Rex Stout: The Rubber Band

The door of the office opened. I turned– Fritz came in, walking formal as he always did to announce a caller. But he didn’t get to announce this one. The caller came right along, two steps behind Fritz, and I grinned when I saw he was stepping so soft that Fritz didn’t loiow he was there.

Fritz started, “A gentleman to—”

“Yeah, I see him. Okay.”

Fritz turned and saw he had been stalked, blinked, and beat it. I went on observing the caller, because he was a specimen. He was about six feet three inches tall, wearing an old blue serge suit with no vest and the sleeves a mile short, carrying a cream-colored ten-gallon hat, with a face that looked as if it had been left out on the fire escape for over half a century, and walking like a combination of a rodeo cowboy and a panther in the zoo.

He announced in a smooth low voice, “My name’s Harlan Scovil.” He went up to Anthony D. Perry and stared at him with half-shut eyes. Perry moved in his chair and looked annoyed. The caller said, “Are you Mr. Nero Wolfe?”

I butted in, suavely. “Mr. Wolfe is not here. I’m his assistant. I’m engaged with this gentleman. If you’ll excuse us …”

The caller nodded, and turned to stare again at Perry. “Then who—you ain’t Mike Walsh? Hell no, Mike was a runt.” He gave Perry up, and glanced around the room, then looked at me. “What do I do now, sit down and hang my hat on my ear?”

I grinned. “Yeah. Try that leather one over there.” He panthered for it, and I started For the door, throwing over my shoulder to Perry, “I won’t keep you waiting long.”

Upstairs, in the plant rooms on the roof, glazed in, where Wolfe kept his ten thousand orchids, I found him in the middle room turning some offseason Oncidiums that were about to bud, while Horstmann fussed around with a pot of charcoal and osmundine. Wolfe, of course, didn’t look at me or halt operations; whenever I interrupted him in the plant rooms he pretended he was Joe Louis in his training camp and I was a boy peeking through the fence.

I said, loud so he couldn’t also pretend he didn’t hear me, “That millionaire downstairs says I’ve got to go to his office right now and begin looking under the rugs for his thirty grand, and there’s an appointment here for six o’clock. I expressed a preference to go tomorrow morning.”

Wolfe said, “And if your pencil fell to the floor and you were presented with the alternative of either picking it up or leaving it there, would you also need to consult me about that?”

“He’s exasperated.”

“So am I.”

“He says it’s urgent, I’m outrageous, and he’s an old client.”

“He is probably correct all around. I like particularly the second of his conclusions. Leave me.”

“Very well. Another caller ]ust arrived. Name of Harlan Scovil. A weather-beaten plainsman who stared at Anthony D. Perry and said he wasn’t Mike Walsh.”

Wolfe looked at me. “You expect, I presume, to draw your salary at the end of the month.”

“Okay.” I wanted to reach out and tip over one of the Oncidiums, but decided it wouldn’t be diplomatic, so I faded.

When I got back downstairs Perry was standing in the door of the office with his hat on and his stick in his hand. I told him, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Well?”

“It’ll have to be tomorrow, Mr. Perry. The appointment can’t be postponed. Anyhow, the day’s nearly gone, and I couldn’t do much. Mr. Wolfe sincerely regrets—”

“All right,” Perry snapped. “At nine o’clock, you said?”

“I’ll be there on the dot.”

“Come to my office.”

“Right.”

I went and opened the front door for him.

In the office Harlan Scovil sat in the leather chair over by the bookshelves. As, entering, I lamped him from the door, I saw that his head was drooping and he looked tired and old and all in; but at sound of me he jerked up and I caught the bright points of his eyes. I went over and wheeled my chair around to face him.

“You want to see Nero Wolfe?”

He nodded. “That was my idea. Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Wolfe will be engaged until six o’clock, and at that time he has another appointment. My name’s Archie Goodwin. I’m Mr. Wolfe’s confidential assistant. Maybe I could help you?”

“The hell you are.” He certainly had a smooth sort voice for his age and bulk and his used-up face. He had his half-shut eyes on me. “Listen, sonny. What sort of a man is this Nero Wolfe?”

I grinned. “A fat man.”

He shook his head in slow impatience. “It ain’t to the point to tease a steer. You see the kind of man I am. I’m out of my county.” His eyes twin– kled a little. “Hell, I’m clear over the mountains. Who was that man that was in here when I came?”

“Just a man. A client of Mr. Wolfe’s.”

“What kind of a client? Anybody ever give him a name?”

“I expect so. Next time you see him, ask him. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“All right, sonny.” He nodded. “Naturally I had my suspicions up, seeing any kind of a man here at this time, but you heard me remark that he wasn’t Mike Walsh. And God knows he wasn’t Vie Lindquist’s daughter. Thanks for leaving my ideas free. Could I have a piece of paper? Any kind.”

I handed him a sheet of typewriter bond from my desk. He took it and held it in front of him spread on the palms of his hands, bent his head over it, and opened his mouth, and out popped a chew of tobacco the size of a hen’s egg. I’m fairly observant, but I hadn’t suspected its existence. He wrapped the paper around it, clumsily but thoroughly, got up and took it to the wastebasket, and came back and sat down again. His eyes twinkled at me.

“There seems to be very little spittin’ done east of the Mississippi. A swallower like me don’t mind, but if John Orcutt was here he wouldn’t tolerate it. But you was asking me if there’s anything you can do for me. I wish to God I knew. I wish to God there was a man in this town you could let put your saddle on.”

I grinned at him. “If you mean an honest man, Mr. Scovil, you must have got an idea from a movie or something. There’s just as many honest men here as the other side of the mountains. And just as few. I’m one. I’m so damn honest I often double-cross myself. Nero Wolfe is almost as bad. Go ahead. You must have come here to spill something besides that chew.”

With his eyes still on me, he lifted his right hand and drew the back of it slowly across his nostrils from left to right, and then, after a pause, from right to left.

He nodded. “I’ve traveled over two thousand miles, from Hiller County, Wyoming, to come here on an off chance. I sold thirty calves to get the money to come on, and for me nowadays that’s a lot of calves. I didn’t know till this morning I was going to see any kind of a man called Nero Wolfe. All that is to me is just a name and address on a piece of paper I’ve got in my pocket. All I knew was I was going to see Mike Walsh and Vic’s daughter and Gil’s daughter, and I was supposed to be going to see George Rowley, and by God if I see him and what they say is true I’ll be able to fix up some fences this winter and get something besides lizards and coyotes inside of ‘em. One thing you can tell me anyhow, did you ever hear of any kind of a man called a Marquis of Clivers?”

I nodded. “I’ve read in the paper about that kind of a man.”

“Good for you. I don’t read much. One reason, I’m so damn suspicious I don’t believe it even if I do read it, so it don’t seem worth the trouble. I’m here now because I’m suspicious. I was supposed to come here at six o’clock with the rest of those others, but I had my time on my hands anyhow, so I thought I might as well ride out and take a look. I want to see this Nero Wolfe man. You don’t look to me like a man that goes out at night after lambs, but I want to see him. What really made me suspicious was the two daughters. God knows a man is bad enough when you don’t know him, but I doubt if you ever could get to know a woman well enough to leave her loose around you. I never really tried, because it didn’t ever seem to be worth the trouble.”