Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02 (6 page)

“Did you ask them what they wanted?”

“No.”

Wolfe nodded, and I went out and brought them in. Bascom went across to the desk to shake hands; the
other gentleman got his big rumpus onto a chair I shoved up, but nearly missed it on the way down on account of staring at Wolfe. I suspected he wasn’t overwhelmed by prestige as much as he was by avoirdupois, having never seen Wolfe before.

Bascom was saying, “It’s been nearly two years since I’ve seen you, Mr. Wolfe. Remember? The hay fever case. That’s what I called it. Remember the clerk that didn’t see the guy lifting the emeralds because he was sneezing?”

“I do indeed, Mr. Bascom. That young man had invention, to employ so common an affliction for so unusual a purpose.”

“Yeah. Lots of ’em are smart, but very few of them is quite smart enough. That was quite a case. I’d have been left scratching my ear for a bite if it hadn’t been for you. I’ll never forget that. Is business pretty good with you, Mr. Wolfe?”

“No. Abominable.”

“I suppose so. We’ve got to expect it. Some of the agencies are doing pretty well on industrial work, but I never got into that. I used to be a workingman myself. Hell, I still am.” Bascom crossed his legs and cleared his throat. “You taken on anything new lately?”

“No.”

“You haven’t?”

“No.”

I nearly jumped at the squeak, it was so unexpected. It came from the other dick, his chair between Bascom and me. He squeaked all of a sudden:

“I heard different.”

“Well, who opened your valve?” Bascom glared at him, disgusted. “Did I request you to clamp your trap when we came in here?” He turned to Wolfe. “Do you
know what’s eating him? You’ll enjoy this, Mr. Wolfe. He’s heard a lot of talk about the great Nero Wolfe, and he wanted to show you haven’t got him buffaloed.” He shifted and turned on the glare again. “You sap.”

Wolfe nodded. “Yes, I enjoy that. I like bravado. You were saying, Mr. Bascom?”

“Yeah. I might as well come to the point. It’s like this. I’m on a case. I’ve got five men on it. I’m pulling down close to a thousand dollars a week, four weeks now. When I wind it up I’ll get a fee that will keep me off of relief all winter. I’m getting it sewed up. About all I need now is some wrapping paper and a piece of string.”

“That’s fine.”

“All of that. And what I’m here for is to ask you to lay off.”

Wolfe’s brows went up a shade. “To ask me?”

“To lay off.” Bascom slid forward in his chair and got earnest. “Look here, Mr. Wolfe. It’s the Chapin case. I’ve been on it for four weeks. Pratt and Cabot and Dr. Burton are paying me—that’s no secret, or if it was, it wouldn’t be for you after Monday. Pratt’s a sort of a friend of mine, I’ve done him a good turn or two. He phoned me last night and said if I wanted to hang my own price tag on Paul Chapin I’d better get a move on because Nero Wolfe was about to begin. That was how I found out about the telegrams you sent. I dusted around and saw Burton and Cabot and one or two others. Burton had never heard of you before and asked me to get a report on you, but he phoned me this morning and told me not to bother. I suppose he had inquired and got an earful.”

Wolfe murmured, “I am gratified at the interest they displayed.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Bascom laid a fist on the desk for
emphasis and got more earnest still. “Mr. Wolfe. I want to speak to you as one professional man to another. You would be the first to agree that ours is a dignified profession.”

“Not explicitly. To assert dignity is to lose it.”

“Huh? Maybe. Anyway, it’s a profession, like the law. As you know, it is improper for a lawyer to solicit a client away from another lawyer. He would be disbarred. No lawyer with any decency would ever try it. And don’t you think our profession is as dignified as the law? That’s the only question. See?”

Bascom waited for an answer, his eyes on Wolfe’s face, and probably supposed that the slow unfolding on Wolfe’s cheeks was merely a natural phenomenon, like the ground swell on an ocean. Wolfe finally said, “Mr. Bascom. If you would abandon the subtleties of innuendo? If you have a request to make, state it plainly.”

“Hell, didn’t I? I asked you to lay off.”

“You mean, keep out of what you call the Chapin case? I am sorry to have to refuse your request.”

“You won’t?”

“Certainly not.”

“And you think it is absolutely okay to solicit another man’s clients away from him?”

“I have no idea. I shall not enter into a defense of my conduct with you; what if it turned out to be indefensible? I merely say, I refuse your request.”

