Some Buried Caesar

He shook his head and got up without haste, kicking his chair back without looking at it, looking instead at me with his eyes still steady and clever.

"This is silly," he said. "Damned silly. You can't bluff me like this."

I asked without turning my head, "Do you want it, Mr. Wolfe?"

"Get it."

"Okay. – Reach for the moon. I'll help myself."

"No you won't." His eyes didn't nicker. "If you try taking it away from me, I won't fight. I'm not much of a coward, but I'm not in condition and I'd be meat for you. Instead I'll yell, and Osgood will come, and of course he'll want a look at the paper that's causing the trouble." He smiled.

"You will?"

"I will."

"Back at you. If you do, I'll show you how I make sausage. I warn you, one bleat and I'll quit only when the ambulance comes. After Osgood reads the paper he'll offer to pay me to do it again. Hold that pose."

I started to reach, and I'll be damned if he didn't try a dive with his knee up, and without flashing a flag. He was- fairly quick, but I side-stepped in time. It wasn't absolutely essen- tial to punch him, but a guy as tricky as he was needed a lesson anyway, so I let him have it, a good stiff hook that lifted him out of his dive and turned him over. I was beside him, bending over him, by the time he got his eyes open again.

"Stay there," I told him. "I don't know which pocket it's in. Do you think you can remember that? If so, gimme."

His hand started for his inside breast pocket, and I reached in ahead of him and pulled out something that proved to be a handsome brown leather wallet with a monogram on it in platinum or maybe tin. He grabbed for it and I jerked away and told him to get up and sit down, and backed off a little to examine the loot.

"My word." I whistled. "Here's an accumulation of cur- rency out of all proportion. A couple of thousand or more. Pipe down, you. I don't steal from blackguards. But I don't see… ah, here we are. Secret compartments you might say." I unfolded it and ran my eye over it, and handed it to Wolfe. "Return the balance?"