When I went to Wolfe in his bedroom after breakfast the next morning, he greeted me with a scowl.  I made a noise back, nothing hostile.  He still looked like about a hundred cubic feet of conservatively tailored hippopotamus to me, and he still didn't interest me as a possible pin-up.  I knew when I saw his hands, though, that I wouldn't be forgetting any time soon where they had been and what they had done there.

As I sat with him working on me, I didn't even bother to try fighting the pleasure I was feeling.  His touch wasn't brusque any more, either.  Now I was being handled more like one of the orchids, or his books.  I said, "I could learn to enjoy this."

"Don't put yourself to the bother, Archie.  Soon, you will be able to defend yourself quite adequately without the external assistance.  You are already performing some of the functions of these sigils on your own.  One benefit of shamanism is the unconscious nature of a great deal of the training.  The shaman learns without thinking, probably an optimal strategy for you."

"That's me, all right: beauty before brains.  Good thing you're invulnerable, sir," I said.  Then, "Ow."

"You are bruised."  His hands moved across my shoulders, checking.

"In a good cause.  I think they came from the greenhouse, yesterday."

"Not last night?"

"No, I think you took the brunt of that one.  Did you manage to do any damage to yourself?"

"None, aside from the necessary damage to my ego."  His hands, which had slid down to my waist, stilled and he heaved a sigh.  I'd wondered if he'd be able to stop them.  "I perceive that you were correct about the need to repeat that folly.  How often do you think we will need to indulge, in order to quench the thirst?"

"Based on past experience, I'm not planning on any house parties for at least a fortnight.  Although, darn it, this evening is my poker game."

He snorted.  "You may as well go.  Saul's apartment is as safe a haven as you could desire, safer, probably than here.  I doubt we will have to battle any more hunters, but there are still the other attacks to cope with."  He gestured me to stand up and worked on the small of my back.  It made me twitch and he rumbled at me, amused and annoyed.  For a moment I was tempted to keep distracting him, but it wouldn't have been fair and we both had what we each called work to do.  I'd save that weapon for another day.

At my desk, I was just reaching for the receiver when the phone rang.  I made a bet with myself as to who it would be, and I won.

"Mr. Goodwin."

"Miss Lee."

"I told---tell you no---and you have good luck."

"Thank you."

There was a click.  I hung up, then picked up the phone again and called Miss Amdahl. 

"Yeah?  Do ya have any idea of what time it is?  What the hell am I saying, of course ya do.  What's up, Goodwin?"

I knuckled my forehead.  It may have been faster and cheaper working with magicians, but they took their payment in irritation.  "Good morning, Miss Amdahl.  I'm telephoning to ask, does the name John Smith mean anything to you?"  I moved the receiver away from my ear.  Sure enough, the laugh was loud and raucous.

"Ya mean, aside from hotel rooms up on 42d Street?  Pocahontas.  Hey, wait: how about those fruitcakes down in the Village?  You know, the ones with the Golden Dawn connections who are always going on about the Fall?"

"No, I don't know.  Would you mind giving me a fast briefing?"

"Sure.  Hold on a sec."  She didn't get her hand all the way over the mouthpiece, so I heard her say, "It's Wolfe's sidekick, fishing for some information.  Nah, no eggs left.  There's Chinese from last night in the icebox, though."

This time, I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that Miss Amdahl was as close to normal and sensible as I was going to find in these circles.

"Okay, lemme see.  There are so many of these clown acts, it's hard to keep track.  Thanks, hon, just two sugars this morning, no milk.  I gotta watch my girlish figure.  Sorry, Goodwin.  Anyhow, this particular one's a study group of maybe thirty, forty people who get together and read metaphysical crap, a real mish-mash of sources.  They like to call themselves occult aesthetes, and they admire Huysmann, which is what I call a waste of time.  They're also universal Gnostic dualists, sort of Cathars-without-Christ, so for the outer circle there's lots of fooling around and probably some dope, while the inner circle is supposed to be full of ascetic wisdom."  She snorted.  "Full of something, anyhow.  They have their own townhouse where five or ten of the craziest live together and print up a little news rag.  Bruce checked 'em when they showed up in Manhattan last year and they couldn't muster enough power between 'em all to set off a flashbulb.  But, he mentioned the boss-man called himself John Smith since the Secret Masters were supposed to be after him under his real name.  More like the cops, I'd bet.  Uh---The Oratorios of Gold.  That what you're looking for?"

