Wolfe's latest eccentricity wasn't an obvious one.  I don't know how much longer it would have taken me to notice something strange was going on if I hadn't let myself be talked into attending a house party in the Hamptons.  It was 1939, Lily Rowan and I were still in the early days of our friendship, and we hadn't yet worked through her address book to find out who I could tolerate and who I wouldn't put up with.  I was learning that she had a wide variety of acquaintances and liked mixing people in about the same way that Harry the bartender down at P.J. Clarke's liked mixing obscure liquors, both to sample the taste of the resulting potions and to enjoy the reactions of the customers.  So, that first weekend in December I ended up serving time in her big house with some real characters, ones almost as guilty as Wolfe of offensive individuality in the first degree.

To add to the fun, Saturday she threw a gala benefit affair for the Red Cross.  The entire house was full of people indulging their charitable impulses by eating, drinking, and gossiping just as hard as they possibly could.  It was quite the social blend although, any way I chose to look at it, Ed Ingram turned out to be the prize in that eighteen room box of crackerjacks. 

Restless people get on my nerves, and Ingram couldn't keep his hands away from his glasses, suspenders, and tie.  He'd adjust the first, run his fingers up and down the second, and move on to tugging at the third before starting all over again.  It made an interesting contrast to his Arrow Shirt features and the hand-tailored Savile Row suits.  Five minutes after I met him, I was ready to shake him off.  Then he mentioned his greenhouses.  Unlike Wolfe, I'm no self-proclaimed horticulturalist, but I do pay attention when the subject of gardening comes up.  There's always a chance that I'll learn something about plants before Wolfe does, which is good for a laugh or three.  Ingram turned out to be quite the enthusiast.  In fact, he described a timed sprinkler system that I knew would make Wolfe drool, if only metaphorically, with envy.  Most times I would've settled for taking mental notes and reporting back, but Christmas was coming and Wolfe had long been fat.  Each year it was a struggle to drop something in his hat.  A nice set of blueprints of a revolutionary sprinkler system with appropriate plumbing and wiring diagrams would go a long way towards solving my problem, so I smiled gently, instead of cracking wise, and let Ingram go on fidgeting.  After a while my patience was rewarded, if not in any way I'd anticipated.

Ingram interrupted himself in the middle of a long monologue about cacti.  He folded both hands together to keep them quiet and asked me, "Wait a minute.  You're Archie Goodwin?  Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin?"

"My own Archie Goodwin, but I do work for Nero Wolfe, yes."

"You're a private inquiries agent."  He was still for a moment except for his eyebrows, which twitched.  "I have an inquiry."  The volume had dropped so low that I was sure his difficulty was either marital, blackmail, or strong-arm.  I wasn't too wild about any of those alternatives.  Before I finished considering how far I was willing to go to trump Wolfe's hand on Christmas Eve, Ingram opened up again.  "You'll laugh at me."

After raising my own eyebrows, I decided he was serious.  So, I picked up my bourbon on the rocks from its parking place on the black marble art-deco mantelpiece and walked him over towards the edge of the room where the crowd was thinner.  En route, he appropriated a fresh martini from Mimi, Lily's maid, probably so he could play with the olive speared on a toothpick.

Once I had myself planted between him and the other party guests, I said, "If I was in the habit of laughing at clients, I would've been out of the business a long time ago.  Feel free to give me a hint."

"It's a ghost."  There wasn't even time for me to blink before he followed up.  "Not a real ghost.  Someone's trying to scare my gardeners."  His expression was as fierce as if someone had tried to palm a detachable celluloid collar off on him.

Fake haunting was a new wrinkle, all right, but it was better than the other possibilities.  I made an inquiring noise.

"They want my prize geraniums."  Fine.  They could have them.  I only wanted his sprinkler system.  "I can't keep gardeners, and, sooner or later, someone is going to slip a ringer in on me and steal some of my seed stock.  I have it all figured out.  It's the only explanation that makes any sense."

"I take it you don't have a weak heart."

"What?  No." He waved an impatient hand, before taking a sip from the glass in it.  "There are no such things as ghosts."  He put the drink down on a lacquered end table so he could straighten his cuffs.  At least he hit the coaster.

I didn't believe in ghosts myself, nor did anyone else I knew except for my late Aunt Viola, the spiritualist.  And, if she had been right, she hadn't shown up to tell me about it.  "Your gardeners were believers, I take it."

