Over My Dead Body

"I was starting to tell you and you interrupted me. Please don't interrupt. She's gone. She didn't even lie down. She went by the window and the fire escape, and presumably found her way to 34th Street by the passage we use sometimes. Since she descended the fire escape, she went right past that window"-I pointed-"facing you, and it must have been daylight."

"I was asleep."

"So it seems. I thought maybe with a woman in the house, and possibly a murderess, you might have been on the qui vive-"

"Shut up."

He took some of the orange juice, frowned at me half a minute, and took some more.

"Phone Mr Cramer. Give him everything."

"Including my trip to the love nest?"

He grimaced. "Don't use terms like that when my stomach's empty. Including everything about Madame Zorka, Mr Barrett, and Miss Reade, except the subject of my threat to Mr Barrett."

"Bosnian forests."

"All of that to be deleted. If he wants a transcript of our talk with Madame Zorka, furnish it; he's welcome to it. He has resources for investigating those people and for finding Madame Zorka. If he wants to see me, eleven o'clock."

"Your daughter's coming at eleven."

"Then noon for Mr Cramer if he wants it." He swallowed more orange juice. "Phone Seven Seas Radio and ask if they have anything for me. If they haven't tell them to rush it to me when it comes. Make an appointment for me to talk with Mr Hitchcock in London at nine o'clock."

"Do you want a record-"

"No. Who is downstairs?"

"No one has come yet. They ought to be here any minute."

"When Saul comes, put the envelope in the safe. I'll see them as soon as I'm through talking to Mr Hitchcock. Send Saul up first, then Fred, then Orrie. Have you had your breakfast?"

"You know damn well I haven't."

"Good heavens. Get it."

I went down to the kitchen and did that, after first calling Seven Seas Radio and arranging for a wire to London at nine. With my breakfast I consumed portions of the Times, specializing on the report of the Ludlow murder. They had my name spelled wrong, and they were pretty stale for a paper that had gone to press at midnight, for they said that the police were looking for me. As Cramer had predicted, they had the low-down on Ludlow's being an agent of the British Government, but there wasn't any hint of Montenegro or Bosnian forests or Balkan princesses. On an inside page there was a spread of pictures and a two-column piece about the murder in Paris that the col de mart had figured in some years before.