I'd felt my scalp prickle.  "That's the one, all right.  Do you have an address?"

"Just a sec."  She hollered at Hancock-Skinner, got me a location, then said good-bye and hung up, probably to go add a cigarette to the coffee. 

I went to the office bookshelves and searched around.  It hadn't been taken down for a couple of years, but there it sat: Greentree. I pulled it out and brought it over to my desk.  In chapter twelve I found what I was looking for.  Our hero the nomad, who was being chased across some mountains by Jirair after he stole one of the Pomegranates of Immortality from the Hermit Prince's gardens, fell into the clutches of a group of monks called the Sun-Metal Speakers-of-Wisdom.  Okay.  I remembered the passage because the next scene, after Jirair rescued the nomad and took the Pomegranate away from him, at the Greek banquet, had been---probably a big reason Sumner had gone after Greentree.  I started to flip forward, then hastily closed the cover and set the book aside.

I was opening the mail when the telephone rang again.  This time it was the Princess.

"Mr. Goodwin?  I've called, as I said I would."

"Thank you.  Will you be able to see Mr. Wolfe today?"

"No, but I will be free tomorrow morning.  How about eleven thirty?"

"I'm sure Mr. Wolfe will be delighted."  We made a few more polite noises at each other before I hung up and scowled at the telephone.  Then I reached for the mail, again.  For once, it was a relief to flip through a catalogue from Jones and Scully, the growers.  There was a soothing, familiar irritation to the notion of Wolfe spending even more money on even more orchids that appealed to me, just then.

When I reported to Wolfe, he grunted.  "You will have to talk to these people."

"I'd figured on that.  How hard do you want me to lean?"

"Use your own judgment.  Remember, though, that they are probably intoxicated with the heady fumes of their own nonsense."

"Secret masters of the universe, right."  I shook my head.  "Do you have any more instructions?"

"No.  Saul will be coming over with the tooth.  If you find that you must miss lunch, make sure that you eat something."  There was a pause, probably imperceptible to an outsider.  "Archie, about last night."

I was surprised to find that I was smiling.  "Yes, sir?"

His eyes narrowed.  "You are enjoying this."

I let the smile grow into a grin.  "Yes, sir."

"You would clown underneath an artillery barrage.  Never mind, we can obviously endeavor as circumstances demand."  He hesitated, and then added, "It was pleasant."

"If that wasn't better than pleasant, I wasn't paying attention.  You shouldn't wait so long next time.  After all, it's exercise.  You can eat another marrow dumpling at lunch today."  He tried to block it, but his lips twitched.  "Okay, I admit I liked it too."

"Good."  His lips straightened back out.  "I still have questions about our opponent's persistent ineffectuality, but I do not expect to find those answers just yet.  Go."

I went.  It was a long walk, but I hoofed it.  After yesterday, I needed to stretch out.  I also needed to have the city around me, to remind me that it was still 1941 and I still lived in Manhattan, not in some other time and place I didn't recognize.  The crowds jostled me around until I could almost believe I was Archie Goodwin, private investigator, again, not the stranger I'd seen in the mirror this morning.

There was a sign over the front stoop of the townhouse in the Village painted in Greek with the letters picked out in gilt.  Since I don't speak Greek, I ignored it and went inside.  In the big entry hall, the other occupants of the room all looked up at me and then went back to what they were doing, which mostly consisted of browsing through the books and pamphlets on display in the glass-fronted bookcases that lined both walls of the hall.  Only the receptionist, sitting at a mahogany desk under a large oil painting of some gent with a ruff and a disdainful expression, paid any real attention to me.  She got up and said, much too brightly for my tastes, "Welcome, seeker.  How may we help you along the golden path this morning?"

