I was on the dance floor when Wolfe first called my name, so he had to say it twice.

That was in October of 1941. The floor of the Rainbow Room was crowded with dancers grabbing one last chance to pretend that they were carefree, even though all the uniforms made the pretence a fairly thin one.  Since Lily was out of town, I had been dancing with an old friend from the Upper East Side.  She was usually a good dancer, but that evening she kept missing steps.  Her brother was over in England acting Canadian for the R.A.F., she worried, and it distracted her.  We had already agreed that it was time to call it an evening when I heard my name.

"Archie."  There it was again, closer this time.  I started, and it was my turn to miss a step.

My partner sighed.  "I stepped on your foot again, didn't I?"

"No," I said absently, scanning the tables around the edges of the dance floor.  He wasn't there, of course.

"Oh, it's no good.  Come and put me in a taxi."

I got her wrap and my coat from the coat check girl, and escorted her out and down the elevators.  The R.C.A. doorman whistled for a cab, and she kissed me on the cheek before she got in and the cabbie pulled away from the curb.  After settling my fedora firmly onto my head and wrapping my scarf around my neck, I decided to walk the blocks back to the brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street.  If I was starting to hear voices, I needed some fresh air before I went to bed.

I turned down a dark cross-street.  The only sounds were my own footsteps on the concrete sidewalks and the far off honks from late night traffic.  A siren rose and died away again.  A few left-over dead leaves scuttled past me as I walked across the mouth of an alley, scattered by a hard, cold gust of wind.  I dug my hands deep into my overcoat pockets.  I was thinking about what Wolfe was going to do once I was in the army when he called my name for the third, and final, time.

I'd been preoccupied enough that I spoke without thinking.  "Yes, sir?"

Good.  It was close, right behind me, in fact.  I turned, and there Wolfe was.  He was drifting about a foot above the ground, faintly glowing.

I gaped.  He scowled at me and spoke.  This time, no sound reached my ears.  Instead, the words marched through my brain.  Try not to react when I converse with you.  You may be being observed.  Either I had lost my marbles, or---the notion of him dead made me swallow.  His eyes narrowed.  Try not to react, I said.  You resemble a befuddled codfish.

I straightened.  Nero Wolfe, pain in the ass from beyond the grave, I could handle.  I thought, What do you mean, react?  It's a new look for you, but not one bad enough to give me hysterics.  Anyway, what was so important that it couldn't wait for me to come home?  I didn't work to make it sting.  For all I knew, he was contemplating an eternity without Fritz's meals and the ten thousand orchids on the roof of the brownstone.

Wolfe let out an inaudible sigh.  Archie, I have been forced into a corner, and have succeeded in finding you only at a cost that I can not afford to expend a second time.  I need you to rescue me, but to do so in a way that will profoundly differ from your usual efforts.  You will also need to do so without alerting your possible---no, probable---observer.

He flickered for a moment and then firmed, looking tired, but game.  Go to Saul Panzer's.  Attempt to make it evident en route that you lost some possession that you deem important during last evening's poker game.  Once you have entered Saul's apartment, it will be safe to speak with me out loud.

He closed his eyes.  I didn't like the way he seemed to pull in on himself and fade.  He looked like a neon sign dying slowly in the night.  I hurriedly faked a shiver, walked another half block, shivered again, and hailed a taxi.  As the cab pulled up I patted my trouser pockets, the way you do to check if you have cash for the trip, before I said a sharp word.  Wolfe had given me a bill clip for my birthday last week that I had been more than a little pleased by:  it was fourteen-karat, and engraved with my initials and a P.I.'s shield.  In the taxi, I turned out my pockets making sure that I palmed the clip.  When the cabby started getting nervous about his fare, I took the emergency fin out of my card case and waved it at him.

"I think I left my money clip at a friend's house.  That's where we're going."

"I don't care where we go, so long as you pay me when we get there."  The name on his license looked Czech, but I could tell he was going to do fine in Manhattan.

All through this, Wolfe drifted above the backseat beside me, shining with a color closer to the purple he hated than anything else I could think of.  He had his eyes closed and his lips were working in and out.  That told me he was busy revving his brain.  I could only hope that he would come up with a simple way to clean up this mess since I really didn't want to deal with anyone who could force him to imitate a lit advertisement for gourmet food and beer consumption.

