Rex Stout: Method Three for Murder

When I first set eyes on Mira Holt, as I opened the front door and she was coming up the seven steps to the stoop, she was a problem, though only a minor one compared to what followed.

At the moment I was unemployed. During the years I have worked for Nero Wolfe and lived under his roof, I have quit and been fired about the same number of times, say thirty or forty. Mostly we have been merely letting off steam, but sometimes we have meant it, more or less, and that Monday evening in September I was really fed up. The main dish at dinner had been pork stewed in beer, which both Wolfe and Fritz know I can get along without, and we had left the dining room and crossed the hall to the office, and Fritz had brought coffee and Wolfe had poured it, and I had said, “By the way, I told Anderson I’d phone and confirm his appointment for tomorrow morning.”

And Wolfe had said, “No. Cancel it.” He picked up the book he was on, John Gunther’s Inside Russia Today.

I sat in my working chair and looked across his desk at him. Since he weighs a seventh of a ton he always looks big, but when he’s being obnoxious he looks even bigger. “Do you suppose it’s possible,” I asked, “that that pork has a bloating effect?”

“No indeed,” he said, and opened the book.

If I had been a camel and the book had been a straw you could have heard my spine crack. He knew darned well he shouldn’t have opened it until we had finished with coffee. I put my cup down. “I am aware,” I said, “that you are sitting pretty. The bank balance is fat enough for months of paying Fritz and Theodore and me, and buying pork and beer in car lots, and adding more orchids to the ten thousand you’ve already got. I’ll even grant that a private detective has a right to refuse to take a case with or without a reason. But as I told you before dinner, this Anderson is known to me, and he asked me as a personal favor to get him fifteen minutes with you, and I told him to come at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. If you’re determined not to work because your tax bracket is already too high, okay, all you have to do is tell him no. He’ll be here at eleven.”

He was holding the book open and his eyes were on it, but he spoke. “You know quite well, Archie, that I must be consulted on appointments. Did you owe this man a favor?”

“I do now that he asked for one and I said yes.”

“Did you owe him one before?”

“No.”

“Then you are committed but I am not. Since I wouldn’t take the job it would waste his time and mine. Phone him not to come. Tell him I have other engagements.”

So I quit. I admit that on some other occasions my quitting had been merely a threat, to jolt him into seeing reason, but not that time. When a mule plants its feet a certain way there’s no use trying to budge it. I swiveled, got my memo pad, wrote on it, yanked the sheet off, got up and crossed to his desk, and handed him the sheet.

“That’s Anderson’s number,” I told him. “If you’re too busy to phone him not to come, Fritz can. I’m through. I’ll stay with friends tonight and come tomorrow for my stuff.”

His eyes had left the book to glare at me. “Pfui,” he said.

“I agree,” I said. “Absolutely.” I turned and marched out. I do not say that as I got my hat from the rack in the hall my course was clearly mapped for the next twenty years, or even twenty hours. Wolfe owned the house but not everything in it, for the furniture in my room on the third floor had been bought and paid for by me. That would have to wait until I found a place to move it to, but I would get my clothes and other items tomorrow, and would I come for them before eleven o’clock and learn from Fritz whether a visitor named Anderson was expected, or would it be better strategy to come in the afternoon and learn if Anderson had been admitted and given his fifteen minutes? Facing that problem as I pulled the door open, I was immediately confronted by another one. A female was coming up the seven steps to the stoop.

I couldn’t greet her and ask her business, since it was a cinch she would say she wanted to see Nero Wolfe and I couldn’t carry on with a job I no longer held by returning to the office to ask Wolfe if he would receive a caller. Anyway I wouldn’t. I couldn’t step aside and let her enter by the door I had opened with no questions asked, since there was a possibility that she was one of the various people who had it in for Wolfe, and while I might have considered shooting him myself I didn’t want to get him plugged by a total stranger. So I crossed the sill, pulled the door shut, sidestepped to pass her, and was starting down the steps when my sleeve was caught and jerked.

“Hey,” she said, “aren’t you Archie Goodwin?”

My eyes slanted down to hers. “You’re guessing,” I said.

“I am not. I’ve seen you at the Flamingo. You’re not very polite, shutting the door in my face.” She spoke in jerks, as if she wasn’t sure she had enough breath. “I want to see Nero Wolfe.”

“This is his house. Ring the bell.”

“But I want to see you too. Let me in. Take me in.”

My eyes had adjusted enough to the poor light to see that she was young, attractive, and hypped. She had on a cap with a beak. In normal circumstances it would have been a pleasure to escort her into the front room and go and badger Wolfe into seeing her, but as things stood I didn’t even consider it. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t work here any more. I just quit. I am now on my way to bum a bed for the night. You’ll have to ring the bell, but I should warn you that in Mr. Wolfe’s present mood there’s not a chance. You might as well skip it. If your trouble is urgent you ought to—”

“I’m not in trouble.”

“Good. You’re lucky.”

She touched my sleeve. “I don’t believe it. That you’ve quit.”

“I do. Would I say so if I hadn’t? Running the risk that you’re a journalist and tomorrow there will be a front-page spread, ‘Archie Goodwin, the famous private detective, has severed his connection with Nero Wolfe, also a detective, and it is thought—”’

“Shut up!” She was close to me, gripping my arm. She let loose and backed up a step. “I beg your pardon. I seem to be… you think Nero Wolfe wouldn’t see me?”

“I don’t think. I know.”

“Anyway I want to see you too. For what I want I guess you would be better than him. I want some advice — no, not advice exactly, I want to consult you. I’ll pay cash, fifty dollars. Can’t we go inside?”

Naturally I was uplifted. Since I had left Wolfe, and since there was no other outfit in New York I would work for, my only possible program was to set up for myself, and before I even got down to the sidewalk here was a pretty girl offering me fifty bucks just for consultation.

“I’m afraid not,” I told her, “since I no longer belong here. If that’s your taxi waiting that will do fine, especially with the driver gone.” A glance had shown me that there was no one behind the wheel of the cab at the curb. Probably, having been told to wait for her, he had beat it to Al’s diner at the corner of Tenth Avenue, which was popular with hackies.

She shook her head. “I don’t—” she began, and let it hang. She glanced around. “Why not here? It shouldn’t take very long — I just want you to help me win a bet.” She moved, descended two steps, and sat on the landing, swaying a little as she bent. “Have a seat.”

We were still on Wolfe’s premises, but he rarely used the outdoors part, and after she paid me I could slip a buck under the door for rent. I sat down beside her, not crowding. I had often sat there watching the neighborhood kids at stoop ball.