Rex Stout: The Squirt and the Monkey

I was doing two things at once. With my hands I was getting my armpit holster and the Marley .32 from a drawer of my desk, and with my tongue I was giving Nero Wolfe a lecture on economics.

“The most you can hope to soak him,” I stated, “is five hundred bucks. Deduct a C for twenty per cent for overhead and another C for expenses incurred, that leaves three hundred. Eighty-five per cent for income tax will leave you with forty-five bucks clear for the wear and tear on your brain and my legs, not to mention the risk. That wouldn’t buy—”

“Risk of what?” He muttered that only to be courteous, to show that he had heard what I said, though actually he wasn’t listening. Seated behind his desk, he was scowling, not at me but at the crossword puzzle in the London Times.

“Complications,” I said darkly. “You heard him explain it. Playing games with a gun is sappy.” I was contorted, buckling the strap of the holster. That done, I picked up my coat. “Since you’re listed in the red book as a detective, and since I draw pay, such as it is, as your licensed assistant, I’m all for detecting for people on request. But this bozo wants to do it himself, using our firearm as a prop.” I felt my tie to see if it was straight. I didn’t cross to the large mirror on the far wall of the office for a look, because whenever I did so in Wolfe’s presence he snorted. “We might just as well,” I declared, “send it up to him by messenger.”

“Pfui,” Wolfe muttered. “It is a thoroughly conventional proceeding. You are merely out of humor because you don’t like Dazzle Dan. If it were Pleistocene Polly you would be zealous.”

“Nuts. I look at the comics occasionally just to be cultured. It wouldn’t hurt any if you did.”

I went to the hall for my things, let myself out, descended the stoop, and headed toward Tenth Avenue for a taxi. A cold gusty wind came at my back from across the Hudson, and I made it brisk, swinging my arms, to get my blood going.

It was true that I did not care for Dazzle Dan, the hero of the comic strip that was syndicated to two thousand newspapers — or was it two million? — throughout the land. Also I did not care for his creator, Harry Koven, who had called at the office Saturday evening, forty hours ago. He had kept chewing his upper lip with jagged yellow teeth, and it had seemed to me that he might at least have chewed the lower lip instead of the upper, which doesn’t show teeth. Moreover, I had not cared for his job as he outlined it. Not that I was getting snooty about the renown of Nero Wolfe — a guy who has had a gun lifted has got as much right to buy good detective work as a rich duchess accused of murder — but the way this Harry Koven had programmed it he was going to do the detecting himself, so the only difference between me and a messenger boy was that I was taking a taxi instead of the subway.

Anyhow Wolfe had taken the job and there I was. I pulled a slip of paper from my pocket, typed on by me from notes taken of the talk with Harry Koven, and gave it a look.

MARCELLE KOVEN, wife

ADRIAN GETZ, friend or camp follower, maybe both

PATRICIA LOWELL, agent (manager?), promoter

PETE JORDAN, artist, draws Dazzle Dan

BYRAM HILDEBRAND, artist, also draws D.D.

One of those five, according to Harry Koven, had stolen his gun, a Marley .32, and he wanted to know which one. As he had told it, that was all there was to it, but it was a cinch that if the missing object had been an electric shaver or a pair of cufflinks it would not have called for all that lip-chewing, not to mention other signs of strain. He had gone out of his way, not once but twice, to declare that he had no reason to suspect any of the five of wanting to do any shooting. The second time he had made it so emphatic that Wolfe had grunted and I had lifted a brow.

Since a Marley .32 is by no means a collector’s item, it was no great coincidence that there was one in our arsenal and that therefore we were equipped to furnish Koven with the prop he wanted for his performance. As for the performance itself, the judicious thing to do was wait and see, but there was no point in being judicious about something I didn’t like, so I had already checked it off as a dud.

I dismissed the taxi at the address on Seventy-sixth Street, east of Lexington Avenue. The house had had its front done over for the current century, unlike Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street, which still sported the same front stoop it had started with. To enter this one you went down four steps instead of up seven, and I did so, after noting the pink shutters at the windows of all four floors and the tubs of evergreens flanking the entrance.

I was let in by a maid in uniform, with a pug nose and lipstick about as thick as Wolfe spreads Camembert on a wafer. I told her I had an appointment with Mr. Koven. She said Mr. Koven was not yet available and seemed to think that settled it, making me no offer for my hat and coat.

I said, “Our old brownstone, run by men only, is run better. When Fritz or I admit someone with an appointment we take his things.”

“What’s your name?” she demanded in a tone indicating that she doubted if I had one.

A loud male voice came from somewhere within. “Is that the man from Furnari’s?”

A loud female voice came from up above. “Cora, is that my dress?”

I called out, “It’s Archie Goodwin, expected by Mr. Koven at noon! It is now two minutes past twelve!”

That got action. The female voice, not quite so loud, told me to come up. The maid, looking frustrated, beat it. I took off my coat and put it on a chair, and my hat. A man came through a doorway at the rear of the hall and approached, speaking.

“More noise. Noisiest goddam place. Up this way.” He started up the stairs. “When you have an appointment with Sir Harry, always add an hour.”

I followed him. At the top of the flight there was a large square hall with wide archways to rooms at right and left. He led me through the one at the left.

There are few rooms I can’t take in at a glance, but that was one of them. Two huge TV cabinets, a monkey in a cage in a corner, chairs of all sizes and colors, rugs overlapping, a fireplace blazing away, the temperature around eighty — I gave it up and focused on the inhabitant. That was not only simpler but pleasanter. She was smaller than I would specify by choice, but otherwise acceptable, especially the wide smooth brow above the serious gray eyes, and the cheekbones. She must have been part salamander, to look so cool and silky in that oven.

“Dearest Pete,” she said, “you are going to stop calling my husband Sir Harry.”

I admired that as a time-saver. Instead of the usual pronouncement of names, she let me know that she was Marcelle, Mrs. Harry Koven, and that the young man was Pete Jordan, and at the same time told him something.

Pete Jordan walked across to her as for a purpose. He might have been going to take her in his arms or slap her or anything in between. But a pace short of her he stopped.

“You’re wrong,” he told her in his aggressive baritone. “It’s according to plan. It’s the only way I can prove I’m not a louse. No one but a louse would stick at this, doing this crap month after month, and here look at me just because I like to eat. I haven’t got the guts to quit and starve a while, so I call him Sir Harry to make you sore, working myself up to calling him something that will make him sore, and eventually I’ll come to a boil and figure out a way to make Getz sore, and then I’ll get bounced and I can start starving and be an artist. It’s a plan.”