The Rubber Band/The Red Box 2-In-1 (30 page)

Clara Fox glanced at Francis Horrocks, who was sitting there looking at her with that sickening sweet expression that you occasionally see in public and at the movies. It was a relief to see him glance at Wolfe and get his mind on something else for a brief moment. He blurted out:

“I say, you know, if she doesn’t want to take money from that chap’s estate, she doesn’t have to. It’s her own affair, what? Now, if my uncle paid your fee … it’s all the same …”

“Shut up, Francis.” Clivers was impatient. “How the devil is it all the same? Let’s get this settled. I’ve already missed one engagement and shall soon be late for another. Look here, seven thousand.”

Hilda Lindquist said, “I’ll take what I can get. It doesn’t belong to me, it’s my father’s.” Her square face wasn’t exactly cheerful, but I wouldn’t say she looked wretched. She leveled her eyes at Clivers. “If you had been half way careful when you paid that money twenty-nine years ago, father would have got his share then, when mother was still alive and my brother hadn’t died.”

Clivers didn’t bother with her. He looked at Wolfe. “Let’s get on. Eight thousand.”

“Come, come, sir.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “Make it dollars. Fifty thousand. The exchange favors you. There is a strong probability that you’ll get it back when Perry’s estate is settled; besides, it might be argued that you should pay my fee instead of Miss Fox. There is no telling how this might have turned out for you but for my intervention.”

“Bah.” Clivers snorted. “Even up there, I saved your life. I shot him.”

“Oh, no. Read the newspapers. Mr. Goodwin shot him.”

Clivers looked at me, and suddenly exploded with his three short blasts, haw-haw-haw. “So you did, eh? Goodwin’s your name? Damned fine shooting!” He turned to Wolfe. “All right. Draw up a paper and send it to my hotel, and you’ll get a check.” He got up from his chair, glancing down at the mess he had made of the front of his coat. “I’ll have to go there now and change. A fine piece of cloth ruined. I’m sorry not to see more of your orchids. You, Francis! Come on.”

Horrocks was murmuring something in a molasses tone to Clara Fox and she was taking it in and nodding at him. He finished, and got up. “Right-o.” He moved across and stuck out his paw at Wolfe. “You know, I want to say, it was devilish
clever, the way you watered Miss Fox yesterday morning and they never suspected. It was the face you put on that stumped them, what?”

“No doubt.” Wolfe got his hand back again. “Since you gentlemen are sailing Saturday, I suppose we shan’t see you again.
Bon voyage
.”

“Thanks,” Clivers grunted. “At least for myself. My nephew isn’t sailing. He has spent a fortune on cables and got himself transferred to the Washington embassy. He’s going to carve out a career. He had better, because I’m damned if he’ll get my title for another two decades. Come on, Francis.”

I glanced at Clara Fox, and my dreams went short on ideals then and there. If I ever saw a woman look smug and self-satisfied …

At Twenty minutes to four, with Wolfe and me alone in the office, the door opened and Fritz came marching in. Clamped under his left arm was the poker-dart board; in his right hand was the box of javelins. He put the box down on Wolfe’s desk, crossed to the far wall and hung up the board, backed off and squinted at it, straightened it up, turned to Wolfe and did his little bow, and departed.

Wolfe emptied his glass of beer, arose from his chair, and began fingering the darts, sorting out the yellow ones.

He looked at me. “I suppose this is foolhardy,” he murmured, “with this bullet-wound, to start my blood pumping.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “You ought to be in bed. They may have to amputate.”

“Indeed.” He frowned at me. “Of course, you wouldn’t know much about it. As far as my memory serves, you have never been shot by a high-calibre revolver at close range.”

“The lord help me.” I threw up my hands. “Is that going to be the tune? Are you actually going to have the nerve to brag about that little scratch? Now, if Hombert’s foot hadn’t jostled his chair and he had hit what he aimed at …”

“But he didn’t.” Wolfe moved to the fifteen-foot mark. He looked me over. “Archie. If you would care to join me at this …”

I shook my head positively. “Nothing doing. You’ll keep beefing about your bullet-wound, and anyway I can’t afford it. You’ll probably be luckier than ever.”

