XXIIIIt was a foul day, simmering hot with that metallic overcast that means a thunderstorm in the making, and I’d have run into another one if I’d gone home to lunch when Lilac was doing curtains. It was about three o’clock when I walked back across the P Street Bridge and saw Archie’s car in front of Colonel Primrose’s. He was there in the back room, and he looked awful. He hadn’t shaved, he hadn’t slept and he was as gaunt as if he hadn’t eaten for days.
“She called Marge,” he said. He put his head down on his hands and kneaded his stubbly pink skull as he’d done at the farm. “I’ll kill that devil if he scares her again.”
Colonel Primrose had both his telephones, listed and unlisted, out in front of him on his big flat desk and the extension from Detective Headquarters in an open draw