At first glance she seemed normal enough.  She wasn't ugly, she wasn't pretty, the blond hair was well-groomed and clean, and the high-necked blue dress was unremarkable.  The smile was good.  Any small-scale accounting office or typing service would have hired her for the front office in a second.  Her necklace ruined the overall effect, though.  It was a complicated affair in gold that involved a rose, a cross, a pyramid, Hebrew lettering, and several squiggles and crescents.  Taken all together, it looked like she was wearing a wire depiction of a tattooed lobster.

I said, "I'm here to see Mr. John Smith.  I don't have an appointment."  On impulse, I added, "Tell him that a Bound Man wants to talk with him."

She paled and her eyes got large.  I raised a brow at her, and she recovered.  "Of course.  Please have a seat, sir."

I sat in the leather chair next to the desk, stretched out an arm, and snagged a pamphlet from a rack full of them.  Up the marble staircase she went, to disappear behind a door on the landing.  I leafed for a moment, puzzling over the bad reproductions of medieval wood-cuts, and then realized I was being watched.  When I looked up, the eyes of everyone in the hall were on me.  I frowned and then, remembering a movie I'd seen a few years back, peeled my top lip back and hissed.  Son of a gun, I got three fast exits in different directions, a cornered glare, and an abrupt retreat behind the cover of a big book about Ghosts and Spirits of Old New York.  I dumped the first pamphlet and picked up another one.  It was a commentary on the information supposedly hidden in tarot decks.  Maybe I should have let that guy Gwilliam take a swing at reading my cards, after all.

The double doors at the top of the landing flew open and out came what could only be John Smith.  Black, close-cropped beard and mustache, black suit, white turtleneck, no tie, an even gaudier lobster; he was pretty much what I had anticipated.  He came over to the edge of the landing, grasped the cast-iron railing with both hands, and spotted me.  His voice was deep and sonorous, and would have been impressive if I hadn't been used to Wolfe's instrument.  "I know you."  His fingers tapped nervously on the rail.

I stood up.  "I've been in the papers a few times.  Maybe you saw me there."

Even at this distance I could see his eyes narrow.  "Perhaps, or perhaps we have met before."

"I think I'd remember if we had.  Do you want to come down, or shall I go up?"

He let go of the railing and grabbed his lobster with both hands.  "Approach."

I made it brisk up the stairs, giving my steps some weight.  When I got up to the landing, he turned his back on me and went over to the doors he'd popped out of.  He used both hands to open them before he flourished me through.

His office was a warren of stacked up books and papers, tables covered with second-hand props from a stage magic act, and the kind of souvenirs U.S. Navy yeomen send home from the exotic east, what Wolfe would call impedimenta.  There were too many pillows and tapestries scattered across the furniture for my taste.  I moved a skull---no one I knew---and sat in the chair across from the old trestle table that served him for a desk.

"My name is---"

He interrupted with a flourished forefinger.  "We do not deal in mundane names here, sir."

John Smith, right.  "My name is Archie Goodwin, of Nero Wolfe's office."

The eyes crinkled in decorative confusion and the beard waggled.  He reminded me of a goat I'd known in Ohio named Old Nick that you'd have done well never to turn your back on.  "Nero Wolfe, the private detective?"

"Part-time, yes.  He's also a part-time gourmet, part-time gardener, part-time friend of the free press, and all-around mystery, but I'm here standing in for the part of him that detects."  I stretched my lips at him.  He tented his fingers, then tapped the fingertips together.  "We're interested in your business dealings with Fay Tremayne."

It hadn't surprised him at all.  "Ah, poor Fay.  When she left us to follow her own path, she could not have foreseen her dismal destiny."

"She was a member of your group?"

"Say, rather, a fellow traveler."  His beard rearranged itself to acknowledge the joke.  "For a year or two, around the time she wrote Greentree, she attended our meetings.  That was before she met her consort."

"Could you tell me his name?"

Smith picked up a piece of paper and examined it, as if he thought the name might be there in invisible ink.  "Mr. De Blieu, of course.  I am not, you understand, speaking of a relationship in the coarse, fleshly sense, but one that existed upon a far more spiritual plane."