“Yeah. I thought you would.” Bascom took his fist off the desk and relaxed a little. “My brother claimed you regarded yourself as a gentleman and you’d fall for it. I said you might be a gentleman but you wasn’t a sap.”

“Neither, I fear.”

“Well and good. Now that that’s out of the way,
maybe we can talk business. If you’re going to take on the Chapin case, that lets us out.”

“Probably. Not necessarily.”

“Oh yes, it does. You’ll soak them until they’ll have to begin buying the cheaper cuts. I know when I’m done, I can take it. I couldn’t hang onto it much longer anyhow. God help you. I’d love to drop in here once a week and ask you how’s tricks. I’m telling you, this cripple Chapin is the deepest and slickest that’s ever run around loose. I said I had it about sewed up. Listen. There’s not the faintest chance. Not the faintest. I had really given that up, and had three men tailing him to catch him on the next one—and by God there goes Hibbard and we can’t even find what’s left of him, and do you know what? My three men don’t know where Chapin was Tuesday night! Can you beat it? It sounds dumb, but they’re not dumb, they’re damn good men. So as I say, I’d love to drop in here—”

Wolfe put in, “You spoke of talking business.”

“So I did. I’m ready to offer you a bargain. Of course you’ve got your own methods, we all have, but in these four weeks we’ve dug up a lot of dope, and it’s cost us a lot of money to get it. It’s confidential naturally, but if your clients are the same as mine that don’t matter. It would save you a lot of time and expense and circling around. You can have all the dope and I’ll confer with you on it any time, as often as you want.” Bascom hesitated a moment, wet his lips, and concluded, “For one thousand dollars.”

Wolfe shook his head gently. “But, Mr. Bascom. All of your reports will be available to me.”

“Sure, but you know what reports are. You know, they’re all right, but oh hell. You would really get some dope if I let you question any of my men you wanted to. I’d throw that in.”

“I question its value.”

“Oh, be reasonable.”

“I often try. I will pay one hundred dollars for what you offer.—Please! I will not haggle. And do not think me discourteous if I say that I am busy and need all the time the clock affords me. I thank you for your visit, but I am busy.” Wolfe’s fingers moved to indicate the books before him on the desk, one of them with a marker in it. “There are the five novels written by Paul Chapin; I managed to procure the four earlier ones yesterday evening. I am reading them. I agree with you that this is a difficult case. It is possible, though extremely unlikely, that I shall have it solved by midnight.”

I swallowed a grin. Wolfe liked bravado all right; for his reputation it was one of his best tricks.

Bascom stared at him. After a moment he pushed his chair back and got up, and the dick next to me lifted himself with a grunt. Bascom said, “Don’t let me keep you. I believe I mentioned we all have our own methods, and all I’ve got to say is thank God for that.”

“Yes. Do you wish the hundred dollars?”

Bascom, turning, nodded. “I’ll take it. It looks to me like you’re throwing the money away, since you’ve already bought the novels, but hell I’ll take it.”

I went across to open the door, and they followed.

B
y dinner time Monday we were all set, so we enjoyed the meal in leisure. Fritz was always happy and put on a little extra effort when he knew things were moving in the office. That night I passed him a wink when I saw how full the soup was of mushrooms, and when I tasted the tarragon in the salad dressing I threw him a kiss. He blushed. Wolfe frequently had compliments for his dishes and expressed them appropriately, and Fritz always blushed; and whenever I found occasion to toss him a tribute he blushed likewise, I’d swear to heaven, just to please me, not to let me down. I often wondered if Wolfe noticed it. His attention to food was so alert and comprehensive that I would have said off hand he didn’t, but in making any kind of a guess about Wolfe off hand wasn’t good enough.

As soon as dinner was over Wolfe went up to his room, as he had explained he would do; he was staging it. I conferred with Fritz in the kitchen a few minutes and then went upstairs and changed my clothes. I put on the gray suit with pin checks, one of the best fits I ever had, and a light blue shirt and a dark blue tie. On my way back down I stopped in at Wolfe’s room, on
the same floor, to ask him a question. He was in the tapestry chair by the reading lamp with one of Paul Chapin’s novels, and I stood waiting while he marked a paragraph in it with a lead pencil.

I said, “What if one of them brings along some foreign object, like a lawyer for instance? Shall I let it in?”

Without looking up, he nodded. I went down to the office.