When we got to Saul's building, the cabby looked at me funny when I forgot and held the taxi door open for Wolfe, and Wolfe scowled at me, which struck me as unnecessary.  So, when I went in the revolving door, I let him fend for himself.  It was a real treat to watch him walk past the doorman and through the panes of glass like they were so many lawyers, but I couldn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to, given how grim he looked.

At the door to Saul's apartment, I knocked.  We were in luck;  Saul was home.  He opened his door, eyed me up and down, and let himself smile.  Saul has a hatchet nose, deep-set eyes, and strong brows.  A smile takes a while to climb up his face, so I was honored that he counted me worth the effort.  When he chooses to take a job, he's the second-best detective in New York, if you count Wolfe.

"Look what the cat dragged in.  You must be hot to pay me that five bucks you owe me."

"Yup.  In fact, I'm so eager that I already paid you; you just didn't know it.  I left my clip here last night."

Saul's eyebrows went up.  "You sure? I haven't seen it."

"Last time I had it was when I was exsanguinating for Lon at the end of the evening."

I saw Wolfe's eyes narrow at my use of 'exsanguinating'.  He wanted to make some crack about my misusing big words, but he couldn't, and it frustrated him.

"Maybe it fell out of your pocket when you were hogging the good armchair.  Cosmic justice."  Saul stood back, opened the door wide, and swept me a bow.  "You might as well come in and help me toss the place.  All you interrupted was two guys debating the peacetime draft on the radio."

"Oh, yeah?  Got any popcorn?"  I followed Saul into the apartment, and he shut the door behind me.

Without missing a beat, he turned and said, "Good Evening, Mr. Wolfe."

Good evening, Saul.

"Great," I said, "we haven't even started, and I'm already the only one who doesn't know what's going on.  I don't know why you two don't fix this up yourselves and leave me to my social life."

Shut up, Archie, Wolfe thought.  I wish I had the time and security to listen to you blather.  It would fuel a warming blaze of irritation amidst this cold Siberia of discomfort.  I fear, though, that we have too little time left for such self-indulgence.

I admit it; that shut me up.  I still woke up nights sweating about the last time I'd been through this mill alone.  If Wolfe was feeling hard pressed---

Saul, I have fallen afoul of unknown opponents.  They succeeded in drawing me out of my body, but failed in their attempt to confine my immaterial corpus.  Instead, I withdrew into the shadows, a tactic that has denied them a complete victory at the cost of much of my ability to sally.

"Wait a minute," I said, "I want to make sure I'm getting this right.  Your body is, what, tucked up in your bed in the brownstone?"

Wolfe nodded, impatient but willing to explain.  Yes.  To the outside observer I would appear to be cataleptic, or perhaps comatose.  It will not matter unless I am destroyed in this form.  In that case, my body will die.

That rocked me back, but I covered up by shaking my head.  "Hell.  This is what I get for indulging you.  Two years back, when I figured out that something fishy was going on, I should have quit.  Either that or not given up until I pried out of you the details of your secret identity as Nero the Great, the world's most corpulent conjurer."  I expected a scowl in return, but that's not what I got.

For once, you are correct to tax me, Archie.  This is entirely my fault.  In a misplaced attempt to protect you, I have instead left you vulnerable to a vicious and deadly opponent.  I apologize.

Wolfe will say sorry when he thinks he needs to, but it's rare for him to leave himself that wide open in public, even in front of Saul, who is family.  I shrugged and smiled.  I didn't want to be smart in return, so that didn't leave me with much to say.

You have followed my lead, based on faith alone, many times in the past.  Can I impose on you again?  There is more at stake in all of this than a single life, as you will discover.

"Sure, I'll play the straight man.  After all, being your bodyguard is numbered among my sixty-seven other duties."  I could feel other words wanting to escape out of my mouth and chained them back up.  There was no time to go soft, and Wolfe would hate it.

Saul watched us, his eyes as still as a well.  "What do you want me to do, Mr. Wolfe?"

Given your role, you obviously can not intervene.  Can you, however, advise others?

Saul nodded.  "That's not a problem, sir."

Then, will you show Archie the first steps into the internal labyrinth?  He will need to be able to communicate with me if he is to serve as the anchor to stave off my dissolution.