To give De Blieu his due, if he had been interested in a personal relationship with Fay, it probably would have been a coarse and fleshly one.  I was having problems buying Smith's disinterest in the flesh.  Call me cynical, but there was something in the way he had the office furnished that suggested coarse interests to me.

"Mr. De Blieu," I mused out loud.  "De Blieu, De Blieu."  Smith was plucking at his turtleneck.  I could tell he wanted me to stop saying that name, and not because repetition bothered him, either.  "Now, what or who is Mr. De Blieu."  I snapped my fingers.  "The Upper East Side gang."

He kept his composure, which was a mistake.  "No, I believe Mr. De Blieu has no relatives."  That was a big mistake.  He shouldn't have read a P.I. saying "gang" as referring to anything other than a group of criminals.  Smith had spent too much time recently surgically separating true believers from their wallets, and his edge was dull.

"Okay.  We're talking about the author?"

"Perhaps you do not know him.  I had assumed that you would."  He tapped the lobster significantly.

"You're mistaken, I'm afraid, but that'll happen with assumptions."  I got out my notebook, for the sake of the prop.  "Could I have his address and phone number, please?"

He gave them to me.  They were wrong, of course.

"Thank you.  Now, I understand you were employing Miss Tremayne at the time of her death."

He tried to lead me around the mulberry bush, complete with directional hand gestures, and I followed him willingly enough.  If you let them go around and around, sometimes they're the ones to get dizzy first.  That proved to be the case with Smith.  He was describing to me the publicity job he claimed to have commissioned Fay to do, and said, "One of my associates provided her with some designs, a few sketches, and a model of our proposed retreat in the Pine Barrens.  Did the police find them in her office?  The model would be hard to replace." 

I shrugged.  "No, they didn't find anything unusual.  Maybe she left them at home."  Ten to one, he had handed her the bait that the hunter had followed and didn't know enough about it to realize the creature would consume the bait with it when it was done with its kill.  That wasn't his mistake; I hadn't know it myself until Wolfe told me.  Smith had merely gotten impatient.

I strung him out for another quarter hour before I left, but I didn't find any more nuggets.  Something told me we'd talk again soon, though.  On the way out, I stopped by the receptionist and said, gravely, "The Jersey Devil arranged the dead donkey atop the piano."  The character still reading about the ghosts of Manhattan dropped his book.

Since I had followed Wolfe's instructions about lunch, it was four-twenty when I got back to the brownstone, time for him to be up in the plant rooms.  As I was hanging up my coat in the hall, I was deciding what comments about Smith I wanted to make to spice up my report, so I didn't recognize the brown raincoat and worn hat next to Saul's coat and cap until I was stowing my own fedora.  Then I checked the office and the front room, fast.  No one was seated in either.  I made it up the three flights to the roof in record time.  The other hat and coat on the rack were Lieutenant Fradkin's.

When I got to the top of the stairs, I slowed down, and it was a good thing, too.  The door from the landing to the warm room was ajar, and I could hear voices.  I didn't like what I was hearing.

From the sound of it, they were over by the benches in the south-east corner.  Wolfe was saying, calmly, "If you feel you have any grounds for complaint, you are free to take the matter up with Mr. Goodwin.  I find him to be frequently whimsical, but rarely irrational.  If he refuses to tell you from whom he obtained the item in question, he will have his reasons, and you may discuss them with him."

Fradkin, on the other hand, was not calm at all.  Wolfe had obviously been baiting him for a while.  His voice was shaking with poorly-suppressed rage.  "To hell with him.  I want to know what you're going to do about it.  Your pal, Cramer---"

Wolfe cut him off.  "I wouldn't waste Inspector Cramer's time with this nonsense, Mr. Fradkin.  Squandering any part of one's limited span of days on such preoccupations is its own punishment.  However, I do feel obliged to warn you that, if you persist in this kind of malignant buffoonery, you will quickly fall victim to your own ineffectual efforts to injure others.  But then, I understand you are prone to suffer from the afflictions you attribute to others."  Even Fradkin could probably spot the sarcastic whine in Wolfe's voice.

