Prisoner's Base

The five hours' sleep that I mentioned getting between early Friday morning and Monday morning came Sunday from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m., on a bumpy old couch at the headquarters of Manhattan Homicide West on Twentieth Street. I might be able, by digging hard, to give a complete report and timetable of a hundred other activities I had a share in during that stretch, but I don't know what good it would do you, and if you don't mind I would rather skip it. I sat in a couple of dozen quiz sessions, at Twentieth Street, Leonard Street, and Centre Street. I read tens of thousands of words of reports and summaries. Most of Sunday I spent in a PD car with a uniformed driver, with credentials signed by a deputy commissioner, calling on a long list of people who were connected in one way or another with something that had been said by one of the suspects. Returning to Twentieth Street Sunday around midnight, I admit I had in mind the possibility of another date with the couch, but I didn't get it. Brucker's alibi had been cracked. Feeling hot breath just behind him, he was now claiming that he had gone from Wolfe's house to Daphne O'Neil's apartment and spent the night there, and she was concurring. When I got in from my Sunday drive, Captain Olmstead was just starting to take Daphne over the bumps, and I was invited to join the party, and accepted. It ended around six a.m. Monday, and my thoughts again dived for the couch, but I didn't. I had to either get a clean shirt or go off and hide, so I went to Thirty-fifth Street and repeated Saturday's performance, including a breakfast by Fritz.

Of course I didn't see Wolfe. I had phoned him once each day, but no mention had been made of murder or Saul Panzer. He was testy, and I was touchy. I looked in the safe again; no more dough had been taken from emergency.

Returning to Twentieth Street, superficially clean and fresh, but pretty well fagged, and no bargain even at half price, I was going along the upper hall when one of my colleagues-for I might as well face it and admit it, during that period Homicide dicks were my colleagues-coming out of a room, caught sight of me, and yelled, "Hey, where the hell have you been?"

"Look at me." I pointed to my shirt and tie. "Doesn't it show?"

"Yeah, let me touch you. I was going to send out a general alarm. They want you down at the Commissioner's office."

"Who wants me?"

"Stebbins phoned twice. He's there with the inspector. There's a car down front. Come on."