The League of Frightened Men

I can't very well pretend to be proud of what happened that afternoon at Paul Chapin's apartment. I pulled a boner, no doubt of that, and it wasn't my fault that it didn't have a result that ended a good deal more than the Chapin case, but the opinion you have of it depends entirely on how you use it. I can't honestly agree that it was quite as dumb as one or two subsequent remarks of Wolfe's might seem to indicate. Anyway, this is how it happened:

Dora Chapin came to the door and opened it, and I got my foot inside the sill. She asked me what I wanted, and I said I had something to ask Pitney Scott.

She said he would be down in half an hour and I could wait downstairs, and started to shut the door, and got it as far as my foot. I said:

"Listen, Mrs. Chapin. I want to ask you something too. You think I'm against your husband, but I'm not, I'm for him.

That's on the level. He hasn't got many friends left, and anyway it won't hurt you to listen to me. I've got something to say. I could say it to the police instead of you, but take it from me you wouldn't like that nearly as well. Let me in. Pitney |Scott's here."

She threw the door wide open and said, "Come in."

Maybe that shift in her welcome should have made me suspicious, but it didn't. It merely made me think I had scared her, and also made me add a few chips to the stack I was betting that if her husband hadn't croaked Dr. Burton, she had. I went in and shut the door behind me, and followed her across the hall, and through a sitting-room and dining-room and into the kitchen. The rooms were big and well furnished and looked prosperous; and sitting in the kitchen at an enamel-top table was Pitney Scott, consuming a hunk of brown fried chicken. There was a platter of it with four or five pieces left. I said to Dora Chapin:

"Maybe we can go in front and leave

Mr. Scott to enjoy himself."

She nodded at a chair and pointed to the chicken: "There's plenty." She turned to Scott: "I'll fix you a drink."

He shook his head, and chewed and swallowed. "I've been off for ten days now, Mrs. Chapin. It wouldn't be funny, take my word for it. When the coffee's ready I'd appreciate that. – Come on – you said Goodwin, didn't you? – come on and help me. Mrs. Chapin says she has dined."