What the hell was Wolfe trying to do?  He might as well goad a bull.  I'd eased the door to the warm room wide enough open to slip through without alerting Fradkin, thanks to Wolfe's dislike of squeaks.  Fradkin was facing away from me and partially blocked by the corner of the elevator shaft, but Wolfe was also out of my line of sight, so I couldn't give him the high sign to knock it off.

"You fat pansy."  Fradkin half-turned and I froze.  "All I need to do is say you're trying for some sort of crazy frame-up.  No one's going to believe otherwise."

"Not at all.  Why do you think your fellows came to us with your pathetic toy in the first place?  Your true desires are evident to all of your colleagues, Lieutenant.  They despise you for them, and will accept, as a sufficient motive for your crazed tomfoolery with black magic, your perverse lust for Mr. Goodwin."

That tore it.  I quit trying to sneak and bounded forwards.  As I got around the corner, I saw the gun and moved to intercept, but it was too late.  Fradkin saw me coming, and it was the last straw.  His finger tightened. 

Wolfe wasn't moving, and I couldn't understand why.  I was shouting something as Wolfe's lips pulled back, as he took the bullets front and center, as the blood splattered, as he jackknifed, sweeping a row of Miltonia with him when he collapsed across the bench and slid onto the floor.  I had my hands on Fradkin now, but it was too late.  Fradkin had twisted the gun around, and he fired one last shot, into his own mouth.

No time: I left him there.  Wolfe was my problem now.  Later, I would find I'd ripped up my trousers and chopped up my knees on shards of broken pottery as I knelt beside him, trying to staunch the blood that seemed to be coming from everywhere, vivid and red.  Even as I fumbled, his eyes widened and his mouth opened, more blood flowed out of it, and---he died.

There were no swirling purple specks this time.  Instead, light poured out of him in great surges, of colors surpassing green and blue, shades that transcended indigo and purple, all so bright that I would have been blinded if I was only seeing with my outer eyes.  The light enfolded me, wrapped me tight, and then consumed me.

That was a mistake on his part, and on the part of the one who was warping him. The words were smug, unmistakable, a tiny wisp of fragrant smoke amidst the brilliance that somehow bound the light to itself.

If you weren't already dead, I'd kill you for this, you son of a bitch.

I am glad that this crisis has not overwhelmed your natural contumaciousness, Archie. As the sentence formed, the light that had been Wolfe was searing each tiny bit of me to ashes.  I wanted to moan with the raw pleasure, the sheer, aching, ecstatic joy of it, but I somehow knew there wasn't time to linger.  I couldn't handle this for long and not be irrevocably changed.

Come on, boss, back in the box. As if we were grappling like two wrestlers, or like the lovers we now were, I seized the fire that was Wolfe and consumed it as I was being consumed.  Somewhere, my teeth locked against what was trying to burst out of me.  I found that place and opened my eyelids, to see his body sprawled beneath my hands.  Already, his liquid brown eyes were drying, and his face had gone slack beneath its veil of blood.  I leaned over to press my lips to his, opened my mouth, tasted sweet-salt, and screamed as the light poured out of me, back to where it all belonged. 

I shuddered, my hands still on him, as my body paid the price in the only way it knew how.  Beneath my palms, flesh shifted, changed.  Shaking, I leaned back again to watch as the wounds pulled together, knitted and closed, as light flared and surged violently around him like an aurora borealis in all the colors of a peacock's tail.  His eyes blinked open, and his hands shot up to pull me down across him, before he kissed me, long and hard.

When I pushed back, he frowned up at me.  "You'll need to wash your face."

I cleared my throat, cleared it again, and said, "And that's not all.  Wait until you see what's left of your suit, not to mention those miltonia that you were working with.  Also, there's a dead cop draped across three bags of osmundine."

He scowled.  "Hell and damnation."  He added a word in Serbo-Croatian.  I knew the waiver for cursing was being issued for the sake of the miltonia, not for Fradkin.  Around him, the luminescence still flared and surged.

