The Father Hunt

The door opened and a uniformed city employee entered, came, and put an old scarred wooden tray on Cramer's desk blotter. As Cramer nodded thanks and picked up the pot to pour, I asked, "Didn't the damn fool ever hear of gloves?"

He put the pot down. "They weren't on the car. On the floor, in front, was a leather cigar case. He got it out to light one while he was parked on Second Avenue waiting for her, and there she came, and he dropped it on the seat…"

My brows were up. "You're saying it was first-degree."

He took a healthy swallow of coffee. I have to sip when it's that hot. "Wolfe is," he said, "not me. I was doing him a favor, reconstructing it for him. I don't give a damn how he happened to leave it; we've got it. But we can't

match the prints-here, Washington, London-nowhere. There were two cigars in the case. Gold Label Bonitas. Knowing, as I do, the kind of stunts Wolfe is capable of, it was possible he was getting set to ask me if I would care to meet a man who smoked Gold Label Bonitas and was shy a case to carry them in." He drank coffee.

"If the case is handy," I said, "I would enjoy looking at it. So I could describe it to Mr. Wolfe."

"It's at the laboratory. It's polished black calfskin, not new but not worn much, stamped on the inside 'Corwin Deluxe.' No other marks. Nothing special about it to trace."

"I suppose the woman who owned the car-"

The door was opening and a cop stepped in. Cramer asked him, "Yes?" and he said Sergeant So-and-so had arrived with What's-his-name, and I stood up. It would have been a dumb remark anyway. They have some darned smart dicks at Homicide South, and one of them had certainly asked the owner of the car if the cigar case was hers.

11

Raymond Thome was more than half an hour late. It was 9:40 when the doorbell rang and I went and admitted him, took him to the office, introduced him, nodded him to the red leather chair, asked him what he would like to drink, and went to the kitchen to fill his order for brandy and a glass of water.