"Every man Jack of them.  Five.  Five have quit in less than six months, can you imagine?  In this economy?"  He didn't seem to think this called for any additional response from me.  "They all say something comes after them at night in the greenhouse.  I can't get them to stay over for fumigation, or the threat of frost, or anything.  What in Hades is the point of a gardener who won't fumigate?"

Not much, I knew.  "Is the greenhouse isolated from the main part of the house?"

"No, attached.  I'm in Manhattan proper.  But, there are locks on the interior doors, and, I assure you, they are good ones.  I've had the locks changed twice, and the second time I kept the only key for myself.  And, if that isn't a bloody nuisance---"  He took another sip, fished out the olive, and put the glass back down.

"Any description of your spook?"

Ingram snorted.  "Oh, it makes noise.  And it's cold.  Or big and black.  It glows.  It crawls.  It wafts.  There's slime, blood, ashes.  Whatever the stultified imagination of the common man, as cued by Hollywood, can come up with, that's what it does."

The inconsistency was interesting.  Still probing, I said, "Your problem sounds like something any good inquiry agency could wrap in about a week with the usual methods.  They'd find out, for example, if your former employees suddenly have extra cash to wave around or your servants do."

"I don't want the usual methods.  I want the best."

It was my turn to snort.  "Because I'm a guest of the house, I'll let myself be blunt.  This time of year you won't even get inside Nero Wolfe's front door.  He's reached the level of income where he'll be working as much for the tax man as himself, so he's taking a Christmas break.  And, in any case, he doesn't poke at the so-called supernatural, even with a stick.  In his mind, it's one step below domestic cases, and he doesn't do domestic."

This time, the left hand crept towards his tie.  He restrained it.  "What about you?"

"What about me? I'm good, I'm very good, but I'm no genius, and I'm employed."

"Couldn't you," he frowned, "I'm not sure, take a walk around the place, and see if you can observe anything? At night?"

I let my shoulders move up and down.  "I might, but it's not something for which I could take money.  I have a boss.  All of Manhattan knows I have a boss, as well as parts of the deep South, the Rocky Mountains, and---"

"You want my sprinkler system."  Well, I said he was restless, not a sap.  Brown eyes narrowed, he assessed me.  Both hands crept up and adjusted the knot on his tie.  It must have helped the blood flow to his brain because he decided.  "All right.  I'd much rather the sprinklers than my geraniums.  Right now?  This evening?"

"Okay." Lily was not going to be pleased, but, given the nature of the crowds I'd been dealing with for the last day and a half, neither was I.  When I tore her away from a lady soprano to let her know I was leaving early, I could tell she was irritated, but I wasn't one of her former admirers.  Unlike them, I had always been up front about not being on her leash, which is why, in those early days, she kept calling back.  Every once in a while, though, she would forget and have to be reminded.

"Someday, buster," she said thoughtfully, "and on that day I want to be there."

"No you don't.  For one thing, you'd have to wear your best hat, sit on the groom's side of the church, and then watch everyone else in the congregation stare at the bride, and you've told me you'd hate that."

The look she gave me in return was half way between annoyed and amused.  "Don't count on it.  You may be the one stuck in a Windsor tie and a wooden pew."  She gave me her hand before I left, but when she returned to the party it was to the side of a male dancer fresh out from Hollywood, not the female songbird.  Fair enough.  She was also up front about being an independent, which is one reason why I kept calling back

I'd driven the convertible that comes along with my job out from Manhattan, and, since we were leaving early, Ingram went to call and cancel his car before I gave him a lift back along the parkway and into the City.  It gave me a chance to pick his brains in a quieter place than the one we'd just left.

"Have you seen this whatever-it-is yourself?"

"No, it avoids me.  That's why it must be the geraniums."  He reached for the glove compartment, stopped himself, and then started fooling with the contents of his coat pockets.  "It doesn't bother my other employees, either.  There's a couple that takes care of me, the Harrisons.  They've never seen it, and neither have any of the girls who come in to clean during the day.  Too much risk we'll see the fake for whatever it really is in daylight, I suppose."

"How about your driver?"

"He hasn't seen it, but he's not often in the house."  He came up with the toothpick from the martini olive, stared at it for a moment, and then stuck it into his mouth.  "And, before you ask, I checked.  No one's been making inquiries about buying or redeveloping the property."