"You forgot to turn the lights off."

"No, that is quite deliberate, part of the highly useful results of the late Lieutenant's injudicious loss of temper."  He started to sit up, and I helped him.  Where he had lain, there were no bloodstains, only a Wolfe-shaped stretch of clean concrete outlined in gore.

Wolfe frowned.  "I sent Jeremy out to purchase some charcoal.  But where is Saul?"

"Saul?"  I repeated, stupidly.  Then the penny dropped.  "You and your god-damned set ups!"

"It was necessary.  I am concerned about Saul, though."  His eyes narrowed in concentration and then widened.  "We have a visitor.  Saul is now downstairs with her in the office."  I gave him a pointed look and he grimaced.  "Yes, I know, and agree with you, but she is used to seeing such shambles on her visits."

"Oh.  Her."  I turned and went to Fradkin, checked quickly to make sure, then left him there.  Nothing about him demanded my attention.

"Archie," Wolfe called out sharply from the elevator.  I went and joined him.

On the way down, I stood as far from him in the elevator as I could get, which wasn't very.  The light around him reflected from the brass plates and molding, so I knew it was visible to anyone.  Between that and his torn and tattered suit, he was a sight and I was sore.  I said, "Don't think we don't have anything to discuss, because we do.  I'm postponing it, not giving up on it."

He grunted, to let me know he'd heard but wasn't committing himself.

When we went in to the office, Saul got a look at us and his eyes widened.  I gave him a cold stare in return and crossed to my desk.  Wolfe ignored our visitor, sat down, and rang for beer.  When Fritz came in, he gave her the expression that he usually reserves for my lady friends.  She only smiled at him, sweetly.  Wolfe asked, "Would you like something to eat or drink?"

She was wearing black wool and a black hat with a black net veil, as if the daylight of Midtown was too bright for her, or as if she was in fashionable mourning.  I thought it was a nice touch.  Her voice was still warm, but somehow more distant than it had been in the night club downtown.  "A seltzer would be nice, if you have it."  Wolfe, Fritz and Saul all relaxed a little.

Wolfe nodded to Fritz, who beat a hasty retreat.  Then he seated himself, and almost sighed, "Madam?"

"I informed Mr. Goodwin that I hoped to meet you soon, but I had no idea that you would be so eager to entertain me."

The corners of Wolfe's lips quirked.  "Entertain, yes.  Accompany, no.  I did, however, need to speak with you, and hoped that this folly might earn your personal attention."

"It did indeed, Mr. Wolfe."  She lingered over his name with pleased amusement, as if it was a clever joke that she could top.

"Thank you for your interventions in the cases of Mr. Hewitt, Mr. Goodwin, and myself.  I assume some similar accommodation can be made for any bystanders swept up into this nonsense?"

"If they so desire, yes."

"That is sufficient.  Since the divergence of views, there has always been that choice."

"Tradition provides us with a framework for our duties," she agreed.

I looked down at my notebook to hide my exasperation.  Writing down Wolfe's dealings with his fellows was like taking the notes at a ceremonial banquet of Shriners.

"It is plain now that I have not a single, but a group of opponents, of varying capacities.  Given Mr. Goodwin's experiences, one must be of your cadre.  Which of your fellows has grown tired of his duties?  Who is wearied by the seemingly endless march-past of humanity?  "

"We have a fairly complex political situation on our hands at the moment.  I agree with you that one of my more powerful associates is meddling in hopes of altering the course of events up here, which is one reason I had your Mr. Goodwin delivered back to you."  A smile came and went.  "There were two other reasons, of course."

I could tell Wolfe badly wanted to ignore the hint, but felt he couldn't afford to.  "Can you tell me your other two reasons?"

"One was that Mr. Goodwin had earned his return by following the old rubrics.  They are still in place, even though many fewer individuals are capable of meeting their requirements, these days."

Wolfe grunted.  "I'm sure Mr. Goodwin is pleased to hear his own impression of his natural abilities confirmed."  He glanced at me sharply as I started to open my mouth and I turned it into a grin.

