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was pretty well gone.'
    'I was all gone,' Paul asserted. 'He would have had to slug me again if he wanted me to notice him.'
    He looked at Wolfe. 'It's an idea. What kind of an errand?'
    'No special kind. I'm merely asking questions. ' Mr. Tuttle, when did you next see Mr. Arrow?'
    'That morning, Sunday morning, he came to the apartment around nine o'clock, just after Doctor Buhl arrived.'
    'Where had he been?'
    'I don't know. I didn't ask him and he didn't say. It was ' well, it was in the presence of death. He asked us a great many questions, some of them impertinent, I thought, but under those circumstances I made allowances.'
    Wolfe leaned back, closed his eyes, and lowered his chin. The brothers sat and looked at him. Tuttle turned to his wife, smoothing her shoulder and murmuring to her, and before long she uncovered her face and lifted her head. He got a nice clean handkerchief from his breast pocket, and she took it and dabbed around with it. There was no sign of any tear gullies down her cheeks.
    Wolfe opened his eyes and moved them from left to right and back again. 'I see no likely advantage,' he pronounced, 'in keeping you longer. I had hoped it would be possible to reach a decision this evening' ' he leveled at Paul ' 'but your conjecture about the morphine merits a little inquiry ' by me, that is, and of course discreet. It would be no service to expose you to an action for slander.' His eyes went to David and back across to Tuttle. 'By the way, I haven't mentioned that Doctor Buhl asked me to let you know that if Miss Goren is charged with negligence he will advise her to bring such an action, and he will support it. She maintains that before she left she put hot water in the bags, and he believes her. You will hear further from me, probably not later -'
    The doorbell rang. When we have company in the office Fritz usually answers it, but I had a hunch, which I frequently do, and I got up and, passing behind the customers' chairs, reached the hall in time to head Fritz off on his way to the front. The stoop light was on, and through the panel I saw a stranger ' a square-shouldered specimen about my age and nearly my size. Telling Fritz I'd take it, I went and opened the door to the extent allowed by the chain of the bolt and asked through the crack, 'Can I help you?'
    A soft drawly voice slipped through. 'I guess so. My name's Arrow. Johnny Arrow. I want to see Nero Wolfe. If you open the door that'll help.'
    'Yeah, but I'll have to ask him. Hold it a minute.' I shut the door, got a piece of paper from my pocket and wrote 'Arrow' on it, returned to the office and crossed to Wolfe's desk, and handed him the paper. The visitors were out of their chairs, ready to leave.
    Wolfe glanced at the paper. 'Confound it,' he grumped. 'I thought I was through for the day. But perhaps I can ' very well.'
    I will concede that I can be charged with negligence, since I knew what had happened Saturday night in the Churchill bar, but I deny that it was intentional. I have as much respect for the furniture in the office as Wolfe has, or Fritz. I just didn't stop to consider, as I went to the front door and let the uranium prince in and ushered him to the office and stepped aside to observe expressions on faces. When, the instant he caught sight of Paul Fyfe, Arrow went for him, I was too far away and therefore one of the yellow chairs got busted. The consolation was that I saw a swell demonstration of how Paul had got his jaw bruised on both sides. Arrow jabbed with his left, hard enough to rock him off balance, and then swung his right and sent him some six feet crashing onto the chair. As he was reaching to yank him up, presumably to attend to the other eye, I got there and put my arm around his neck from behind, and my knee in his back. Tuttle was there, trying to grab Arrow's sleeve. David was circling around, apparently with the notion of getting in between them, which is rotten tactics. Louise was making shrill