For the rest of the trip, I took him through the exact sequence of supposedly supernatural events, twice.  Like he'd said, at first glance there didn't seem to be much of a pattern to the proceedings, aside from the so-called ghost's liking for midnight visits to the greenhouse.  I decided to reserve judgment, and further questions, until I'd examined the layout of his house.  So, we turned to talking about the internal politics of the various New York horticultural societies.  It was amusing to hear their opinions of Wolfe, especially those held by the distaff members, and I made careful mental notes for future reference.

Ingram had a red brick house, decked out with a lacey wrought-iron porch, all to himself on Gramercy Park.  When he'd finished chatting with his housekeeper, he showed me around.  The greenhouse was connected both to the first floor hallway and a music room full of Nipponese knick-knacks.  It was a two-story affair, occupying space that, once upon a time, must have been the kitchen gardens.  The structure was all of iron and glass, including the balcony hung with pots and baskets that extended all the way around the greenhouse.  Foliage dangled down, almost touching the patterned tile floor below.  You might have called the room a conservatory if it wasn't for the workman-like concrete benches covered in potted plants arranged in rows on the ground level.  Ingram gave me the grand tour, including a long pause to admire the famous geraniums, and then left me to my work.

I checked the entire place with care, which took me a good two hours.  There wasn't anything I hadn't seen before except for the sprinkler system.  By the time I was done, it was half past eleven, and I was more than ready to pillage the tray of sandwiches Ingram's butler had left for me in the music room.  After switching off the lights in the greenhouse, I went to have my dinner.  The ham and cheese on white was no better than average.  When I was done, I decided it was too late to hunt up Jeeves and his Mrs. for a talk, so I settled in to wait for midnight.

Sure enough, the clock over the mantelpiece had barely stopped chiming for the twelfth time when I heard a faint noise from the direction of the greenhouse.  It sounded as if several someones were running razorblades around and around the lips of wine glasses or as if something was skittering across the panes of a window, something with lots of legs tipped with metal claws.  I stood up, wishing for a moment that I had a gun, or a knife, or a brick.  Instead, I lifted the lamp on the desk next to me and tilted it so that the pool of light it cast illuminated the area behind a Japanese folding screen where the door to the greenhouse stood open.  Nothing there but a sound in darkness.

There was a knickknack on the table next to me, a brass fish that was about the right shape, size, and heft to serve as an informal set of knucks.  Taking a deep breath, I put the lamp down, turned it off, picked up my new friend, and soft-footed it over to the connecting door.  The light switches were inside the small foyer between the music room and the greenhouse.  I went to turn on the lights, and, of course, they didn't work.  I don't read horror stories, so I didn't know this was my cue to turn tail and run.  Instead, I eased along the side of the foyer into the greenhouse and then paused.  The noise had stopped. 

Since I'd last been in there, the moon had risen, and the far side of the greenhouse was now faintly lit by its glow.  However, since all the hanging plants cast shadows and the screen in the music room was blocking any remaining light behind me, I shouldn't be easily visible to an observer in the greenhouse.  Making as little noise as I could, I moved further into the greenhouse along the back wall and then froze again, listening.

There was nothing to be heard, not even a plant rustling.  I stretched my eyelids wide, letting my eyes adjust to the dim lighting, and didn't see anything new.  Without moving my head, I rolled my eyes, checking the benches and then the balconies.  That was when I spotted it.  All of a sudden I understood why the gardeners said that the thing shone, was dark, was bloody, was cold as ice.  It was all of those things but none of them.

It looked like nothing more than a wad of fuzz about the size of a hand, drifting maybe four or five feet above the far end of the balcony in a patch of moonlight.  If my brain had been working right, the thing might have reminded me of cottonwood fluff or some kind of lint.  My brain wasn't working right.  It was too busy trying to find a reason for me to be panting and sweating, for the chills that were rippling across my skin as I fought not to vomit or soil myself.  The raw sensation would have made sense if what I was looking at was a ghost, or a monster, or a demon, so my brain kept trying to produce one for me.  But thirteen years experience as a P.I.  left me trapped with reality.  All that was floating in the moonlight was some fuzz, and I feared it as I'd never feared anything in my life.  When it started to waft down from the balcony, I smothered a noise and backed up three paces before I could make myself stop.

"Archie."  It was one sharp word from behind me, said in the familiar baritone.

