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Horan’s attitude toward the progress of the friendship between her husband and Mrs. Fromm.
    I made an objection. “But if you want to fit in Pete Drossos and Matthew Birch, that’s no good. Unless you can make it good. Who was Matthew Birch?”
    Lon snorted. “On your way out buy a Wednesday Gazette .”
    “I’ve got one at home and I’ve read it. But that was three days ago.”
    “He hasn’t changed any. He was a special agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had been for twenty years, with a wife and three children. He had only twenty-one teeth, looked like a careworn statesman, dressed beyond his station, wasn’t any too popular in his circle, and bet on the races through Danny Pincus.”
    “You said you counted Birch in because of the pattern. Was there any other reason?”
    “No.”
    “Just to your old and trusted friend Goodwin. Any at all?”
    “No.”
    “Then I’ll do you a favor, expecting it back with interest at your earliest convenience. It’s triple classified. The cops have it sewed up that the car that killed Pete Drossos was the one that killed Birch.”
    His eyes widened. “No!”
    “Yes.”
    “Sewed up how?”
    “Sorry, I’ve forgotten. But it’s absolutely tight.”
    “I’ll be damned.” Lon rubbed his palms together. “This is sweet, Archie. This is very sweet. Pete and Mrs. Fromm, the earrings. Pete and Birch, the car. That ties Birch and Mrs. Fromm. You understand that the Gazette will now have a strong hunch that the three murders are connected and will proceed accordingly.”
    “As long as it’s just a hunch, okay.”
    “Right. As for the car itself-as you know, the license plate was a floater; the car was stolen in Baltimore four months ago. It’s been repainted twice.”
    “That hasn’t been published.”
    “They released it at noon.” Lon leaned to me. “Listen, I’ve got an idea. How can you be absolutely sure I’m to be trusted unless you try me? Here’s your chance. Tell me how they know the same car killed Birch and the boy. Then I’ll forget it.”
    “I forgot it first.” I stood up and shook my pants legs down. “My God, are you a glutton! Dogs should be fed once a day, and you’ve had yours.”

Chapter 6
    When I got back to Thirty-fifth Street it was after four o’clock and the office was empty. I went to the kitchen to ask Fritz if there had been any visitors, and he said yes, Inspector Cramer.
    I raised my brows. “Any blood flow?”
    He said no, but it had been pretty noisy. I treated myself to a tall glass of water, returned to the office, and buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone, and when Wolfe answered I told him, “Home again. Regards from Lon Cohen. Do I type the report?”
    “No. Come up and tell me.”
    That was not exactly busting a rule, like the interruption at lunch, but it was exceptional. It suited me all right, since as long as he stayed sore because he thought someone had made a monkey of him he would probably make his brain work. I went up the three flights and through the aluminum door into the vestibule, and the door to the warm room, where the Miltonia roezli and Phalaenopsis Aphrodite were in full bloom. In the next room, the medium, only a few of the big show-offs, the Cattleyas and Laelias, had flowers, which was all right with me, and anyway the biggest show-off in the place, named Wolfe, was there, helping Theodore adjust the muslin shaders. When I appeared he led the way to the rear, through the cool room into the potting room, where he lowered himself into the only chair present and demanded, “Well?”
    I got onto a stool and gave it to him. He sat with his eyes closed and his nose twitching now and then for punctuation. In making a report to him one of my objectives is to cover it so well as I go along that at the end he won’t have one question to ask, and that time I made it. When I had finished he held his pose a long moment, then opened his eyes and informed me, “Mr. Cramer was