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ran them back over and down my scalp, giving me a comb.
    'Air,' she said. 'Baby, do I need air!'
    'We'll share it,' I told her. 'Ninety percent for you and ten for me.'
    I got my hat and topcoat from the hall, escorted her out, opened the door of her coupe for her, and went around to the other side and climbed in. What I was actually after was not air, nor yet more hair-combing, but insurance against bodily injury. I wasn't condemning Wolfe for not informing Dazy Perrit before pulling that on her, since he might have thought it up just before she came, or even after she came, but all the same I didn't care for the sketch as it now stood. If she bounced into the penthouse and blurted it out to Perrit, which she was certainly capable of, there was no way of telling how he might react. Common sense would have told him what Wolfe was up to, trying to get nine out of ten to hand back to him, but the trouble was that there was nothing common about a bird like Perrit, not even sense. Probably he didn't think there was an honest man on earth. So there I was in her coupe with her. She was a first-rate driver, fully half as good as me. As she slowed down for a red light at Fortieth Street I said, 'Miss Murphy, you're sunk.'
    'Cut out the Murphy,' she snapped. Then she reached to pat me on the knee. 'Just call me Angel Food.'
    I didn't have much time, since the penthouse was on Seventy-eighth Street, not more than a few minutes away at that time of night, and I didn't really intend to go up with her and tuck her in.
    'I don't like angel food,' I told her. 'I'll call you Maple Delight. But you're absolutely sunk if you try to bull it through. I speak frankly because I admire you in more ways than one, and also because I enjoy life and don't care to leave it at this point. If you go on putting the bee on Perrit and don't give Wolfe his nine-tenths, you're through. Wolfe is a hyena, a vulture, and a jackal. If you do give Wolfe his nine-tenths, Perrit will find it out sooner or later, and then not only will Wolfe get it, which might or might not be a calamity, but I am liable to get it too. Even if I'm not as healthy and handsome as you thought I was there for a minute, I do have my skin on straight and I like it that way.'
    'Go on talking.' She didn't take her eyes from her driving. 'You haven't said anything yet, but your voice goes through me. I won't even want a drink.'
    We were at Fifty-first Street. I went on, 'So to show you how selfish I am, I've got a suggestion. You haven't got a chance of cleaning up, not one in a million. You're squeezed in between Dazy Perrit and Nero Wolfe, and that's no set-up for a Sherman tank, let alone a lady. The big haul is out for good, and you might as well face it and show you've got brains as well as guts.' I patted her thigh. 'So take it, Maple Delight. First, you can keep the screw on Perrit, handing most of it over to Wolfe, but you'd be a sucker if you did. It wouldn't be worth your measly percentage. Second, you can slide out and away, and my opinion is no good on that because I don't know how hard you'd find it to make a living. Of course you'd have to travel, which would be a disadvantage if you like New York. Third, and this is my suggestion, you can tell Perrit-or I'll do it if you want me to-that the gyp is out, you are merely his loving and obedient daughter, but it would be nice to have the weekly handout stepped up to three centuries instead of one.'
    She sent me a sharp glance and back again to her driving. I somehow gathered that I was doing fine. 'Wolfe would get no cut,' I said firmly. 'I doubt if he would even expect it, and anyhow you can leave that to me. I have-a way of bringing pressure. Almost certainly Perrit would settle for that and no hard feelings. As for you, you don't have to be a damn pig. That would be fifteen thousand, six hundred bucks a year, no income tax, and I suppose Perrit pays the household expenses, including such items as this car. Six hundred dollars more