Rex Stout: Before I Die

“This is Mr. Schane,” Beulah told me, and he came forward for a shake. She went on, “He’s been scolding me. He says I was maudlin on the phone, talking to you about a preacher. Maybe I was, but he shouldn’t have got me drunk.”

“Now wait a minute,” Schane protested with a smile at me and then at her. “Who made the cocktails?”

“I did,” she admitted, and somehow they were next to each other, touching, though neither had deliberately managed it. Evidently they were at the stage where the two organisms naturally float to a junction. She asked me, “Hasn’t a girl got a right to make cocktails when she’s got engaged? By the way, there’s a little left. Won’t you have one?” She went to a table and picked up a shaker. “I’ll get a glass.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I declared, intercepting her. “I ought to be ashamed of myself for busting in on your celebration, and especially right at dinnertime. Why not let me help you go on celebrating, in a mild sort of way? How about a betrothal dinner?” I was giving them my best grin. “With no rooms in hotels, I’m putting up with a friend down on Thirty-fifth Street, and he happens to be a famous man, and also he’s very hospitable. I’ll call him up and tell him we’re coming. All right?”

They looked at each other. “But after all,” Schane objected. “We’re utter strangers, not only to him but to you too.”

“What’s he famous for?” Beulah asked. “Who is he?”

“Nero Wolfe, the detective. I’ve known him for years. He saved my life once — uh, on a murder charge. I was innocent and he proved it.”

“Oh, Morton, let’s go!” Beulah had both her hands on his arm, holding him and looking up at him. “This is my first request as your bride-to-be, to come and eat dinner with Nero Wolfe! You can’t refuse the first one!” She turned her head to me. “We’ll make him go! He has a strong sense of propriety because he’s in his last year at law school and he thinks lawyers are the guardians of everything from social conventions to moral righteousness.”

“Not righteousness,” Schane said firmly. “Right.”

He looked it. He stood, about my height, like a bulwark against something, with a good strong chin, a face that had bones, and, just to round out the picture, dark straight-aiming eyes behind glasses in thick black frames. He said he had intended to go home and do some studying in preparation for a stiff test that was coming. She said, still holding on to his arm, surely not on their engagement evening, and when it ended the way those things always end I got permission to use the phone and crossed over to it.

Fritz’s voice came. “Mr. Wolfe’s residence.”

“Fritz, this is Harold Stevens... No, no, Mr. Wolfe’s guest, Harold Stevens. May I speak to Mr. Wolfe, please?”

My first chance to check on Beulah’s habit that we were supposed to cure her of, sitting with her shoulders slumped and then straightening up with a jerk, came at the dinner table after Fritz had served the broiled chicken and grilled sweet potatoes. It didn’t look particularly noticeable to me, but of course I didn’t have the same background for it as Dazy Perrit. It would have been a cinch to kid her out of it, I thought, if she hadn’t just got herself engaged. A girl who has just collared her man is not likely to be in a frame of mind to be easily persuaded that anything about her needs correcting.

Her man was, in my opinion, a pain in the neck. He seemed to be under the impression that he was already married, with accumulated burdens. The food may not have been red meat but there was nothing wrong with it, as there never is when it has Fritz’s by-line, and the wines were some of the best in Wolfe’s cellar, but he didn’t loosen up once. Law students may think they have a lot on their minds, but my God, this was a celebration of his contract for happiness. I was doing my best to keep it gay and carefree because I was afraid that if the conversation turned serious Beulah would ask me for a detailed account of the activities and plans of the Dayton Community Health Center, and that might have floored me, with her probably up on the lingo. To my surprise, Wolfe helped out by hopping all over the place, asking Beulah about her courses and other concerns, talking about himself and cases he had handled, and even trying to draw Schane out — he actually called him Morton, in a paternal tone — regarding his philosophies and ambitions.

“I don’t really know anything,” Morton told him while Fritz was passing the salad plates, “except law. That’s the worst of a specialized education, it leaves you comparatively ignorant in all other fields. That is certainly regrettable.”

“It is indeed.” Wolfe reached for the bowl of dressing. “But not as regrettable as their ignorance in their own field. I hope, Morton, that you are prepared to face the fact that very few people like lawyers. I don’t. They are inveterate hedgers. They think everything has two sides, which is nonsense. They are insufferable word-stretchers. I had a lawyer draw up a tort for me once, a simple conveyance, and he made it eleven pages! Two would have done it. Have they taught you to draft torts?”

Morton was too well mannered to take offense at his dinner host. “Naturally, sir, that’s in the course. I try not to put in more words than necessary.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, keep it brief. A little more dressing, Harold?”

I nearly muffed that one because my mind was on something else. It wouldn’t hurt, I thought, to make a delivery of some kind to Dazy Perrit, and in my opinion we had something to deliver. He certainly didn’t know his daughter was engaged to be married, since it had just happened, and he would probably appreciate being told about it. I decided that as soon as we left the table I would excuse myself, go to my room two flights up, ring Wolfe on the house phone and get his okay, and then call Perrit from the extension in my room.

That worked all right except for the little detail that I couldn’t reach Perrit. I tried all five of the numbers he had given me, following instructions by saying it was Goodyear calling, and got nothing but not in. I left word everywhere for Perrit to call Goodyear and went downstairs to join them in the office, where they were having coffee.

Wolfe and Beulah were singing songs. At least it was as close to singing as I had ever seen him get. She was really pouring it out in words that were strangers to me, apparently songs she had mentioned at dinner that she had learned from a fellow student from Ecuador, and Wolfe was moving a finger to keep time and evidently humming. For him that was drunken revelry, and I would have merely sat and enjoyed it if I had had no worries. But it was past ten o’clock, and the situation called for my driving them home, and I didn’t want to miss Violet, who might beat the gun and arrive before eleven-thirty. So I stayed on my feet.

It wasn’t hard to get them out, because Morton was ready to go anyhow. Wolfe behaved like a gentleman, even getting out of his chair to say good night. I suppose that what was itching Morton was anxiety to get home and study, the wine and song having had no visible effect on him, but I was as wrong as I could be. Out at the curb, as I was opening the door of the convertible, he suddenly put his hand on my shoulder — more intimacy than I had thought him capable of in anything less than a year — and spoke.

“You know, you’re a swell guy, Stevens. That was a swell idea you had. Now I’ve got one, and I don’t think it’s all the wine I drank. Or maybe it is, but so what? Whose car is this?”

“Mr. Wolfe’s. He’s letting me use it.”

“But of course you have a driver’s license?”