It wasn't until much later I figured out what it cost Saul to say yes.  He did, though, and Wolfe disappeared so quickly it seemed as if he were late for his hours in some immaterial greenhouse on the roof of the world.  I opened my mouth to speak, and he was gone.  I closed my mouth and turned to Saul.

"The internal labyrinth?  Since when do you speak Southern Californian, Saul?"

Saul snorted.  "I'll let my hair grow and buy some sunglasses.  It's a kind of meditative exercise with a little ritual magic thrown in, to make you dive down under the surface of your own consciousness.  It'll get you to where Wolfe is."

As the loaded bookshelves in his apartment indicated, Saul was a lot more educated than he let on.  It's one of the traits that has given him the edge over me as a private operative.  But, when it came to religion, I had him pegged for a skeptic.  It was a shock to find out that he'd been studying the supernatural on the side

"Fine, that makes sense.  In a manner of speaking.  If I make allowances.  What happens after I dive into my belly button?"

"Right now, Wolfe's weakened by being cut off from his body.  Since you two have known each other for a while, you'll be able to find him and he can borrow some of your corporeality.  Don't worry, that part won't hurt."

Saul didn't have to clue me in that the rest of the proceedings would somehow hurt.  I had already figured on it, since there are no free rides, and few of the ones worth taking are cheap.  Even so, I don't think I was trying to stall when I quizzed him again.

"Okay.  Two last questions.  Why can't the guy who is after Wolfe eavesdrop on your place?  And, why aren't you taking this job instead of me?  You seem to know what's going on.  I'm over here in the dark, running into things."

Saul looked me over, and decided to turn gentle.  "Same answer to both questions, Archie.  Jurisdiction dispute."

"Jurisdiction dispute?  Come on, Saul, I need some solid information, here."

Saul shrugged.  "Just like I said, jurisdiction dispute."  He saw from my expression that I wasn't going to swallow without a look at the label.  "It's something in my past, from before you knew me." Still no soap:  I knew Wolfe needed the best, and that looked to be Saul, not me.  He hesitated, and then reluctantly added, "I used to be, well, call it a creature of the empyrean, sort of an observing spirit."

Living with Wolfe had stretched my vocabulary.  "The empy---what, like an angel?"

"Yeah, if you look at it one way, roughly that's it."  His face was a little flushed.  He wasn't kidding.  I had to sit down. 

"You want a drink, Archie?  It'll have to be water, given where you're going."

"Yeah, sure."  I watched him go into the kitchen and slowly shook my head.  It is true that, of all the people I knew, Saul Panzer would have been my first pick for a veteran of the celestial wars.  He seemed to stand on the threshold of the room that everyone else was living in, giving you the feeling, in any situation, that he knew just a little more than he should.  I had always chalked it up to his being such a great detective.  If Saul's claim was true, a big if, I'd had it wrong all these years.  I should have chalked it up to his being---no, that was crazy.  This was crazy.  Even more than fuzzy terrors or Wolfe talking in my head, it was crazy.

It all started to spin away from me until I thought of Wolfe floating around like an incandescent barrage balloon.  I need you to rescue me.

Saul brought me a glass, and I took it and drained it.  Okay, I'd make it three, maybe four, to one that he thought he was telling the truth.  Of course, it was one gets you four that I was beating my head against the wall of a padded room somewhere, but there was nothing I could do about that possibility.  I put the empty glass down on Saul's rug.  "Fine.  What do we do?"

Saul took a last sip and set his beer bottle down on a coaster.  "Well, first I put on some mood music."  He looked at me and smiled.  "Stop grimacing, you ape.  Meanwhile, take off your shoes and belt, because you're going to be lying on the couch for a while."

He went to his collection of records while I got comfortable.  The music he selected and played on the turntable tried to crawl right up my backbone and sink its claws in. 

"Stravinsky.  Rite of Spring.  When the tyrannosaurus showed up, I thought of Wolfe spotting an orchid with aphids."

"Uh huh."  I should have remembered he knew my opinion of the piece;  he'd been there when I saw the movie.  "Sorry, Archie, this isn't really the time for critical commentary.  I need to burn some incense."  He got what looked like a bronze dragon down off of his bookshelves, loaded it up with something suspicious out of a tobacco humidor, and took out his Zippo. 