When I heard Wolfe's voice, I whirled around.  I couldn't tell you now if it was to grab and shove the fat fool out of danger or just to grab him.  No one was there.  Now the thing was behind me.  But, since I wasn't looking at it, I was only terrified, not paralyzed.  I beat it back to the doorway to the foyer before I turned around again.  It was floating over the central bench, the one with the geraniums, making little darts in various directions.  My skin crawled as I realized it was hunting, hunting as if it couldn't see its prey.  I wrenched my gaze away.

I was about to hot-foot it back into the music room when I felt---something.  It wasn't quite a touch, and it wasn't quite the twitch I feel when my hunches kick in.  It was more like the feeling I get when Wolfe gives me a certain glance during one of his showdowns, and I, all of a sudden, know who the killer in the room is.  The whole affair was a set-up.  Someone, or something, was waiting for me back in the music room.

I've done harder things than go back into that greenhouse, but I don't want to do any of those again, either.  I didn't look.  I just moved fast.  Keeping to the shadows of the foliage dangling from the balcony, with my eyes fixed firmly on my destination, I made it to the door to the front hallway and got through it.  When I shut that thick oak door behind me and locked it, I made myself stay put until I couldn't hear my own breathing.  Then I unclenched my fist.  One of the fins on the brass fish had cut into my palm, so I switched hands.  Somewhere in the house, a door slammed.

I moved fast, but it had been the front door.  When I crossed the entranceway and wrenched the door open, nothing was outside but someone's Persian cat crossing the street towards the private park in the square.  There were no pedestrians on the sidewalks, no moving cars on the cobblestones, and no beat cop.  That, as it turned out, was just as well.  Taking it slow, I strolled out onto the porch, down the front stairs to the sidewalk, and double-checked.  I could hear honks in the distance and the trees in the park rustling a little but no other noises.  After I went back in, I took a deep breath, decided to check the greenhouse, and found nothing.

There was nothing to be seen in the music room, either, but there was a faint smell that made my nose wrinkle.  I took a deep breath with my mouth half open and decided that the scent reminded me of flowers that have been left standing in water too long.  Shaking my head, I put the brass fish back where it belonged.  When I set it down on the table, I noticed I'd bled on the fish, so I took out my handkerchief and wiped the knickknack off before I searched the room.  I didn't find anything, but I also didn't bother to argue with my sense that something had been in there, waiting for me.

The rest of the house was quiet.  Now my skin had stopped crawling and my jaw was clenched, and temper kept me going while I checked the place.  No one was home.  All the lights were off.  The furniture in the rooms I had passed through three hours ago was neatly covered in dust sheets.  In the kitchen, on the sideboard, I recognized the pattern on the dishes I had eaten off of, but all of the service had been washed long enough ago to be covered with a thin patina of dust.

I had enough momentum left that I rifled the desks, even though I paused to put gloves on.  It didn't take me long to find out that the family that actually lived in this house wasn't named Ingram.  They had a different name, the British citizenship to go with it, and the courage to do what I hoped I would have done in their circumstances, to return home and volunteer their services for the duration.  I thought for a moment, swore, and then started wiping surfaces, fast.  I'd been in some kind of a snare.  Even if the wire hadn't snapped my neck, I wasn't inclined to linger and see if anyone came by to check the results.  I got out of there, got the convertible, and headed for the house on Thirty-Fifth Street.

En route, I pulled over next to a diner and used their phone booth.  Lily was less than thrilled to be awoken at that hour, but she figured out from the tone of my voice that it was an emergency.  When I asked her about Ingram, she asked me who I was talking about.  Some words back and forth, and then an interruption to her maid Mimi's well earned rest, produced the fact that both of them had seen the man I had talked with and neither was quite certain who he was.  I'll spare you the theories and speculations, none of which turned out to be useful, but I will say that it was all mysterious enough that I ended the call in better favor than I'd begun it.  And, all it cost me was five minutes keeping a bemused and sleepy dancer busy on the other end of the line while Lily went in person to wake the irreplaceable Mimi.

When I parked the car at Curran's Motors, I started to get out.  Then I paused.  Beneath the dim light of an overhead bulb in the garage, I searched the glove compartment and the passenger seat next to me with care.  Again, nothing, until I ran my fingers a second time slowly along the seam of the seat.  Far back in the fold I found it:  a chewed toothpick.

 

---

III --- An Alarming Revelation

---

 

When I got to the front door of the brownstone, the chain bolt was off, a fact that I report without comment.  Sure enough, Nero Wolfe wasn't even trying to pretend.  Although it was two o'clock on a Sunday morning, he was awake, groomed, dressed, and sitting behind his desk, reading when I entered the office.  He didn't bother to look up from his book when I came in, and I didn't wait to see if I had his attention before I started talking.