The first one was early. I hadn’t looked for the line to start forming until around nine, but it lacked twenty minutes of that when I heard Fritz going down the hall and the front door opening. Then the knob of the office door turned, and Fritz ushered in the first victim. He almost needed a shave, his pants were baggy, and his hair wasn’t combed. His pale blue eyes darted around and landed on me.

“Hell,” he said, “you ain’t Nero Wolfe.”

I admitted it. I exposed my identity. He didn’t offer to shake hands. He said:

“I know I’m early for the party. I’m Mike Ayers, I’m in the city room at the
Tribune.
I told Oggie Reid I had to have the evening off to get my life saved. I stopped off somewhere to get a pair of drinks, and after a while it occurred to me I was a damn fool, there was no reason why there shouldn’t be a drink here. I am not referring to beer.”

I said, “Gin or gin?”

He grinned. “Good for you. Scotch. Don’t bother to dilute it.”

I went over to the table Fritz and I had fixed up in the alcove, and poured it. I was thinking, hurrah for Harvard and bright college days and so on. I was also thinking, if he gets too loud he’ll be a nuisance but if I refuse to pander to his vile habit he’ll beat it. And having learned the bank reports practically by heart,
I knew he had been on the
Post
four years and the
Tribune
three, and was pulling down ninety bucks a week. Newspapermen are one of my weak spots anyhow; I’ve never been able to get rid of a feeling that they know things I don’t know.

I poured him another drink and he sat down and held onto it and crossed his legs. “Tell me,” he said, “is it true that Nero Wolfe was a eunuch in a Cairo harem and got his start in life by collecting testimonials from the girls for Pyramid Dental Cream?”

Like an ass, for half a second I was sore. “Listen,” I said, “Nero Wolfe is exactly—” Then I stopped and laughed. “Sure,” I said. “Except that he wasn’t a eunuch, he was a camel.”

Mike Ayers nodded. “That explains it. I mean it explains why it’s hard for a camel to go through a needle’s eye. I’ve never seen Nero Wolfe, but I’ve heard about him, and I’ve seen a needle. You got any other facts?”

I had to pour him another drink before the next customer arrived. This time it was a pair, Ferdinand Bowen, the stockbroker, and Dr. Loring A. Burton. I went to the hall for them to get away from Mike Ayers. Burton was a big fine-looking guy, straight but not stiff, well-dressed and not needing any favors, with dark hair and black eyes and a tired mouth. Bowen was medium-sized, and he was tired all over. He was trim in black and white, and if I’d wanted to see him any evening, which I felt I wouldn’t, I’d have gone to the theater where there was a first night and waited in the lobby. He had little feet in neat pumps, and neat little lady-hands in neat little gray gloves. When he was taking his coat off I had to stand back so as not to get socked in the eye with his arms swinging around, and I don’t cotton to a guy with that sort of an attitude towards his fellowmen in confined spaces.
Particularly I think they ought to be kept out of elevators, but I’m not fond of them anywhere.

I took Burton and Bowen to the office and explained that Wolfe would be down soon and showed them Mike Ayers. He called Bowen Ferdie and offered him a drink, and he called Burton Lorelei. Fritz brought in another one, Alexander Drummond the florist, a neat little duck with a thin mustache. He was the only one on the list who had ever been to Wolfe’s house before, he having come a couple of years back with a bunch from an association meeting to look at the plants. I remembered him. After that they came more or less all together: Pratt the Tammany assemblyman, Adler and Cabot, lawyers, Kommers, sales manager from Philadelphia, Edwin Robert Byron, all of that, magazine editor, Augustus Farrell, architect, and a bird named Lee Mitchell, from Boston, who said he represented both Collard and Gaines the banker. He had a letter from Gaines.

That made twelve accounted for, figuring both Collard and Gaines in, at ten minutes past nine. Of course they all knew each other, but it couldn’t be said they were getting much gaiety out of it, not even Mike Ayers, who was going around with an empty glass in his hand, scowling. The others were mostly sitting with their funeral manners on. I went to Wolfe’s desk and gave Fritz’s button three short pokes. In a couple of minutes I heard the faint hum of the elevator.

The door of the office opened and everybody turned their heads. Wolfe came in; Fritz pulled the door to behind him. He waddled halfway to his desk, stopped, turned, and said, “Good evening, gentlemen.” He went to his chair, got the edge of the seat up against the back of his knees and his grip on the arms, and lowered himself.

Mike Ayers demanded my attention by waving his glass at me and calling, “Hey! A eunuch
and
a camel!”