“Then a lot of them must have been after him. Unless you reject the theory that girls have been known to chase—” “Of course they do. They did.” “Did it make him very mad?” “No, he loved it.” “Did it make you mad?” She smiled. However, it was not precisely the sort of smile Rosenbaum had had in mind. I smiled back at her.
She asked, “Now we’re getting down to it, aren’t we?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Are we?” As soon as her words were out she had caught her lower lip with her teeth. After holding on for a moment, not long, the teeth let go. “That was silly,” she declared. “No, I don’t think it made me mad. In a way I enjoyed it and in a way I didn’t. Go ahead.” I took my hands from my pockets and clasped them back of my head and regarded her. “I would like very much to go ahead, Miss Livsey, if I only knew which way.
Say we try another door. Have you ever had any reason to suppose or suspect that Moore’s death was anything but a hit-and-run accident?” “No,” she said bluntly.
“But there’s been gossip about it, hasn’t there?” “There certainly has.” “What started the gossip?” “I don’t know what started it back in December, when it happened—I guess it just started itself, the way gossip does. Then it died down, it stopped entirely as far as I know, that was quite a while ago, and just last week it started up again.” “Do you know what started it again?” She looked at me, made sure she had her eyes into mine, and asked, “Do you?” “I’ll say yes if you will.” “It’s a go. Yes.” “Same here. Have you any idea why he put that word on that report?” “No. I don’t know and I can’t imagine. I know I’d like to—” She bit it off.
“What?” She didn’t say what. She didn’t say anything. She was visibly, for the first time in niy three encounters with her, having feelings about something. I wouldn’t have called her cold, that word simply didn’t fit her and never would, but even the name of Moore and talking of him had put nothing you could call emotion into her face or voice. Now she was letting something show. She didn’t exhibit anything as trite as quivering lips or eyes blinking to keep tears back, but a sort of loosening of her face muscles indicated that some strict discipline had met more than it could handle.
Suddenly and abruptly she got up, crossed to me, and put her hand, her open palm, on top of my head and patted it several times. I got more the impression of a melon being tested to see if it was firm than of a woman caressing a man, but that might have been only my modesty. I didn’t budge.
She backed up a step and stood looking down at me, and my clasped hands let my head go back so as to meet her look.
“It’s a funny thing,” she said, half puzzled and half irritated. “I used to be able to handle men any way I wanted to. I’m not bragging, but I really could, I knew how to get anything I wanted from men, you know, little things, you know how girls are—and now I want something from you, and look at me! It isn’t you either—I mean there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re quite good-looking and there’s nothing wrong with you at all. I don’t know whether you’re a policeman or what you are, but whatever you aree you’re a man.” She stopped.
“Every inch,” I agreed warmly. “I could suggest better how you ought to go about it if I knew what you want. First tell me that.” “Well, for one thing, I want to keep my job here.” “Done. I’ll attend to that in my report. Next?” Her voice muscles were loose too now. “That’s ridiculous,” she stated, not offensively. “I don’t know who you are or what you are, but I do know you’re trying to find out something about the death of the man I was going to marry, and it’s getting to be more than I can stand. I want to forget all about it, I want to forget about him—I do, I really do! You don’t know what hundreds of girls together in a place like this—you don’t know what they can be like when they get started talking—it’s horrible, just horrible! Why Mr. Naylor started it going again—I don’t know. I can’t stand it much longer and I’m not going to, but I like it here and I have to have a job—I like my work and I like my boss, Mr.
Rosenbaum—” She went to her chair and sat down, with her two fists resting on the desk in front of her, and addressed not me but the world: “Oh, damn it!” “I still don’t know,” I protested, “what you want from me.” “Certainly you know.” She almost glared at me. “You can stop the talk. You can show that Mr. Naylor is nothing but a silly old fool. You can settle it, once and for all, that Waldo was killed by a hit-and-run driver and that’s all there is to it!” “I see. That’s what you want.” Her eyes had come back to me, and mine were at a slant to meet them. We went on looking at each other, and I had a distinct feeling, whether shared by her or not I didn’t know, that we were beginning to get acquainted. When a girl has patted a man’s head, and sat and let him look for ten seconds or more, and looked back at him, with no words exchanged, she can no longer maintain the attitude that he is a complete stranger.
“I’m not a policeman,” I said. “Whatever I am, I can’t settle it how and why he got killed, because that was settled nearly four months ago, the night of December fourth. It’s all down somewhere, all settled, and all I can do is try to dig up enough of it to satisfy everybody concerned. It helps to know that you’re already satisfied.” “You’re working for Mr. Naylor,” she declared, her tone and look indicating that in all her long association with me she would never have supposed me capable of sinking so low.
“No.” I was emphatic. “I’m not.” “You’re really not?” “Really and positively.” “But then—” She stopped, frowning at me but not for me. “But he has talked to you about Waldo, hasn’t he?” “He has indeed. He’s a great talker.” “What did he say?” “That Moore was murdered.” “Oh, I know that.” The frown was still there. “He put that on the report. The whole floor knows about it, which was what he wanted, that was why he had a floor girl type the reports instead of his secretary. What else did he say?” “About Moore, nothing of any importance. He just says murdered. It’s an eeday feex.” “What else did he say about anything?” “Oh, my God. That eating cooked vegetables brought on the war. That a man who eats meat—” “You know perfectly well what I mean!” she was actually scolding me. “What did he say about me?” “Not a peep. Not a single word. He made only one remark that could possibly be construed as a reference to you. This morning, standing out there at the end of the arena, he said he doubted if there was a virgin in the room, but since you have your own office it probably didn’t apply to you.” The question of virginity apparently wasn’t troubling her. She insisted, “He really hasn’t mentioned me?” “Not yet.” I looked at my wrist, let the front legs of my chair come down to the floor, and stood up. “You have your letters to do, and I have some chores myself. I’m sorry it can’t all be settled the way you want it right now, I honestly am sorry. You say you really want to forget all about Moore?” “Yes! I do!” “Okay, we’ll keep that on the agenda.”
CHAPTER Eleven
The first chore on my list consisted of manual labor, with the typewriter in my room as the tool for it, so I went there and started to work.
I had asked, among other items, for some coated stock, letter size, and while the stuff they had sent was nothing to brag about, I inspected it again and decided it would serve. It was a quarter to four, only half an hour till my date with Jasper Pine, and therefore I had to step on it. Making a club sandwich of three sheets of the coated stock and two of carbon paper, I inserted them in the machine and typed in the upper right-hand corner in caps: >REPORT FROM THE OFFICE OF NERO WOLFE March 19 1947 Four spaces down, in the middle, I put: CONFIDENTIAL TO NAYLOR-KERR, INC.