Prisoner's Base

I put the bite where it belonged and chewed slowly. Saul Panzer looked less, and acted more, like the best all-round operative in New York than any other candidate I had ever seen or heard of. He was so good that he could free-lance without an office and make more than anyone on a payroll. He was always Wolfe's first choice when we had to have help, and we had used him hundreds of times.

I asked casually, "Saul's taking over my job, I suppose?"

"I don't know," Fritz said firmly, "anything about what Saul is doing."

That was plain enough. Obviously Fritz had been told that if I came around it was okay for me to know that Saul had come to an early breakfast, but no more. I made no effort to snake it out of him, having tried it once or twice before with no success at all.

On my way out I stopped in the office. Friday's mail, under a paperweight on Wolfe's desk, contained nothing that couldn't wait. There was nothing on the desk, or on the memo pad or calendar, that gave any hint of what he wanted with Saul, but in the safe I found something that indicated that it was no trivial chore. I opened the safe because I wanted to hit petty cash for a loan. One of the drawers of the safe is partitioned in the middle, with petty cash on the right and emergency reserve on the left. Getting five twenties from petty, I noticed a slip of paper in emergency that hadn't been there before, and I picked it up for a look. Scribbled on it in pencil in Wolfe's neat hand was the notation, "6/27/52 $2000 NW." It was the long-standing rule to keep five grand in emergency, in used hundreds, twenties, and tens. A quick count showed that the slip was a record of a real transaction; two grand had been taken. That was interesting-so darned interesting that I might have forgotten to tell Fritz so long if he hadn't heard me leaving the office and come out to put the bolt back on the door. I told him it was okay to let Wolfe know I had been in for an early breakfast, but no more.

Returning to Leonard Street in a taxi, naturally I tried to decide what Saul Panzer was supposed to be doing with two thousand bucks, granting that it was in connection with Eads-Fomos-Jaffee. I concocted quite a list of guesses, beginning with a trip to Venezuela to check on Eric Hagh, and ending with a bribe to Andy Fomos to spill something his wife had told him. I bought none of them.