Rex Stout: Nero Wolfe 01 - Fer-de-Lance

Wolfe said, "Show her one."

The last one he had clipped was on top, but I reached under it and got the next one; the painting piece had been in a large box in the lower right quarter of the page. As I held it out, spread open, to Anna, Wolfe said, "Look at that, Miss Fiore. Is that the way the piece was cut out Monday morning?"

She gave it only a glance. "No, sir. It was a big piece out of the top, here, let me show you--"

I snatched it out of the way before she could get hold of it, tossed it back to the table, and picked up another. I spread it in front of her. This time she took two glances, then she said, "Yes, sir."

"You mean that's it?"

"It was cut out like that, yes, sir."

For a moment Wolfe was silent, then I heard him breathe and he said, "Turn her around, Archie." I took the arm of her chair and whirled it around with her in it. Wolfe looked at her and said, "How sure are you, Miss Fiore, that the paper was cut out like that?"

"I know it was, sir. I'm sure."

"Did you see the piece he had cut out? In his room, in the wastebasket perhaps, or in his hand?"

"No, I never saw it. It couldn't have been in the wastebasket because there isn't any."

"Good. If only all reasons were as good as that. You may go home now, Miss Fiore. You have been a good girl, good and patient and forbearing, and unlike most of the persons I avoid meeting by staying inside my house, you are willing to confine your tongue to its proper functions. But will you answer just one more question? I ask it as a favor."

The girl was completely tired out, but there was enough life left in her to let the bewilderment show in her eyes. She stared at him. Wolfe said, "Just one more question. Have you ever at any time seen a golf club in Carlo Maffei's room?"

If he was looking for a climax he got it, because for the first time in all these hours the girl shut up on him. It was funny how plain you could see it happen. For an instant she just looked, then when the question had clicked what little color she had left her till she was dead white and her mouth dropped half open; she looked absolutely like an idiot, and she began to tremble all over.

Wolfe bored at her, quiet. "When did you see it?"

All of a sudden she shut her lips tight, and her hands in her lap closed into fists. "No, sir." It was just a mumble. "No, sir, I never did."

Wolfe looked at her a second, then he said, "All right. It's quite all right, Miss Fiore." He turned to me. "Take her home."

She didn't try to stand up till I went over and touched her shoulder. Then she put her hands on the arms of the chair and got to her feet. He had certainly got her somehow, but she didn't seem exactly scared, just caved in. I got her jacket from the back of a chair and helped her put it on. As she started for the door I turned to say something to Wolfe, and couldn't believe my eyes. He was raising himself out of his chair to stand up! Actually. I had at one time seen him refuse to take that trouble for the departure from that room of a woman worth twenty-million American dollars who had married an English duke. But anyway I said what I had started to say: "I told her I'd give her a dollar."

"Then you'll have to do it, I'm afraid." He raised his voice a little to reach the door: "Good night, Miss Fiore."

She didn't reply. I followed her to the hall and took her out to the roadster. When we got to Sullivan Street Mrs. Ricci was waiting in front with a glare in her eye that made me decide not to stop for any amenities.

By the time I had garaged the car and walked the two blocks back to Thirty-fifth Street the office was dark and when I went up a flight I saw a ribbon of light under the door of Wolfe's bedroom. I often wondered how he ever got his clothes off, but I know Fritz never helped him. Fritz slept up above, across the hall from the plant-rooms; my room was on the second floor, the same floor as Wolfe's, a fair-sized room in front with its own bath and a pair of windows. I had lived there seven years, and it certainly was home; and seemed likely to remain so for another seven, or even twenty-seven, for the only girl I had ever been really soft on had found another bargain she liked better. That was how I happened to meet Wolfe--but that story isn't for me to tell, at least not yet. There are one or two little points about it that will need clearing up some day. But that room was certainly home. The bed was big and good, there was a desk with plenty of drawer-space and three chairs all roomy and comfortable, and a real carpet all over, no damn little rugs to slide you around like a piece of butter on a hotcake. The pictures on the walls were my own, and I think they were a good selection; one of Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, a colored one of a lion's head, another colored one of woods with grass and flowers, and a big framed photograph of my mother and father, who both died when I was just a kid. Also there was a colored one called September Morn, of a young woman apparently with no clothes on and her hair hanging down in front, but that was in the bathroom. There was nothing unusual about the room, it was just a good room to live in, except the big gong on the wall under the bed, and that was out of sight. It was connected up so that when Wolfe turned on a switch in his room, which he did every night, the gong would sound if anyone stepped in the hall within five feet of his door or if any of his windows was disturbed, and also it was connected with all entrances to the plant-rooms. Wolfe told me once, not as if it mattered much, that he really had no cowardice in him, he only had an intense distaste for being touched by anyone or for being compelled without warning to make any quick movements; and when I considered the quantity he had to move I was willing to believe him. For some reason questions like that of cowardice have never interested me as regards Wolfe, though ordinarily if I have cause to suspect that a man is yellow as far as I'm concerned he can eat at another table.

I took one of the newspapers from the office upstairs with me, and after I had undressed and got into pajamas and slippers, I made myself comfortable in a chair with cigarettes and ashtray handy and read that university president article three times. It was headed like this:

Friends Reach His Side With His Last Breath

It was quite a piece, with a full column on the front page, another column and a half on the inside, and in another article a long obituary with comments from a lot of prominent people. The story itself didn't amount to much and there was really nothing to it except another man gone. I read the paper every day and this one was only two days old, but I couldn't remember noticing this. Barstow, 58-year-old president of Holland University, had been playing golf Sunday afternoon on the links of the Green Meadow Club near Pleasantville, thirty miles north of New York, a foursome, with his son Lawrence and two friends named E.D. Kimball and Manuel Kimball. On the fairway of the fourth hole he had suddenly pitched forward and landed on his face, flopped around on the ground a few seconds, and then lay still. His caddy had jumped to him and grabbed his arm, but by the time the others got to him he was dead. Among the crowd that collected from the clubhouse and other players was a doctor who was an old friend of Barstow's, and he and the son had taken the body in Barstow's own car to the Barstow home six miles away. The doctor had pronounced it heart disease.

The rest was trimmings, all about Barstow's career and achievements and a picture of him and this and that, and how his wife had collapsed when they brought him home and his son and daughter bore up well. After the third reading I just yawned and threw up the sponge. The only connection that I could see between Barstow's death and Carlo Maffei was the fact that Wolfe had asked Anna Fiore if she had seen a golf club, so I tossed the paper away and got up saying to myself aloud, "Mr. Goodwin, I guess you haven't got this case ready for the closed business file." Then I took a drink of water and went to bed.