Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 41 (20 page)

“As I brought a yellow chair Wragg spoke to Wolfe. “Your word? Better than mine? You goddam skunk!”

“Sit down,” Wolfe said. “Whether my word is better or not, my brain is. I don’t judge a situation before I understand it. Mr. Cramer is—”

“All agreements are off.”

“Pfui. You’re not a donkey. Mr. Cramer is regretting that he surmised that a member of your bureau was a murderer. If you sit down and compose yourself he may tell you so.”

“I have no apologies for anybody,” Cramer growled. He turned his head to make sure the red leather chair was still there, and sat. “Anyone who withholds information—”

“No,” Wolfe snapped. “If you gentlemen must contend, that’s your affair, but not in my office. I want to resolve a situation, not tangle it. I like eyes at a level, Mr. Wragg. Be seated.”

“Resolve it how?”

“Sit down and I’ll tell you.”

He didn’t want to. He looked at Cramer, he even looked at me, like a general surveying a battlefield and watching his flanks. He didn’t like it, but he sat.

Wolfe turned a palm up. “Actually,” he said, “the situation isn’t tangled at all. We all want the same thing. I want to get rid of an obligation. You, Mr. Wragg, want it made manifest that your men are not criminally implicated in a murder. You, Mr. Cramer,
want to identify and bring to account the person who killed Morris Althaus. It couldn’t be simpler. You, Mr. Wragg, give Mr. Cramer the bullet you have in your pocket and tell him where it came from. You, Mr. Cramer, have a comparison made of that bullet with one fired from the gun which was taken this afternoon from the apartment of Sarah Dacos, and along with other evidence which no doubt your men are securing now, that will settle it. There is no—”

“I haven’t said I have a bullet in my pocket.”

“Nonsense. I advise you to pull in your horns, Mr. Wragg. Mr. Cramer has good reason to suppose that you have on your person an essential item of evidence in a homicide which occurred in his jurisdiction. Under the statutes of the State of New York he may legally search you, here and now, and get it. Is that correct, Mr. Cramer?”

“Yes.”

“But,” Wolfe told Wragg, “that shouldn’t be necessary. You do have a brain. Obviously it is to your interest and that of your bureau that you give Mr. Cramer that bullet.”

“The hell it is,” Wragg said. “And one of my men gets on the stand and says under oath that he was in that apartment and took it? The hell it is.”

Wolfe shook his head. “No. No indeed. You wouldn’t. You give Mr. Cramer your word, here privately, that that’s where the bullet came from, and one of
his
men gets on the stand and says under oath that he took it from that apartment. There will—”

“My men are not perjurers,” Cramer said.

“Bah. This is not being recorded. If Mr. Wragg hands you a bullet and says it was found on the floor of Morris Althaus’s apartment about eleven o’clock in the
evening of Friday, November twentieth, will you believe him?”

“Yes.”

“Then save your posing for audiences that will appreciate it. This one isn’t sufficiently naïve. I don’t think—”

“He might not be posing,” Wragg cut in. “He might go on the stand himself and tell how he got it. Then I’m called to the stand.”

Wolfe nodded. “True. He might. But he wouldn’t. If he did, I too would be called to the stand, and Mr. Goodwin, and a much larger audience than this one would learn how the murderer of Morris Althaus had been disclosed after the police and the District Attorney had spent eight futile weeks on it. He wouldn’t.”

“Damn you,” Cramer said. “Both of you.”

Wolfe looked at the clock. “It’s past my dinner hour, gentlemen. I’ve said all I have to say, and I have disposed of my obligation. Do you want to settle it, or mulishly fail to, elsewhere?”

Wragg looked at Cramer. “Do you see anything wrong with it?”

The eyes of the cop and the G-man met and held. “No,” Cramer said. “Do you?”

“No. You have the gun?”

“Yes.” Cramer turned to Wolfe. “You said I might not ask Goodwin after we finished with Wragg. I won’t. I may later if we hit a snag. I would only get a run-around, and to hell with it.” He went back to Wragg. “It’s up to you.”

Wragg’s hand went to a pocket and came out with a little plastic vial. He rose and took a step. “This bullet,” he said, “was found on the floor of Morris Althaus’s apartment, in the living room, around eleven o’clock in
the evening on Friday, November twentieth. Now it’s yours. I have never seen it.”

Cramer stood up to take it. He removed the lid of the vial, let the bullet drop into his palm, inspected it, and returned it to the vial.

“You’re damned right it’s mine,” he said.

T
hree evenings later, Monday around half past six, Wolfe and I were in the office, debating a point about the itemization of expenses to go with the bill to Mrs. Bruner. I admit it was a minor point, but it was a matter of principle. He was maintaining that it was just and proper to include the lunch at Rusterman’s, on the ground that the meals we got there were in consideration of services he had rendered and was still rendering to the restaurant and so were not actually gratis. My position was that the past services had already been rendered, and the present ones would be rendered, even if she and I had gone to the Automat for lunch.

“I realize,” I said, “that you’re up against it. Even if you push the fee to the limit, say another hundred grand, it still might not be enough to last the whole year, and around Labor Day, or at least Thanksgiving, you might have to take on a job, so you need to squeeze out every nickel you can. But she has been a marvelous client, and you should have some consideration for her, and indirectly for me too in case I decide to marry her. She has a lot of other expenses besides you, and now she’ll have another one, now that she’s going to supply
a high-priced lawyer to defend Sarah Dacos. Have a heart.”

“As you know, Miss Dacos has confessed.”

“So she’ll need a lawyer even more. I feel very strongly about this. I invited her to lunch. I am almost prepared to say that if she is billed for it I will feel that I must tell her privately that it was on the house. She may want—”

The doorbell rang. I got up and went to the hall and saw a character on the stoop I had never seen before, but I had seen plenty of pictures of him. I stepped back in and said, “Well, well. The
big
fish.”

He frowned at me, then got it, and did something he never does. He left his chair and came. We stood side by side, looking. The caller put a finger to the button, and the doorbell rang.

“No appointment,” I said. “Shall I take him to the front room to wait a while?”

“No. I have nothing for him. Let him get a sore finger.” He turned and went back in to his desk.

I stepped in. “He probably came all the way from Washington just to see you. Quite an honor.”

“Pfui. Come and finish this.”

I returned to my chair. “As I was saying, I may have to tell her privately …”

The doorbell rang.

Enjoy a peek into the life of Nero Wolfe’s creator, Rex Stout, courtesy of the Stout Estate. Pulled from Rex Stout’s own archives, here are rarely seen memorabilia Each title in “The Rex Stout Library” will offer an exclusive look into the life of the man who gave Nero Wolfe life.

The Doorbell Rang

From the October 31, 1965 issue of
The New York Times Book Review
, here is Viking Press’ full-page ad for this Nero Wolfe mystery,
The Doorbell Rang
, soon to become one of the most famous, most controversial titles in the series.

A very rich woman comes to Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, claiming that she is being harassed by the FBI. She reports that agents are following her and members of her family, her wires are being tapped, and her privacy is being otherwise invaded. She demands that Wolfe help her to find relief and offers him the largest retainer he has ever seen.

Wolfe, with some hesitation, takes the case and quickly encounters a murder about which members of the FBI may know more than is apparent. He also soon finds himself in a direct encounter with FBI agents under highly questionable circumstances.

Never before has Rex Stout written a book more perfectly plotted or one with a denouement so skillfully arrived at.

At all bookstores                $3.50