Prisoner's Base

As I said, I was bored and disillusioned and hungry. An encounter with Rowcliff was enough to ruin a day anyhow, and that was only one item of the record. I had to meet Lon Cohen at seven-thirty to buy him a steak as promised, and afterward I had to go home and pack a bag before finding a hotel room. That was okay, but there was no telling what frame of mind they had pestered Wolfe into, and if I went home he would probably be laying for me. Also I didn't mind sleeping in a hotel room, but what about when I left it in the morning? What were my plans? I shrugged that off, thinking I would get some kind of lead from Lon, and decided to call him then instead of waiting until seven. There was no phone in the room where I was, so I got up and went out to the corridor, glanced right and left, and started left. There were doors on both sides, all closed. I preferred one standing open, with a phone in sight, and kept going. No luck. But nearly at the end of the corridor the last door on the left was ajar, a three-inch crack, and as I approached it I heard a voice. That was the event I have referred to as occurring at fourteen minutes to six-my hearing that voice, coming from that room. At twelve paces it was audible, at five paces it was recognizable, and when I got my ear within six inches of the crack the words were quite plain.

"This whole performance," Nero Wolfe was saying, "is based on an idiotic assumption, which was natural and indeed inevitable, since Mr. Rowcliff is your champion ass-the assumption that Mr. Goodwin and I are both cretins. I do not deny that at times in the past I have been less than candid with you-I will acknowledge, to humor you, that I have humbugged and hoodwinked to serve my purpose-but I still have my license, and you know what that means. It means that on balance I have helped you more than I have hurt you-not the community, which is another matter, but you, Mr. Cramer, and you, Mr. Bowen, and of course you others too."

So the DA himself was in the audience.