Rex Stout - Plot It Yourself

“Do so at once. Tell him to get those absurd charges dismissed if possible; if not, arrange for bail. And phone Mr. Harvey or Miss Ballard or Mr. Tabb that I shall be at that meeting at half past two.”

I started. “What?”

“Must I repeat it?”

“No. Do you want me along?”

“Certainly.”

I was thinking, as I returned down the aisles between the benches of orchards and on down the stairs, that this thing was going to set a record for smashing rules before we were through with it — if we ever got through. At my desk I rang the office of Nathaniel Parker, the lawyer Wolfe always uses when only a lawyer will do, and found him in. He didn’t like the picture. He said rural communities resented having New York private detectives snooping around, especially when the snoopee was a property-owner and not a known criminal, and they weren’t fond of New York lawyers either. He thought it would be better for him to relay the job to an attorney in Carmel whom he knew, instead of going up there himself, and I told him to go ahead. Another five Cs down the drain, at least.

I started to dial Philip Harvey’s number but remembered in time that I had promised never to call him before noon except for an emergency, and dialed Jerome Tabb’s instead. A female voice told me that Mr. Tabb was working and couldn’t be disturbed until one o’clock, and would I leave a message. She seemed surprised and a little indignant that there was anyone on earth who didn’t know that. I told her to tell him that Nero Wolfe would come to the council meeting at two-thirty, but, knowing that messages aren’t always delivered, I got Cora Ballard at the NAAD office. She was delighted to hear that Wolfe would be present. I made two more calls, to Orrie Gather at home and to Sally Corbett at Dol Bonner’s office, informing them about the circus and telling them the operation was off until further notice. Orrie, who was a free-lance, wanted to know if he was free to lance, and I told him no, to stand by. What the hell, another forty bucks was peanuts.

When I went to the kitchen to tell Fritz that lunch would be at one o’clock sharp because we were leaving at two for an appointment, he had a question. For Wolfe he was going to make a special omelet which he had just invented in his head, and would that do for me or should he broil some ham? I asked what would be in the omelet, and he said four eggs, salt, pepper, one tablespoon tarragon butter, two tablespoons cream, two tablespoons dry white wine, one-half teaspoon minced shallots, one-third cup whole almonds, and twenty fresh mushrooms. I thought that would do for two, but he said my God, no, that would be for Mr. Wolfe, and did I want one like it? I did. He warned me that he might decide at the last minute to fold some apricot jam in, and I said I would risk it.

At 2:35 p.m. Wolfe and I, both of us well fueled with omelet, stepped out of a wobbly old elevator on the third floor of the Clover Club, which is in the Sixties just off Fifth Avenue. The hall was spacious and high-ceilinged and looked its age, but not much the worse for it. There was no one in sight. We glanced around, heard voices beyond a closed door, crossed to it, opened it, and entered.

Some three dozen people, all but six of them men, were seated around a long rectangular table covered with a white cloth. There were coffee cups, water glasses, ashtrays, pads of paper, and pencils. We stood, Wolfe with his hat in one hand and his cane in the other. Three or four of them were talking at once, and no one paid any attention to us. At the right end of the table were three of the committee members: Amy Wynn, Philip Harvey, and Mortimer Oshin. At the other end was Cora Ballard, and next to her was the president of the NAAD, Jerome Tabb. His picture had been on the jacket of his book I had read. Next to Tabb was the vice-president, a man who, according to an article I had read recently, averaged a million dollars a year from the musicals for which he had written the books and lyrics. I had recognized some other faces — four novelists, three dramatists, and a biographer or something — by the time Harvey got up and came over to us. The talk stopped, and heads were turned our way.

“Nero Wolfe,” Harvey told them. “Archie Goodwin.”

He took Wolfe’s hat and cane. An author or dramatist went and got two chairs and moved them near the table. If I had been the president or the executive secretary the chairs would have been in place; after all, we were expected.

As we sat, Jerome Tabb raised his voice. “You’re a little early, Mr. Wolfe.” He glanced at his wrist. “It’s the time agreed, I know, but we haven’t finished our discussion.”

“A sentry in the hall could have stopped us.” Wolfe was gruff. He always was when he had put his fanny on a chair seat that was too small. “If the discussion doesn’t concern me you can finish it after I leave. If it does concern me, proceed.”

A famous woman novelist tittered, and two men laughed. A famous dramatist said, “Let’s hear what he has to say. Why not?” A man raised his hand. “Mr. President! As I said before, this is very irregular. We almost never admit outsiders to a council meeting, and I see no reason for making this an exception. The chairman of the Joint Committee on Plagiarism has reported and made a recommendation, and that should be the basis of our...” He finished his sentence, but I didn’t catch it because five or six other voices drowned him out.

Tabb tapped on a glass with a spoon, and the voices subsided. “Having Mr. Wolfe here has been decided,” he said with authority. “I told you he had been invited, and a motion was made and seconded to admit him and hear him, and it carried by a voice vote. We won’t go into that again. And I don’t see how we can take a position based solely on the report: and recommendation of the chairman of the joint committee. One reason we had to call this special meeting was that the three NAAD members of the committee don’t agree. They actively disagree. I’m going to ask Mr. Wolfe to state his case, but first he ought to know in a general way how our discussion has gone. Now there shouldn’t be any interruptions. Mr. Harvey, you first. Briefly.”

The committee chairman cleared his throat. He looked around. “I’ve told you how I feel,” he said. “I was never enthusiastic about hiring a private detective, but I went along with the majority of the committee. Now this matter has gone far beyond the province of the committee, what it was set up for. Three people have been killed. Nero Wolfe told the committee last week, last Wednesday, that he was going to expose the murderer of Simon Jacobs whether we terminated our engagement with him or not. Now I suppose he’s going to expose the murderer of Jane Ogilvy and Kenneth Rennert. All right, that’s fine, I’m all for exposing murderers, but that’s not the job of this committee. It’s not only not our job it’s probably illegal and it could get us into serious trouble. We have no control over what Nero Wolfe does. He said he would have to have a free hand, that he wouldn’t tell us what he was doing or was going to do. I say that’s dangerous. As I said before, if the council doesn’t instruct the committee to terminate the engagement with Nero Wolfe, the only thing I can do is resign from the committee. The way I feel, I’ll have to.”

Two or three of them started to say something, but Tabb tapped on the glass. “You’ll all get a chance later. Mr. Oshin? Briefly.”

Oshin squashed a cigarette in an ashtray. “I’m in a different position now,” he said, “now that Kenneth Rennert’s dead. Before today I could be accused of having a personal interest, and I did. I don’t deny that when I kicked in ten thousand dollars it was chiefly because I thought it might save me paying Rennert ten times that. Now personally I’m out from under. My ten thousand was a contribution to the expenses of the committee, and one of the publisher members, Dexter, has said he’ll contribute whatever is necessary, and I think we should tell Nero Wolfe to go ahead. If we don’t we’re quitters. If he wants to expose a murderer, all right, if he exposes a murderer he will also expose the man that has been back of this plagiarism racket, and that’s what we hired him for. He hasn’t been murdered, he’s still alive and still loose, and are we going to back out just because we’ve found out that he’s not only a racketeer but a killer? I don’t like threats to resign, I never have, but if you instruct the committee to fire Nero Wolfe I’ll have to resign, and I wish I could resign from the NAAD too.”