He put a dignified stare on me. “A dime a game.”

“No.”

“A nickel.”

“No. Not even for matches.”

He stood silent, and after a minute of that heaved a deep
sigh. “Your salary is raised ten dollars a week, beginning last Monday.”

I lifted the brows. “Fifteen.”

“Ten is enough.”

I shook my head. “Fifteen.”

He sighed again. “Confound you! All right. Fifteen.”

I arose and went to the desk to get the red darts.

How many novels will you read this year that were published in 1937?

The odds are, not many.

But Rex Stout’s
The Red Box
is a marvelous exception and with good reason. The fourth book in the immortal Nero Wolfe series,
The Red Box
is quintessential Stout. Every element so long adored by faithful fans is there, the brownstone on Thirty-fifth Street; Wolfe’s monumental girth, which is exceeded only by his towering intellect; the ten thousand orchids (Archie keeps the records updated) in the glassed-over rooms on the roof (the orchids’ caretaker, Theo Horstmann, sleeps up there in a small den); the quick wit and ready cynicism of good-looking, blunt-talking Archie Goodwin; the unmatched epicurean delights (on the heavy side, only good eaters invited) of chef Fritz Brenner; the great man’s collection of beer bottle caps.

And therein lies much of the magic of this series, the creation of a world that readers come to know as well as the insides of their own households, from the yellow couch and double-width cherry desk in Wolfe’s office-cum-living room to the climate-and-temperature-controlled
plant rooms where Wolfe spends from nine to eleven and four to six every day.

Readers often are curious as to how much of the author can be found in a book’s hero. In the case of Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe, the lack of correlation is perhaps more striking. Stout was tall, slender, scraggly bearded; Wolfe packed a seventh of a ton into a stocky five foot eleven inches. Stout radiated energy; Wolfe avoided physical exertion as if it were deleterious to his health. Stout enjoyed good food, but was quite willing to enjoy common fare; Wolfe was a gourmand who would rather skip a meal than eat junk food. Stout had a wide-ranging interest in the political life of his country; Wolfe was almost apolitical.

But what they had in common and the quality that accounts for the greatest charm of the Nero Wolfe series is a love of language. Stout used language with great precision and with great pleasure. Wolfe was surely his alter ego in this glorious pursuit.

As all Wolfe and Goodwin aficionados know, Wolfe’s idea of heaven was life uninterrupted in his brownstone with the orderly progression of his day from plant room to meal to plant room. It was Archie who alternately bullied and cajoled the great man into taking cases, which Wolfe did only because he knew he had to earn enough money to maintain their life-style.

The Red Box
is a shining example of Wolfe and Archie at their most entertaining and intriguing, and the banter between the great detective and his unquenchable sidekick will delight Stout fans.

The Red Box
provides one of the few instances in the long history recorded by Archie (more than forty books) when Wolfe does indeed depart from the cozy confines of his brownstone, much to Wolfe’s disgruntlement.
Archie achieves this rare state of affairs through a clever ploy that takes advantage of Wolfe’s orchidmania.

The sortie to the clothing enterprise on Fifty-second Street provides perspicacious Wolfe with the only ambiguity among the recorded statements on the murder of a model.

Wolfe is faced first with a seemingly insoluble crime—who was really the intended victim? When he correctly identifies the murderer’s true objective and has within his grasp the opportunity to divine the perpetrator, murder once again intervenes—this time in Wolfe’s own office, both an infuriating and ultimately tactless mistake by the murderer.

The cast of suspects includes:

—A gorgeous, rich model who knows too much about the candy.

—The caretaker of an estate who talks so much and so fast no one can get a word in edgewise.

—A self-possessed widow who certainly earned the ire of her husband.

