Rex Stout - Plot It Yourself

I divide the books Nero Wolfe reads into four grades: A, B, C, and D. If, when he comes down to the office from the plant rooms at six o’clock, he picks up his current book and opens to his place before he rings for beer, and if his place was marked with a thin strip of gold, five inches long and an inch wide, which was presented to him some years ago by a grateful client, the book is an A. If he picks up the book before he rings, but his place was marked with a piece of paper, it is a B. If he rings and then picks up the book, and he had dog-eared a page to mark his place, it is a C. If he waits until Fritz has brought the beer and he has poured to pick up the book, and his place was dog-eared, it’s a D. I haven’t kept score, but I would say that of the two hundred or so books he reads in a year not more than five or six get an A.

At six o’clock that Monday afternoon in May I was at my desk, checking the itemization of expenses that was to accompany the bill going to the Spooner Corporation for a job we had just finished, when the sound came of his elevator jolting to a stop and his footsteps in the hall. He entered, crossed to the oversized made-to-order chair behind his desk, sat, picked up Why the Gods Laugh , by Philip Harvey, opened to the page marked with the strip of gold, read a paragraph, and reached to the button at the edge of his desk without taking his eyes from the page. As he did so, the phone rang.

I got it. “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speaking.” Up to six o’clock I say “Nero Wolfe’s office.” After six I say “residence.”

A tired baritone said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Wolfe. This is Philip Harvey.”

“He’ll want to know what about. If you please?”

“I’ll tell him. I’m a writer. I’m acting on behalf of the National Association of Authors and Dramatists.”

“Did you write a book called Why the Gods Laugh? ”

“I did.”

“Hold the wire.” I covered the transmitter and turned. “If that book has any weak spots here’s your chance. The guy who wrote it wants to speak to you.”

He looked up. “Philip Harvey?”

“Right.”

“What does he want?”

“He says he’ll tell you. Probably to ask you what page you’re on.”

He closed the book on a finger to keep his place and took his phone. “Yes, Mr. Harvey?”

“Is this Nero Wolfe?”

“Yes.”

“You may possibly have heard my name.”

“Yes.”

“I want to make an appointment to consult you. I am chairman of the Joint Committee on Plagiarism of the National Association of Authors and Dramatists and the Book Publishers of America. How about tomorrow morning?”

“I know nothing about plagiarism, Mr. Harvey.”

“We’ll tell you about it. We have a problem we want you to handle. There’ll be six or seven of us, members of the committee. How about tomorrow morning?”

“I’m not a lawyer. I’m a detective.”

“I know you are. How about ten o’clock?”

Of course that wouldn’t do, since it would take more than an author, even of a book that rated an A, to break into Wolfe’s two morning hours with the orchids, from nine to eleven. Harvey finally settled for a quarter past eleven. When we hung up I asked Wolfe if I should check, and he nodded and went back to his book. I rang Lon Cohen at the Gazette and learned that the National Association of Authors and Dramatists was it. All the dramatists anyone had ever heard of were members, and most of the authors, the chief exceptions being some scattered specimens who hadn’t decided if they cared to associate with the human race — or had decided that they didn’t. The Book Publishers of America was also it, a national organization of all the major firms and many of the minor ones. I passed the information along to Wolfe, but I wasn’t sure he listened. He was reading.

That evening around midnight, when I got home after taking a friend to a show, A Barrel of Love , by Mortimer Oshin, Wolfe had just finished his book and was making room for it on one of the shelves over by the big globe. As I tried the door of the safe I spoke.

“Why not leave it on your desk?”

He grunted. “Mr. Harvey’s self-esteem needs no sop. If he were not so skillful a writer he would be insufferable. Why curry him?”

Before I went up two flights to my room I looked up “curry” in the dictionary. Check. I won’t live long enough to see the day when Wolfe curries anybody including me.

At 11:20 the next morning, Tuesday, Wolfe, seated at his desk, sent his eyes from left to right and back again, rested them on Philip Harvey, and inquired, “You’re the spokesman, Mr. Harvey?”

Since Harvey had made the appointment and was chairman of the committee, I had put him in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk. He was a middle-aged shorty with a round face, round shoulders, and a round belly. The other five were in an arc on yellow chairs that I had had ready for them. Their names, supplied by Harvey, were in my notebook. The one nearest me, the big blond guy in a brown suit with tan stripes, was Gerald Knapp, president of Knapp and Bowen. The one next to him, the wiry-looking bantam with big ears and slick black hair, was Reuben Imhof of the Victory Press. The female about my age who might have been easy to look at if her nose would stop twitching was Amy Wynn. I had seen a couple of reviews of her novel, Knock at My Door , but it wasn’t on Wolfe’s shelves. The tall gray-haired one with a long bony face was Thomas Dexter of Title House. The one at the far end of the arc, with thick lips and deep-set dark eyes, slouching in his chair with his left ankle on his right knee, was Mortimer Oshin. He had written the play, A Barrel of Love , which I had seen last evening. He had lit three cigarettes in eight minutes, and with two of the matches he had missed the ashtray on a stand at his elbow and they had landed on the rug.

Philip Harvey cleared his throat. “You’ll need all the details,” he said, “but first I’ll outline it. You said you know nothing about plagiarism, but I assume you know what it is. Of course a charge of plagiarism against a book or a play is dealt with by the author and publisher, or the playwright and producer, but a situation has developed that needs something more than defending individual cases. That’s why the NAAD and the BPA have set up this joint committee. I may say that we, the NAAD, appreciate the cooperation of the BPA. In a plagiarism suit it’s the author that gets stuck, not the publisher. In all book contracts the author agrees to indemnify the publisher for any liabilities, losses, damages, expenses—”

Reuben Imhof cut in. “Now wait a minute. What is agreed and what actually happens are two different things. Actually, in a majority of cases, the publisher suffers—”

“The suffering publisher!” Amy Wynn cried, her nose twitching. Mortimer Oshin had a comment too, and four of them were speaking at once. I didn’t try to sort it out for my notebook.

Wolfe raised his voice. “If you please! You started it, Mr. Harvey. If the interests of author and publisher are in conflict, why a joint committee?”

“Oh, they’re not always in conflict.” Harvey was smiling, not apologetically. “The interests of slave and master often jibe; they do in this situation. I merely mentioned en passant that the author gets stuck. We deeply appreciate the cooperation of the BPA. It’s damned generous of them.”

“You were going to outline the situation.”

“Yes. In the past four years there have been five major charges of plagiarism.” Harvey took papers from his pocket, unfolded them, and glanced at the top sheet. “In February nineteen fifty-five, McMurray and Company published