Рекс Стаут - Death Times Three

“Give it to him,” I said. “What the hell.”

She has claimed, since, that she misunderstood me. She has conceded that I might have meant give him the package, but that at the time she thought I was telling her to charge. Nuts. The truth is just the opposite; she would have handed it over if I hadn’t told her to. She was simply born contrary, and what she did was an automatic reaction to my telling her to give it to him. She brought her legs up and jerked her body sideways, and of course I jumped — or rather, dived. I went for the arm that held the knife, but missed because her feet had bumped him. By the time I braked and turned he was back on balance and she had tumbled off the sofa onto the floor, hanging on to the package, and damned if he didn’t ignore me and go for her, holding the knife high. I sprang and got his wrist and brought it down and over, and heard it crack. He let out a squeal and the knife dropped, and in my enthusiasm I gave his arm another twist, and he crumpled to the floor just as Tammy got back on her feet. And as Raymond Dell appeared in the doorway and boomed: “Who is dog and who is bear?”

“No bear,” I said. “Hyena.” I picked up the knife. “He was waving this at Miss Baxter. I’ll quit disturbing you if you’ll go and call Watkins 9-8241, get Sergeant Stebbins, and tell him I have a murderer here for him. Not Goodman, Goodwin. I’ll repeat the number: Watkins 9-8241.”

“I’ll go,” Tammy said, and was moving, but I got her arm.

“You will not,” I said firmly. “You wouldn’t call that number, at least not first. — If you please, Mr. Dell?”

“Monstrous,” he said, and turned and went.

I glanced at Paul Hannah, still on the floor, holding his right wrist with his left hand, and let go of Tammy’s arm. “I know you didn’t promise,” I said, “but I may have saved you from a scratch. Just as a personal favor, may I have the name now?”

“Go climb a tree,” she said.

One afternoon a couple of months later, the day after a jury of four women and eight men made it thumbs down for Paul Hannah, I got back to the office from doing an errand and found Wolfe at his desk working on one of those highbrow crossword puzzles in the London Observer . As I sat at my desk he looked up.

“A message for you,” he said. “Call Byron 7-6232.”

“Thanks. It’s not urgent.”

He grunted. “I recognized the voice.”

“Sure.”

“I am not inquisitive about your personal affairs, but I like to know when you pursue an acquaintance that began in this office. I didn’t know you were cultivating her.”

“I didn’t either. I’ll have to look up ‘cultivate.’ ”

“To seek the society of. To court intimacy with.”

I gave it a thought. “I don’t like that ‘court.’ I suppose you could say that when two prizefighters sign up for a bout they are seeking each other’s society. You might even say that when one of them aims a jab at the other one’s nose he is courting intimacy with him. As you see, it’s very complicated.”

“It is indeed. You understand that my only concern is with any possible untoward effect on the operation of this office. I trust there will be none.”

“So do I,” I said.