"He left me a toothpick, so at least I have a memory to press in my scrapbook."

"Mmm," said Wolfe.  He marked his place with a scrap of paper, put the book down, and blinked, once.

"We would probably save a lot of time if I start by reporting, but you may not be interested since I am off duty for the weekend."  I raised inquiring brows at him.

He eyed me and then said peevishly, "Don't be provocative.  I find this annoying enough as it is.  Report."  Our little discussion was going to be a lot of fun, I could tell.

I take pride in my ability to recount a sequence of events without unintentional editing or commentary.  There was no reason to let my standards slide only because I had no idea what the hell had just happened to me.  So, when I got to the parts I didn't understand, I concentrated on chewing over the facts with care and set my speculations aside for dessert.  My reward for being such a good boy was seeing Wolfe's lips purse about twenty minutes into my account.  A bit later, his nostrils flared.  From him, that was as good as a telegram.  It had really happened, and I had truly been in danger.

I finished, tilted my head, and then, since he was expecting it, let him have it.  "Of course, you know some of this already.  By the way, thanks for not trying to make me think I was hearing things when you said my name."

"Your trust in your perceptions hones your edge.  There is no sense in blunting a tool that I use myself."

Just then I felt more like sandpaper than a knife, but I let it go.  "Okay.  Do I fish, or do you spill the net?"

"I don't want to chatter about irrelevancies.  Also, there are certain facts that I can not discuss."  Wolfe sighed.  "It seems best that I speak first.  If you are not satisfied when I am done, ask.  I merely request that you do not confound curiosity with necessity."

I looked at him, told my brow to unwrinkle, and went and sat down in the red leather chair.  Something told me we both needed the reminder that I didn't have to work for him.

When I was settled in, he said, "It was not a ghost.  To the best of my knowledge, there are no such things as ghosts."

I grimaced.  I was getting tired of that phrase.

"However, a man who is afraid," his eyes half opened as he checked to see if I was going to kick at the description before he continued, "is especially vulnerable to certain types of predators.  I conjuncture that one such hunter was waiting for you in the music room.  The creature that you saw was intended to drive you, as if you were a partridge before a beater, within the hunter's range while you were in a vulnerable state.  Most likely, you would then have been, call it abducted, and used as a hostage, or a lure, or a Trojan Horse."

"That much I figured out on my own."

"Yes.  Mr. Ingram was, I have no doubt, some opponent from my past or was a dependent of such an individual."  Wolfe considered the notion, a sour expression on his face.  "I thought I had outrun them all, but an incident or two during the past decade should have suggested otherwise.  Hope deluded me.  Now I know better."

"Great."  Lousy, actually, but I had more immediate concerns than rubbing in his mistake.  "Should I be bracing for more trouble?"

"Since I am warned, I doubt it.  Your value as a cats paw would have lain in my ignorance.  In this case the cliché is correct:  forewarned is forearmed.  I can give you no guarantee of safety, but we both know that there never are true guarantees."  That was an idea we'd discussed at length over dinners past without any debate between us, so I nodded.

There was a pause.  He'd gotten to the bit we both knew was important.  If it's not clear why, don't send me a letter of inquiry, because you wouldn't understand the answer.  "I knew you were in difficulties."  His voice had dropped to a murmur.  "I knew not because I was watching but because there was---a noise."

"Yes, sir.  A noise."

"Don't reiterate.  As I said, I had some vague apprehensions that my past might be returning to vex me.  I did not wish to distract you with impracticalities, but I could not, in all fairness, risk your being ambushed, either."  His shoulders rose almost imperceptibly and fell.  "There was a way to make sure that you would not be bothered without my knowing, a way that provides no other information, and leaves no other trace."

I let him watch me considering it.  After a minute, I decided I could live with the idea of being belled, given the circumstances, and nodded for him to continue.

"I do not have to renew my tripwire if you do not so desire."

"You get no other information from it?"

"No, none."  An almost imperceptible pause and he added, "Unless one of us dies, of course."

"I thought you said there were no such things as ghosts."  Wolfe glared at me.  I let myself grin.  "Sure, go ahead sir, knock yourself out.  Have fun.  I've always liked magic acts."

"Archie, I am not a magician."