"Do me a favor, Saul."

"Calm down, it'll smell like pine."  He set the burner down on the end table next to my head.  He was right.  The scent wasn't too bad.  It reminded me of a trip I took a few years back to Santa Fe during the fall.  Saul turned the lights off, except for a mission floor lamp that he moved close and then turned down low.

"Okay, end of the easy part.  Now, stare at the lampshade and try to relax while I get the juice."  Saul went to his holdout;  I won't say where it was, because I might want to use the trick myself some day.  When he came back, he had one of those kits that they issue to nurses, only I would give a hundred to one that the little bottles didn't contain painkillers.

"What the hell?"  I demanded.

"This is where it gets ugly, Archie.  It's a mix of stuff, only some of which is legal.  It'll knock you off your feet, but we're in a hurry and this will lay you out right where we want you to be.  Roll up your sleeve."

I took out my left cufflink, half of another present from Wolfe---as if I needed the reminder---and rolled up my sleeve, while he got a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the bathroom.  Then he used a cotton ball to swab the inside of my elbow.  He raised both eyebrows at me, cleared the needle of the hypodermic, pushed it through the rubber membrane of the bottle, and pulled back the plunger.

I looked back at him.  "So, there is no other way to do this."  I'd like to think that it was more of a statement than a question.

"Oh, yes, there are other ways you could do this."  Saul held the hypodermic up to the light and squeezed a bit of the dose off the tip.  "You could lie naked on a glacier wrapped in a wet sheet, or fast for forty days, or pull a line of fish hooks through your tongue.  The trick is always the same, to swamp your brain in its own chemicals so that the older systems can rise up and take over.  This will do the job faster, though, and it's neat."

"So, fine, I still don't have to like it."  I sat up.  "Hand it over."  I took the rubber tube and hypodermic away from him, tied off my arm, and injected myself.  Saul was surprised, I could tell, but I'd never claimed I'd told him all my stories, any more than he had told me all of his.  The mix didn't feel like much going in.  I even had time to get the tourniquet off before it hit.

I think I spasmed.  Saul was right there, holding me down until I went limp.  I watched him do it from about six feet up in the air above my own head.  I should have shaved this morning.

I heard him say "Archie?"  Then he looked up and repeated it without moving his lips, Archie?  I looked back down at him.  He looked no different from above if you ignored the fact that he glowed like a magnesium flare.  He seemed startled, though. 

Don't tell me something has gone wrong, I thought at him.

He blinked.  "He told me, but--- you're fast, is all.  You could have made some living as a trance medium."

Like the German guy that the mad doctor kept in a box at the carnival?  Nope.  Working for Wolfe is bad enough, thanks.

Saul's living room also looked about the same if I ignored the colors.  Anyone who has ever seen sunlight hit a stack of white paper on a bright day may know what colors I mean.  The ream glints purple around the edges, with a tinge of shades that you don't so much see as sense.  I remember I asked Wolfe about it once at dinner.  He looked interested, pumped me for details, and then followed up with a thirty-minute lecture on spectra, heredity, and the extrema of human sensory ranges, none of which I paid much attention to.  Fritz was serving corn cakes that day.

Saul whistled to get my attention.  "Hey, don't drift off.  It's easy to do, and you'll be sorry."

I nodded and tried to focus.  It wasn't simple, because of the guy on the sofa.  I distracted me.  I pretended I was back in the brownstone, giving Wolfe a report, and that helped.

"Good.  Now go out the other door and up the elevator.  You'll find Wolfe there."

What other door, Saul?  This place only has one exit.

"Over there, Archie." He pointed towards the wall by the kitchen, the one where he had a framed print of View of Toledo.  The painting had been replaced by a wooden door, its paint slightly weatherworn, of the kind you see at the top of half the stoops in Manhattan. 

I looked to Saul for further instructions, and he shrugged.  "Sorry.  You're on your own.  Just handle it like any other fieldwork and trust your instincts."

Well, I'd been stuck with the baby before.  I thought about going over to the door, and I felt myself drift.  As I moved away from the body on the couch, my own body seemed to form around me.  I turned around.  There I was on the couch.  I looked down.  Here I was:  weird.  I shrugged myself, went over, and opened the door.