spared and so forth."

Wolfe shook his head. "I'm afraid my face wouldn't help you any on that. My sole reaction is the thought that the British Consul-General must have remarkable channels of information. It's half past ten at night. The murder occurred only four hours ago."

"Nothing remarkable about it. He heard it on a radio news bulletin."

"The source of the news was you or your staff?"

"Naturally."

"Then you had discovered that Ludlow was a British subject?"

"No. No one up there knew much about him. Men are out on that now."

"Then obviously it's remarkable. The radio tells the consul merely that a man named Percy Ludlow had been killed at a dancing and fencing studio on 48th Street, and he knows at once that the victim was a British subject. Not only that, he doesn't wait until morning, when the usual conventional communication could be sent to the police from his office, but immediately phones the commissioner himself. So either Mr Ludlow was himself important or he was concerned in important business. Maybe the consul could supply some details."

"Much obliged. The commissioner has a date with him at eleven o'clock. Meanwhile how about supplying a few yourself?"

"I don't know any. I heard Mr Ludlow's name for the first time shortly before six o'clock this afternoon."

"You say. All right, to hell with you and your client both. I don't kick on any ordinary murder, it's my job and I try to handle it, but I hate these damn foreign mix-ups. Look at those two girls, they barely speak English, and if they want to monkey around playing with swords why can't they stay where they belong and do it there? Look at Miltan, I suppose some kind of a Frenchman, and his wife. Look at Zorka. Then look at that Rudolph Faber guy, he reminds me of the cartoons of Prussian officers at the time of the World War. And now the Federals are up there horning in, and this Consul-General informs us that even the dead man wasn't a plain honest-to-God American-"