"You do not share his opinion of himself?  I was under the impression that each of you had a clear view of the other, with some few exceptions."  One long finger went up and briefly tapped her lips.  "Then I believe it is still for you to discover my third reason.  Remember, though, that there are no safe illusions when one is Downtown, and you are now committed to visiting us, 'Mr. Wolfe.' "

Wolfe's lips stretched slightly, but it wasn't into a smile.  "I realize that, Madam.  I comprehend the risks I run.  The hour grows late, though, and my job more perilous, through no fault of my own.  Unlike my opponents, I am still constrained to remain within the boundaries of my authority.  I will need your permission, in case it becomes necessary for either me or Mr. Goodwin to seek information within your jurisdiction."

"You will have it when you need it.  I can and do suggest, though, that you also seek your answers Upstairs."

Saul straightened so abruptly that I glanced over at him in astonishment.  He never interrupted, either by word or gesture, without a reason when Wolfe was talking with a witness during a case.

She turned to him and gave a ladylike snort.  "Do you think that we Downtown are the only ones to have formed particularities?  Human flesh is not just a suit of overalls to be put on and cast off as soiled when the day's work is done, no matter what you and your colleagues may think."

Saul's jaw firmed.  "I don't think that."

She stared at him, unblinking, for several seconds before she said, "Perhaps you don't.  You have learned something, then, Saul Panzer."  Suddenly, she laughed, and nothing had ever sounded warmer and colder at the same time.  "I love the way you men choose your names.  It is like the games that children play while they still think that foreign languages are magical."  She looked up at Fritz, who had entered during this last bit with both her seltzer water and a single slice of toast, topped with some sort of pâté, on a silver tray.  "Your name is especially entertaining, Mr. Brenner."

Fritz somehow managed to look gratified and reproving at the same time.  "Thank you, Madame."  He proffered the tray to her, and she smiled up at him with a wattage that made me blink as she picked up the toast from its plate and took a healthy bite.

"Delicious," she said, and both Wolfe and Saul, who had been as tense as two terriers at a rat hole since Fritz had come in, seemed to breath as one.  She took the seltzer and Fritz bowed, now only gratified, and left again.  She sipped, before she said to Wolfe, "I would imagine that you will use your short liberty with care?"

He didn't answer.  He had leaned back in his chair, and his lips were pushing in and out.  She blinked at him thoughtfully, then settled back, sipped her seltzer, and munched her toast, waiting.  After four minutes he abruptly straightened and, to my surprise looked at me.  "Archie.  Will you please go to the kitchen for a few minutes?"

It was damn raw, but I'd been doing some thinking, too.  He should have been surprised when I said, "Yes, sir," got up, and went without further comment, but he was too focused to pay proper attention.  Saul understood, I could tell, but he didn't say anything.

I went into the kitchen, where Fritz was just closing the door of the oven.  He looked at me enquiringly.  "Archie?  You are disheveled.  There is blood."

"It's been that kind of a day."  I sat down on my stool.  "Okay, so I made a classic high school boy's mistake.  Just because you're easy, I shouldn't have been ignoring you."

He tried to look shocked but ended up giggling, instead.  No wonder it had never given me any doubts about his fundamentals.

"You and Saul are both keeping an eye on Wolfe, right?  Saul's the outside man and you're the inside man, but you're both---spiritual observers.  Referees.  You're watching to see if he breaks the rules of the game now that he's in the thick of it."

"It is not a game, Archie, but you are otherwise correct."  Fritz turned the heat down under a saucepan and went over to sit down in his chair.  Sometimes, even now, his feet hurt, a souvenir of the last war.  "He knows, you understand, and approves.  We both have great respect for him.  With me, there is also more, and with M. Panzer, too, I believe.  M. Wolfe is quite certainly a genius."

"Yeah."  I wondered why I felt irritated, when I was finally getting the answers I'd wanted.  "You don't all necessarily agree on how to handle things, though."

"I prefer knowledge, even when it is difficult to convey to the outside observer."  He inspected the fruit bowl in front of him contemplatively.  "He has seen such mixed results, he does not believe in truth to the degree that he claims."

