Rex Stout - Too Many Cooks

Then I had to help Blanc clean up. Getting it off was twice as hard as putting it on, and I don’t know if he ever did get his ears clean again. Considering that he wasn’t a murderer at all, he was pretty nice about it. What with Wolfe’s blood and Blanc’s burnt cork, I certainly raised cain with Kanawha Spa towels that day.

Blanc stood and told Wolfe: “I have submitted to all this because Louis Servan requested it. I know murderers are supposed to be punished. If I were one, I would expect to be. This is a frightful experience for all of us, Mr. Wolfe, frightful. I didn’t kill Phillip Laszio, but if it were possible for me to bring him to life again by lifting a finger, do you know what I’d do? I would do this.” He thrust both hands into his pockets as far as they would go, and kept them there.

He turned to go, but his departure was postponed a few minutes longer, by a new arrival. The change in program had of course made it necessary to tell the greenjacket in the hall that the embargo on visitors was lifted, and now came the first of a string that kept knocking at the door intermittently all afternoon.

This one was my friend Barry Tolman.

“How’s Mr. Wolfe?”

“Battered and belligerent. Go on in.”

He entered, opened his mouth at Wolfe, and then saw who was standing there.

“Oh. You here, Mr. Blanc?”

“Yes. At Mr. Servan’s request-”

Wolfe put in, “We’ve been doing an experiment. I don’t believe you’ll need to waste time with Mr. Blanc. What about it, Archie? Did Mr. Blanc kill Laszio?”

I shook my head. “No, sir. Three outs and the side’s retired.”

Tolman looked at me, at Wolfe, at Blanc. “Is that so. Anyhow, I may want to see you later. You’ll be at Pocahontas?”

Blanc told him yes, not very amiably, expressed a hope that Wolfe would feel better by dinnertime, and went. When I got back from escorting him to the door, Tolman had sat down and had his head cocked on one side for a look at Wolfe’s bandage, and Wolfe was saying:

“Not to me, no, sir. The doctor called it superficial. But I assure you it is highly dangerous to the man who did it. And look here.” He displayed the mangled script of the speech. “The bullet did that before it struck me. Mr. Goodwin saved my life by tossing my speech at the window. So he says. I am willing to grant it. Where is Mr. Berin?”

“Here. At Pocahontas with… with his daughter, I brought him myself, just now. They phoned me at Quinby about your being shot. Do you think it was the one that stabbed Laszio who did it?”

“Who else?”

“But why was he after you? You were through with it.”

“He didn’t know that.” Wolfe stirred in his chair, winced, and added bitterly, “I’m not through with it now.”

“That suits me. I don’t say I’m glad you got shot… and you started on Blanc? What made you decide it wasn’t him?”

Wolfe started to explain, but another interruption took me away. This time it was the lunch trays, and Louis Servan had certainly put on the dog. There were three enormous trays and three waiters, and a fourth greenjacket as an outrider for opening doors and clearing traffic. I was hungry, and the smells that came from under the covered services made me more so. The outrider, who was Moulton himself, after a bow and an announcement to Wolfe, unfolded serving stands for the trays and advanced to the table with a cloth in his hand.

Wolfe told Tolman, “Excuse me, please.” With a healthy grunt he lifted himself from his chair and made his way across to the serving stands. Moulton joined him and hovered deferentially. Wolfe lifted one of the covers, bent his head and gazed, and sniffed. Then he looked at Moulton. “Piroshki?”

“Yes, sir. By Mr. Vallenko.”

“Yes. I know.” He lifted other covers, bent and smelled, with careful nods to himself. He straightened up again. “Artichokes barigoule?”

“I think, sir, he called them drigante. Mr. Mondor. Something like that.”

“No matter. Leave it all here, please. We’ll serve ourselves, if you don’t mind.”

“But Mr. Servan told me-”

“I prefer it that way. Leave it here on the trays.”

“I’ll leave a man-”

“No. Please. I’m having a conversation. Out, all of you.”

They went. It appeared that if I was going to get anything to eat I’d have to work for it, so I called on the muscles for another effort. As Wolfe returned to his chair I asked, “How do we do it? Boardinghouse style a la scoop shovel?”

He waited until he got deposited before he answered. Then he sighed first. “No. Telephone the hotel for a luncheon menu.”

I stared at him. “Maybe you’re delirious?”

“Archie.” He sounded savage. “You may guess the humor I’m in. That piroshki is by Vallenko, and the artichokes are by Mondor. But how the devil do I know who was in that kitchen or what happened there? These trays were intended for us, and probably everyone knew it. For me. I am still hoping to go home to-night. Phone the hotel, and get those trays out of here so I can’t smell them. Put them in your room and leave them there.”

Tolman said, “But my God, man… if you really think… we can have that stuff analyzed…”

“I don’t want to analyze it, I want to eat it. And I can’t. I’m not going to. There probably is nothing at all wrong with it, and look at me, terrorized, intimidated by that blackguard! What good would it do to analyze it? I tell you, sir-Archie?”

It was the door again. The smell from those covered dishes had me in almost as bad a state as Wolfe, and I was hoping it might be a food inspector from the Board of Health to certify them unadulterated, but it was only the greenjacket from the hall. He had a telegram addressed to Nero Wolfe.

I went back in with it, tore the envelope open, and handed it to him.

He pulled it out and read it.

He murmured, “Indeed.” At the sound of the new tone in his voice I gave him a sharp glance. He handed the telegram back to me, unfolded. “Read it to Mr. Tolman.”

I did so:

NERO WOLFE KANAWHA SPA W VA NOT MENTIONED ANY PAPER STOP CRAMER COOPERATING STOP PROCEEDING STOP WILL PHONE FROM DESTINATION

PANZER

Wolfe said softly, “That’s better. Much better. We might almost eat that piroshki now, but there’s a chance… no. Phone the hotel, Archie. And Mr. Tolman, I believe there will be an opportunity for you also to cooperate…”

15

JEROME BERIN SHOOK BOTH his fists so that his chair trembled under him. “God above! Such a dirty dog! Such a-” He stopped himself abruptly and demanded, “You say it was not Blanc? Not Vukcic? Not my old friend Zelota?”

Wolfe murmured, “None of them, I think.”

“Then I repeat, a dirty dog!” Berin leaned forward and tapped Wolfe on the knee. “I tell you frankly, it did not take a dog to kill Laszio. Anyone might have done that, anyone at ail, merely as an incident in the disposal of garbage. En passant. True, it is bad to stab a man in the back, but when one is in a hurry the niceties must sometimes be overlooked. No, only for killing Laszio, even in that manner, I would not say a dog. But to shoot at you through a window-you, the guest of honor of Les Quinze Maitres! Only because you had interested yourself in the cause of justice! Because you had undertaken to establish my innocence! Because you had the good sense to know that I could not possibly have made seven mistakes of those nine sauces! And let me tell you… will you credit it when I tell you what they gave me to eat in that place… in that jail in that place?”