If Death Ever Slept

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It would not be strictly true to say that Wolfe and I were not speaking that Monday morning in May.

We had certainly spoken the night before. Getting home — home being the old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street owned by Wolfe, and occupied by him and Fritz and Theodore and me — around two a.m., I had been surprised to find him still up, at his desk in the office, reading a book. From the look he gave me as I entered, it was plain that something was eating him, but as I crossed to the safe to check that it was locked for the night I was supposing that he had been riled by the book, when he snapped at my back, “Where have you been?”

I turned. “Now really,” I said. “On what ground?”

He was glaring. “I should have asked, where have you not been. Miss Rowan has telephoned five times, first shortly after eight o’clock, last half an hour ago. If I had gone to bed she wouldn’t have let me sleep. As you know, Fritz was out for the evening.”

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