"Okay, let me back up and make sure I have this straight.  Way back when, there was a big argument among the powers that were about how local affairs should be run."

"Yes, Archie, it was quite dramatic.  Tales are still told."

"From said stories, and from knowing him, I'd bet he was championing our right to go to hell in a hand basket all by ourselves.  Wolfe's side won, but he somehow got stuck with the clean-up job after the brawl."

Fritz nodded, frowned, and then went over to check the contents of the oven before he sat down again.

"But, at the same time, he's getting paid for doing whatever the work is because, what, no one else wants to do it?"

Fritz shrugged.  "He is nothing to what he was.  He will never live in his homeland again.  It was his choice."

"And he took the job anyhow?  That doesn't sound like him."

Fritz only repeated, "He is not what he was."  He added, "I like M. Wolfe better, now."  He reached out, picked up a tomato, and examined it.  "Cooking is wonderful."

"Don't you start.  I've had enough parables, allegories, and epigrams in the last couple of days to last me a lifetime."

He smiled that sweet, far-away smile of his.  "No, Archie, I enjoy the cooking I do for him.  That is all I mean.  I am glad that you will have the time to cultivate your palate, to the degree it is possible."

"I will if I don't get shot in the next couple of years."

"The war is a difficulty," he agreed, sadly.  "It is convenient if more watchers must be assigned, but I still do not like it.  The Germans have a great deal to answer for, again."

I asked, slowly, "Was it Saul who taught Wolfe how to do the overalls trick with a human body?"

"I doubt there was need, for it is not complicated.  M. Panzer may have suggested the tactic."  Fritz pursed his lips.  "I would not have.  M. Wolfe was lucky.  He is not of our kind.  His sort should not enwrap themselves although they sometimes do.  The effects are not as predictable for M. Wolfe and his sort as they are for us, and it could have gone wrong."

"Yeah."  I felt another piece fall into place inside my skull, and I could have smacked myself, it was so obvious.  Seemingly, Wolfe hadn't been the only one distracted.  "Oh, nuts."

"Archie?"  Fritz sounded worried.

"It's okay.  We just have a tricky job and some tough opponents, is all.  Damned if I see how he expects to pull all this off, though."

"Ah," said Fritz, ever the pragmatist, "but you will still be paid?"

"In this household?  You can bet on it."  The house phone rang and I went to pick it up.  It was Wolfe, telling me to come back to the office.  I washed my face, then went.

I half expected her to be gone, but she was still there, thoughtfully regarding her complexion in a silver powder compact.  For a miracle, Wolfe was ignoring her.  Saul was missing, though.

"You needed me for something, sir?"  I thought I'd made it subtle, but she pressed her lips together to suppress a smile.

Wolfe gave me a bleak look.  "Theodore is not dead, it seems.  Also, you did not report on your visit with Mr. Smith."

"I was distracted," I said, sweetly.  "Funny how that can happen.  Shall I report now, sir?"

"Yes.  Do."

I have enough self-respect that I wasn't going to do a bad job just to spite His Fatness.  However, unlike the Princess, our current visitor didn't seem terribly interested in my performance.  About half way through, she started contemplating the orchids on Wolfe's desk.  When I finished, she asked, "May I be permitted to see the legendary greenhouses?"

Wolfe's face was a picture.  The conflict of wariness, pride in his orchids, and sheer irritation at something he'd undoubtedly consider feminine scatter-brained behavior, overcame his usual brusque courtesy.  "Bah!"  came out of him as if it had been shot from the mouth of a large-bellied mortar.  She smiled, I grinned.  I have to admit, it soothed my bruised ego.

"There is a dead body upstairs," I pointed out.  She looked at me, still smiling, and raised a single eyebrow.  I felt the grin slide off of my face.

"Perhaps I can be of assistance."

"Thank you, madam," Wolfe said, still sounding skittish.  Fradkin probably hadn't let anyone know where he was going, but we still didn't want to have to deal with his mess.

Of course, when we got up to the greenhouse Fradkin was gone and there was another hole in the roof.