—Wolfe’s first client, who can’t seem to make up his mind what he wants.

—An expatriate without visible means of support who seems to live quite comfortably.

Wolfe is frustrated because he decides early on who did the killing, but sees no way of bringing the suspect to justice. Wolfe solves this problem—with some artful legerdemain—when he unmasks a clever and calculating killer in the comfort and convenience of his lair.

Archie Goodwin is in top form, sassing police, suspects, and clients (as Archie remarks, this case “is just one damned client after another”).

Readers will delight in the intricacy of the plot, the repartee between Wolfe and his man-about-town, Archie, and they may be quite particular in their choice of candies should a box without provenance be offered.

Wolfe looked at our visitor with his eyes wide open—a sign, with him, either of indifference or of irritation. In this case it was obvious that he was irritated.

“I repeat, Mr. Frost, it is useless,” he declared. “I never leave my home on business. No man’s pertinacity can coerce me. I told you that five days ago. Good day, sir.”

Llewellyn Frost blinked, but made no move to acknowledge the dismissal. On the contrary, he settled back in his chair.

He nodded patiently. “I know, I humored you last Wednesday, Mr. Wolfe, because there was another possibility that seemed worth trying. But it was no good. Now there’s no other way. You’ll have to go up there. You can forget your build-up as an eccentric genius for once—anyhow, an exception will do it good. The flaw that heightens the perfection. The stutter that accents the eloquence. Good Lord, it’s only twenty blocks, Fifty-second between Fifth and Madison. A taxi will take us there in eight minutes.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe stirred in his chair; he was boiling. “How old are you, Mr. Frost?”

“Me? Twenty-nine.”

“Hardly young enough to justify your childish effrontery. So. You humored me! You speak of my build-up! And you undertake to stampede me into a frantic dash through the maelstrom of the city’s traffic—in a taxicab! Sir, I would not enter a taxicab for a chance to solve the Sphinx’s deepest riddle with all the Nile’s cargo as my reward!” He sank his voice to an outraged murmur. “Good God. A taxicab.”

I grinned a bravo at him, twirling my pencil as I sat at my desk, eight feet from his. Having worked for Nero Wolfe for nine years, there were a few points I wasn’t skeptical about any more. For instance: That he was the best private detective north of the South Pole. That he was convinced that outdoor air was apt to clog the lungs. That it short-circuited his nervous system to be jiggled and jostled. That he would have starved to death if anything had happened to Fritz Brenner, on account of his firm belief that no one’s cooking but Fritz’s was fit to eat. There were other points too, of a different sort, but I’ll pass them up since Nero Wolfe will probably read this.

Young Mr. Frost quietly stared at him. “You’re having a grand time, Mr. Wolfe. Aren’t you?” Frost nodded. “Sure you are. A girl has been murdered. Another one—maybe more—is in danger. You offer yourself as an expert in these matters, don’t you? That part’s all right, there’s no question but that you’re an expert. And a girl’s been murdered, and others are in great and immediate peril, and you rant like Booth and Barrett about a taxicab in a maelstrom. I appreciate good acting; I ought to, since I’m in show business. But in your case I should think there would be times when a decent regard for human suffering and misfortune would make you wipe off the make-up. And if you’re really playing it straight, that only
makes it worse. If, rather than undergo a little personal inconvenience—”

“No good, Mr. Frost.” Wolfe was slowly shaking his head. “Do you expect to bully me into a defense of my conduct? Nonsense. If a girl has been murdered, there are the police. Others are in peril? They have my sympathy, but they hold no option on my professional services. I cannot chase perils away with a wave of my hand, and I will not ride in a taxicab. I will not ride in anything, even my own car with Mr. Goodwin driving, except to meet my personal contingencies. You observe my bulk. I am not immovable, but my flesh has a constitutional reluctance to sudden, violent or sustained displacement. You spoke of ‘decent regard.’ How about a decent regard for the privacy of my dwelling? I use this room as an office, but this house is my home. Good day, sir.”