Prisoner's Base

"For the kick." I was slightly exasperated. "There are at least a thousand people in the metropolitan area who think Nero Wolfe has lived long enough, and one or more of them might have decided to take a hand. His room, as you apparently know, is directly below this. What I expect to find is a brace and bit in the suitcase and a copperhead or rattler in the hatbox. Are they locked?"

She regarded me to see if I was kidding, decided I wasn't, and stepped over and opened the suitcase. I was right there. On top was a blue silk negligee, which she lifted and put on the bed.

"For the kick," she said indignantly.

"It hurts me worse than it does you," I assured her. "Just pretend I'm not here."

I'm not a lingerie expert, but I know what I like, and that was quite a collection. There was one plain white folded garment, sheer as gossamer, with the finest mesh I had ever seen. As she put it on the bed I asked politely, "Is that a blouse?"

"No. Pajama."

"Oh. Excellent for hot weather."

When everything was out of the suitcase I picked it up for a good look, pressing with my fingertips on the sides and ends, inside and out. I wasn't piling it on; among the unwanted articles that had been introduced into that house in some sort of container were a fer-de-lance, a tear-gas bomb, and a cylinder of cyanogen. But there was nothing tricky about the construction of the suitcase, or the hatbox either; and as for the contents, you couldn't ask for a prettier or completer display of the personal requirements of a young woman for a quiet and innocent week in a private room of the house of a private detective.

I backed off. "I guess that'll do," I granted. "I haven't inspected your handbag, nor your person, so I hope you won't mind if I lock the door. If you sneaked down to Mr. Wolfe's room and put a cyanide pill in his aspirin bottle, and he took it and died, I'd be out of a job."

"Certainly." She hissed it. "Lock it good. That's the kind of thing I do every day."

"Then you need a caretaker, and I'm it. How about a drink?"

"If it isn't too much bother."

I said it wasn't and left her, locking the door with the key I had brought along from the office. Downstairs, after stopping in the kitchen to tell Fritz we had a guest locked in the south room, to ask him to take her up a drink, and to give him the key, I went to the office, took the seven fifties from my pocket, worked them into a fan, and put them under a paperweight on Wolfe's desk.

Chapter 2