“Well, to start with, material witness. You talk, or I take you down, and maybe I do anyway.”
“You mean arrest me as a material witness?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Go ahead. It will be the first time I’ve ever been arrested in the city of New York. And by you! Go ahead.”
He growled. He was getting mad. “Goddamn it, Archie, don’t be a sap! In that uniform? You’re an officer, ain’t you?”
“I am. Major Goodwin. You didn’t salute.”
“Well, for God’s sake-”
“No good. Final. Regarding Ann Amory, anything about Ann Amory, I don’t open my trap.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ve always thought you were cuckoo. You’re under arrest. Get in that car.”
I did so.
There was one little chore left before I could sit back and let nature take its course. Arriving at Centre Street, and asserting my right to make one phone call, I got a lawyer I knew out of bed and gave him some facts to relay to Bill Pratt of the
Chapter 8
It had cost me two bucks to get it smuggled in to me, but it was worth it. Wednesday noon I sat on the edge of my cot in my cell gazing admiringly at it, a front page headline in the early edition of the
ARMY MAJOR HELD IN MURDER CASE
NERO WOLFE’S FORMER ASSISTANT
LOCKED UP
As the schoolboy said to the teacher, good-
