Rex Stout: The Black Mountain

That was his plan. The Basilia was scheduled to dock at noon on Wednesday. We would disembark and go home. That evening after dark Zov would come ashore and meet me at a waterfront bar, to go with me to the house of a friend of ours who would lend us his car to drive to Philadelphia. The house would be on West Thirty-fifth Street. I would take Zov in and introduce him to Nero Wolfe, taking adequate precautions that he didn’t execute his mission then and there. Possibly Wolfe would have to get Cramer on the phone himself instead of telling me to.

Wolfe wouldn’t budge. That was the plan, no matter what I said, or how often I said it, about the risks involved or the defects in Wolfe’s character that made him hatch it. I admit that my remarks about the defects got fairly pointed by the twelfth day, and that morning as we packed, him with his bag on his bed and me with mine on mine, our relations were so strained that when he had prolonged trouble with his zipper he didn’t call for help and I didn’t offer any. When I had my bag closed and labeled I told him, “See you in the dining room with the immigration officers,” and left him. Out in the passage there was Zov, coming along. He asked, “Okay?” and I told him, “Yep, okay.” He entered our cabin. Being good and sore, I told my legs to go on to the dining room, but they said no. They kept me standing there until Zov came out again with our bags, and headed for the stairs. I wanted to stop him and make sure he knew where we were going to meet that evening, but Wolfe had said it was all arranged in Serbo-Croat, and the few times I had tried exchanging English with Zov it hadn’t worked too well, so I skipped it.

When we had finished immigrating, Wolfe went back to the cabin and I went on deck to take in the harbor and the Statue of Liberty and the skyline. The neat little blonde came and joined me at the rail, and if you had guessed her Gibson intake from the way she looked you would have been away off. She was just a happy and healthy little doll with nice clear eyes and a clear, smooth skin, so much so that a news photographer, who had taken a dozen shots of the only notable on board, an orchestra conductor, and was looking around for something that might appeal to his public, came and asked her to pose. She said all right, but refused to sit on the rail with her skirt up, and I thought it might have been worth the trouble to try to reform her. There was nothing wrong with her legs, so it wasn’t that.

It was a bright, sunny day. As we passed the Battery and slid up the river I was thinking that now would be the time to telephone Cramer if that big baboon had listened to reason. It would be a crime if something happened now to spoil it — as, for instance, Zov deciding he liked some other contact in New York better than us. I had a notion to go down to the cabin and have one more try at talking sense into Wolfe, and was debating it as we were being nosed into the slip, when his voice sounded behind me and I turned. He was looking placid and pleased. He glanced left and right at the line of waving passengers and then down at the group of waving welcomers on the pier. He nodded at somebody, and I stretched my neck to see who it was, and there was Zov with three or four other stewards, back against the bulkhead.

“Satisfactory,” Wolfe said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “So far.”

Somebody yelled, “Nero Wolfe!”

I jerked around. It was the news photographer. He was headed for us down the deck, beaming, jostling passengers. “Mr. Wolfe! Look this way! Just a second!” He advanced and got set to focus.

It may have been partly me. If I hadn’t looked at Zov and started my hand inside my jacket he might have hesitated long enough for Wolfe to get behind something or somebody. He was fast. I never saw a faster hand. Mine had just touched the butt of the Marley when he pulled the trigger. Wolfe took one step toward him and went down. I had the Marley out but couldn’t shoot because the other stewards were all over Zov. I jumped over Wolfe’s body and was there to help, but they had Zov flat on the deck, and one of them had his gun. I went back to Wolfe, who was on his side, propping himself with an elbow. People were crowding in and jabbering.

“Lie down,” I commanded him. “Where did he get you?”

“Leg. Left leg.”

I squatted and looked. The hole was in the left leg of his pants, ten inches above the knee. I wanted to laugh, and I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I was afraid the photographer would shoot it and it would look silly.

“Probably in the bone,” I said. “What did I tell you?”

“Have they got him?”

“Yes.”

“The gun?”

“Yes.”

“Was it the Luger?”

“Yes.”

“Satisfactory. Find a phone and get Mr. Cramer.”

He flattened out and closed his eyes. The ham.