Rex Stout - The League of Frightened Men

Wolfe nodded at me. “Good evening, Archie. I am relieved again. It occurred to me after I phoned you that you were probably in no condition to pilot a car through this confounded labyrinth. I am greatly relieved.—You have met Mrs. Chapin.—Sit down. You don’t look as if standing was very enjoyable.”

He lifted his glass of beer and took a couple of swallows. I saw the remains of some kind of a mess on his plate, but Dora Chapin had cleaned hers up. I moved his hat and stick off a chair and sat down on it. He asked me if I wanted a glass of milk and I shook my head. He said:

“I confess it is a trifle mortifying, to set out to rescue you and end by requesting you to succor me, but if that is Mr. Scott’s taxicab he should get new springs for it. If you get me home intact — and no doubt you will — that will not be your only triumph for this day. By putting me in touch with Mrs. Chapin in unconventional circumstances, though it seems inadvertently, you have brought us to the solution of our problem. I tell you that at once because I know it will be welcome news. Mrs. Chapin has been kind enough to accept my assurances—”

That was the last word I heard. The only other thing I remembered was that a tight wire which had been stretched between my temples, holding them together, suddenly parted with a twang. Wolfe told me afterwards that when I folded up my head hit the edge of the table with a loud thud before he could catch me.

Monday morning when I woke up I was still in bed. That sounds as if I meant something else, but I don’t. When I got enough awake to realize where I was I had a feeling that I had gone to bed sometime during Lent and here it was Christmas. Then I saw Doc Vollmer standing there beside me.

I grinned at him. “Hello, doc. You got a job here as house physician?”

He grinned back. “I just stopped in to see how it went with what I pumped into you last night. Apparently—”

“What? Oh. Yeah. Good God.” It struck me that the room seemed full of light. “What time is it?”

“Quarter to twelve.”

“No!” I twisted to see the clock. “Holy murder!” I jerked myself upright, and someone jabbed a thousand ice-picks into my skull. “Whoa, Bill.” I put my hands up to it and tried moving it slowly. I said to Vollmer, “What’s this I’ve got here, my head?”

He laughed. “It’ll be all right.”

“Yeah. You’re not saying when. Wowie! Is Mr. Wolfe down in the office?”

He nodded. “I spoke to him on the way up.”

“And it’s noon.” I slid to my feet. “Look out, I might run into you.” I started for the bathroom.

I began soaping up, and he came to the bathroom door and said he had left instructions with Fritz for my breakfast. I told him I didn’t want instructions, I wanted ham and eggs. He laughed again, and beat it. I was glad to hear him laugh, because it seemed likely that if there really were ice-picks sticking in my head he, being a doctor, would be taking them out instead of laughing at me.

I made it as snappy as I could with my dizziness, cleansing the form and assuming the day’s draperies, and went downstairs in pretty good style but hanging onto the banister.

Wolfe, in his chair, looked up and said good morning and asked me how I felt. I told him I felt like twin colts and went to my desk. He said:

“But, Archie. Seriously. Should you be up?”

“Yeah. Not only should I be up, I should have been up. You know how it is, I’m a man of action.”

His cheeks unfolded. “And I, of course, am super-sedentary. A comical interchange of roles, that you rode home last evening from the Bronx River Inn, a matter of ten miles or more, with your head on my lap all the way.”

I nodded. “Very comical. I told you a long while ago, Mr. Wolfe, that you pay me half for the chores I do and half for listening to you brag.”

“So you did. And if I did not then remark, I do so now — but no. We can pursue these amenities another time, now there is business. Could you take some notes, and break your fast with our lunch?—Good. I spoke on the telephone this morning with Mr. Morley, and with the District Attorney himself. It has been arranged that I shall see Mr. Chapin at the Tombs at two-thirty this afternoon. You will remember that on Saturday evening I was beginning to dictate to you the confession of Paul Chapin when we were interrupted by news from Fred Durkin which caused a postponement. If you will turn to that page we can go on. I’ll have to have it by two o’clock.”

So as it turned out I not only didn’t get to tie into the ham and eggs I had yearned for, I didn’t even eat lunch with Wolfe and Hibbard. The dictating wasn’t done until nearly one, and I had the typing to do. But by that time the emptiness inside had got to be a vacuum, or whatever it may be that is emptier than emptiness, and I had Fritz bring some hot egg sandwiches and milk and coffee to my desk. I wanted this typed just right, this document that Paul Chapin was to sign, and with my head not inclined to see the importance of things like spelling and punctuation I had to take my time and concentrate. Also, I wasted three minutes phoning the garage to tell them to bring the sedan around, for I supposed of course I would take Wolfe in it; but they said they already had instructions from Wolfe, and that the instructions included a driver. I thought maybe I ought to be sore about that, but decided not to.

Wolfe ate a quick lunch, for him. When he came into the office at a quarter to two I barely had the thing finished and was getting the three copies clipped into brown folders. He took them and put them in his pocket and told me to take my notebook and started on the instructions for my afternoon. He explained that he had asked for a driver from the garage because I would be busy with other things. He also explained that on account of the possibility of visitors he had procured from Hibbard a promise that he would spend the entire afternoon in his room, until dinner time. Hibbard had gone there from the lunch-table.

Fritz came to the door and said the car was there, and Wolfe told him he would be ready in a few minutes.

What gave me a new idea of the dimensions of Wolfe’s nerve was the disclosure that a good part of the arrangements had been completed for a meeting of the League of the White Feather, in the office that evening at nine o’clock. Before he had seen Chapin at all! Of course I didn’t know what Dora might have told him, except a couple of details that had been included in the confession, but it wasn’t Dora that was supposed to sign on the dotted line, it was her little crippled husband with the light-colored eyes; and that was a job I was glad Wolfe hadn’t bestowed on me, even if it did mean his sashaying out of the house twice in two days, which was an all-time record. But he had gone ahead and telephoned Boston and Philadelphia and Washington, and six or eight of them in New York, after we got home Sunday evening and from his room early that morning, and the meeting was on. My immediate job was to get in touch with the others, by phone if possible, and ensure as full an attendance as we could get.

He gave me another one more immediate, just before he left. He told me to go and see Mrs. Burton at once, and dictated two questions to ask her. I suggested the phone, and he said no, it would be better if I saw the daughter and the maids also. Fritz was standing there holding his coat. Wolfe said:

“And I was almost forgetting that our guests will be thirsty. Fritz, put the coat down and come here, and we shall see what we need.—Archie, if you don’t mind you had better start, you should be back by three.—Let us see, Fritz. I noticed last week that Mr. Cabot prefers Aylmer’s soda—”