"No cape, no hat, no wand, no bunny rabbit, no cute assistant in tights."  I yanked up one trouser leg and checked my sock and garter before shaking my head.  "Nope.  I guess you're right."

He started to say something, stopped himself, and muttered, "It is a trait of yours that has its uses and therefore must be tolerated."  Ignoring my snort, he continued, "I am done.  Do you have questions?"

"About a thousand, most of which I know you won't answer, so I'll boil them down."  It was time for me to make it plain that I wasn't an idiot.  I understood the implications of what had happened.  "We've spent a lot of time chewing the fat about this sort of thing down through the years.  You don't think much of the supernatural, and you've used some pungent language saying so.  Were you lying?"

"No.  I am not a ninny.  Occasionally I did not say all that I could have, but I never lied to you.  It would have been too significant a falsehood."

That was the rule, all right.  I nodded.

"I remain an epicurean, a materialist.  If my reasons are different than those of others like me at this time, in this place, they are still rational.  I admit there are a few bits of valid information entangled within the farrago that is modern occultism and traditional superstition."  His voice grew dry.  "A medieval barber could stitch a wound shut.  I would not, on that basis, credit his theory of the bodily humors or allow him to remove my appendix."

Maybe it was the association of ideas.  As I raised my eyebrows I was, without thinking, working my right hand.  He caught the motion and scowled.  Letting him see me sigh, I held up the hand, palm turned towards him.  "Like I said, sir, I clenched that fish tight."

He grunted.  "It may be useful.  May I see?"

I got up, walked over to his desk, and presented it to him.  He took it between his own pudgy paws and examined the cut on it.

"I've already been told I have a long life line and a strong heart line, if one marred by many, many---"

He asked, my hand still clasped between his own, his tone almost polite, "Was I not clear, when I claimed not to be a ninny?"  He frowned at the cut.  "Were you careful about wiping up your blood?"

"Just because I didn't say that I wasn't a ninny---"

"I take your point."  Without warning, his hands twisted on my own, re-opening the cut.  Quickly, he shoved one large thumb on the fresh blood and pressed hard.  It didn't hurt.  I heard an almost inaudible click somewhere inside the back of my skull and felt a flash of warmth spread out from my palm and fade like a drop of ink diluting in water.

I considered him.  "I'm not going to ask when you did that the last time because I think I know the answer, and it will only annoy me to hear you say it out loud."

"A judicious decision on your part.  Do you have any more questions?"  At my shake of the head, he said, "Good.  It is late, I want my bed, and you need to take care of that hand.  Tomorrow morning call Saul, Fred, and Orrie.  Ask if they will interrupt their weekends.  We shall see if we can discover any trace of the supposed Mr. Ingram."

The others and I spent a few days running down everything we could about Ingram, and what we came up with was a whole load of nothing.  Wolfe didn't seem surprised, and he paid their hours without even a grunt.

For Christmas, I got Wolfe a magician's wand.  I also managed to lay hands on a signed edition of---but that's neither here nor there.  The glare he gave me when he opened the wrappings and saw my first present let me know that, supernatural or no supernatural, everything was back to normal. 

The same could not be said of the world outside our front door.  1940 was a busy year for a number of reasons including one that spoke German.  We worked harder than we ever had in all the time Wolfe had employed me, mostly on matters that were as tedious in his eyes as they were fiscally rewarding in mine.  He wasn't blowing all the kale on orchids and truffles, either.  Instead, he was shifting money out of the checking account and changing it into compact forms that could be easily stowed in the safe deposit box.  It didn't need a genius to see that he anticipated war and was storing up a new kind of fat against famine. 

By the time 1941 rolled around, I'd realized for myself what he'd probably deduced a while ago.  When the hammer fell, I would be between it and the anvil.  I was going to war.  I almost volunteered when the peace-time draft came in but decided to wait since a couple of matters Wolfe and I were working on had something to do with the impending conflict.  Still, it was only a matter of time, and we both knew it.

What with one thing and another, I put my brief encounter with the beyond on a back shelf in my brain and left it there.  I never forgot---I don't forget---but there was no reason to rake any of it up again, either.  All of our opponents that year cast shadows.  I still hadn't noticed Wolfe's hair never got greyer, and the wrinkles on his huge face never grew deeper.  His tripwire, whatever it was, didn't bother me.  I had no reason to worry about what had happened in Ingram's supposed greenhouse or to connect any of it with Fay's book until the night when Nero Wolfe once again said my name.