Too Many Clients Read Online Free PDF

what'The only thing to say was “Will you marry me?” but that wouldn’t do because the idea of her washing dishes or darning socks was preposterous. Then I became aware of something, that I had moved my foot inside the sill so the door couldn’t close, and that spoiled it. I was just a private detective trying to dig up a client.
    Footsteps sounded, and as they approached she moved aside. It was a man, a chunky broad-shouldered guy two inches shorter than her, with a pug nose and bushy eyebrows. I stepped inside and greeted him. “My name’s Goodwin. From the Gazette. I want to rent a room, a front room.”
    He said to his daughter, “Go, Maria,” and she turned and went, down the dark hall. He turned to me. “No rooms.”
    “A hundred dollars a week,” I said. “I’m going to do an article on the scene of a murder after the murder. I want to take pictures of the people who come to look at it. A window on your second floor would be just the right’angle.”
    “I said no rooms.” His voice was deep and rough.
    “You can shift someone around. Two hundred dollars.”
    “No.”
    “Three hundred.” “No.”
    “Five hundred.” “You’re crazy. No.”
    “I’m not crazy. You are. Snooting five hundred bucks. What’s your name?” “It’s my name.”
    “Oh for God’s sake. I can get it next door or from the cop out front. What’s wrong with it?”
    He half closed one eye. “Nothing is wrong with it. My name is Cesar Perez. I am a citizen of the United States of America.”
    “So am I. Will you rent me a room for one week for five hundred dollars in advance in cash?”
    “But what I said.” He gestured with both hands and both shoulders. “No room. That man out there dead, this is a bad thing. To take pictures of the people from this house, no. Even if there was a room.”
    I decided to be impetuous. Delay could actually be dangerous, since Homicide or the DA might uncover a connection between Yeager and this house any moment. Getting my case from my pocket and taking an item from it, I handed it to him. “Can you see in this light?” I asked.
    He didn’t try. “What is it?”
    “My license. I’m not a newspaperman, I’m a private detective, and I’m investigating the murder of Thomas G. Yeager.”
    He half closed an eye again. He poked the license at me, and I took it. His chest swelled with an intake of air. “You’re not a policeman?”
    “No.”
    “Then get out of here. Get out of this house. I have told three different policemen I don’t know anything about that man in the hole, and one of them insulted me. You get out.”
    “All right,” I said, “it’s your house.” I returned the license to the case and the case to my pocket. “But I’ll tell you what will happen if you bounce me. Within half an hour a dozen policemen will take the house over, with a search warrant. They’ll go over every inch of it. They’ll round up everybody here, beginning with you and your daughter, and they’ll nab everyone who enters. The reason they’ll do that is that I’ll tell them I can prove that Thomas G. Yeager came to this house Sunday evening and he was killed here.”
    “That’s a lie. Like that policeman. That’s insult.”
    “Okay. First I call to the cop out front to come in and stand by so you can’t warn anyone.” I turned. I had hit it. With the cops of course he had been set, but I had been unexpected and had caught him off balance. And he wasn’t a moron. He knew that even if I couldn’t prove it I must have enough to sick the law on him and the house.
    As I turned he reached and got my sleeve. I turned back, and he stood there, his jaw working. I asked, not hostile, just wanting to know, “Did you kill him?”
    “You’re a policeman,” he said.
    “I am not. My name is Archie Goodwin and I work for a private detective named Nero Wolfe. We expect to get paid for investigating this case, that’s how we make a living. So I’ll be honest; we would rather find out