Rex Stout: Three Men Out

Three Men Out Rex Stout Series:Nero Wolfe [24] Published:1954 Tags:Vintage Mystery

Vintage Mysteryttt

Three Men OutRex Stout Series:Nero Wolfe [24] Published:1954 Tags:Vintage Mystery

Vintage Mysteryttt

Also available in Large Print by Rex Stout: The Broken Vase Prisoner's Base Three Men Out A PiERO WOLFE MYSTERY Rex Stout G.I<,HALL^CO. Boston^ Massachusetts 1990 �>THE . SCAH&OPO^H p^UCUBP^ BOABP Copyright 1952, 1953 by Rex Stout. All rights reserved. Acknowledgment is made to American Magazine, in which these short novels originally appeared. The magazine title for "The Zero Clue" was "Scared to Death"; "Invitation to Murder" was titled "Will to Murder." Published in Large Print by arrangement with Barbara Stout and Rebecca Stout Bradbury. G.K. Hall Large Print Book Series. Set in 16 pt. Plantin. Library of Congress Catahging in Publication Data Stout, Rex, 18861975. Three men out : a Nero Wolfe mystery / Rex Stout. p. cm.--(G.K. Hall large print book series) (Nightingale series) "Published in large print"--T.p. verso. ISBN 0-8161-4793-0 (Ig. print) 1. Large type books. I. Tide. [PS3537.T733T47 1990] 813'.52--dc20 8938093 Contents Invitation to Murder The Zero Clue This Won't Kill You Invitation to Murder The neat little man resented it. He was hurt. "No, sir," he protested, "you are wrong. It is not what you called it, sordid familial flimflam. It is perfectly legitimate for me to inquire into anything affecting the disposal of the fortune my father made, is it not?" Weighing rather less than half as much as Nero Wolfe, he was lost in the red leather chair three steps from the end of Wolfe's desk. Comfortably filling his own outsized chair behind the desk, Wolfe was scowling at the would-be client, Mr. Herman Lewent of New York and Paris. I, at my desk with notebook and pen, was neutral, because it was Friday and I had a weekend date, and if Lewent's job was urgent and we took it, good-by weekend. Wolfe, as usual when solicited, was torn. He hated to work, but he loved to eat and drink, and his domestic and professional establishment in the old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street, including the orchids in the plant rooms on the roof, had an awful appetite for dollars. The only source of dollars was his income as a private detective, and at that moment, there on his desk near the edge, was a little stack of lettuce with a rubber band around it. Herman Lewent, who had put it there, had stated that it was a thousand dollars. Nevertheless Wolfe, who hated to work and was torn, demanded, "Why is it legitimate?"

Lewent was small all over. He was slim and short, his hands and feet were tiny, and his features were in scale, with a pinched little mouth that had no room at all for lips. Also he was old enough to have started to shrink some and show creases. Still I would not have called him a squirt. When his quick little gray eyes met yours straight, as they did, you had the feeling that he knew a lot of the answers and could supply good guesses on the ones he hadn't worked out. He was still resenting Wolfe but holding it in. "I came to you," he said, "because this is a very delicate matter, and the combination you have here, you and Mr. Goodwin, may be able to handle it. So I'm prepared to suffer your rudeness. The inquiry is legiti- 4 mate because it was my father who made the fortune--in mining, mostly copper mining. My mother died when I was a child, and I never learned how to behave myself. I have never learned, and I am now too old to. A few months ago I had three mistresses, one in Paris, one in Toulouse, and one in Rome, and one of them tried to poison me." I gave him an eye and decided to believe nothing he said. He just wasn't built for it. He was proceeding. "I am no longer wild; I'm too old; but I was wild when young. Though my father didn't approve of me and finally refused to see me, he didn't let me starve--in fact, he was fairly generous. But when he died--I was thirty-six then; that was twenty years ago--he left everything to my sister, Beryl, with a request that she consider my needs. She did so, up to a point, until she died a year ago. She was born knowing how to behave, my sister was. I was abroad when she died--I have lived mostly abroad--but of course I flew over for the funeral." He shrugged like a Frenchman, or anyhow not like an American. "Out of all the millions she had inherited from our father, she left me nothing. Not a cent, not a sou. 5 It all went to her husband, Theodore Huck, with a request that he consider my needs, worded exactly like the request in my father's will. As I said, my sister knew how to behave. I had a talk with Huck and suggested that it would be simpler to transfer a lump sum to me--say a million or even half a million--but he thought not. He said he knew what Beryl's wishes were and felt bound to carry them out, and he agreed to send me the same amount she had been sending the last two years, a thousand dollars a month. I didn't do what I should have done." He wanted a question, and Wolfe obliged. "What should you have done?" "I should have killed him. He sat there in his wheelchair--his arteries have gone bad, and he can't walk--he sat there in my father's house, the owner of it, and he said he would send me a thousand a month from the money my father had made. It was an invitation to murder. If I had killed him, with due precaution of course, under my sister's will I would have received for the rest of my life an annual income of some forty thousand dollars. The idea did occur to me, but I'm no good at all with any kind of intricacy, and though I have never learned 6 how to behave, my instinct of self-preservation is damned keen." He gestured. 'That's what brought me here, that instinct. If for any reason this creature, this brother-in-law, this Theodore Huck in a wheelchair, stopped considering my needs, I would shortly die of starvation. I am incapable of sustaining life, even my own--especially my own. So when, at my rooms in Paris, I received a communication warning me of possible danger, I took a plane to New York. My brother-in-law made me welcome at my father's house--damned gracious of him--and I've been there nearly two weeks now, and I'm stumped, and that's why I'm here. There are three--" He stopped abruptly, aimed the quick little gray eyes at me, sent them back to Wolfe, and said, "This is confidential." Wolfe nodded. "Things discussed in this room usually are. Your risk, sir." "Well." He screwed his pinched little mouth, making it even smaller. He shrugged. "Well. I think the warning I got was valid. There are three women in that house with him, besides the cook and maids: the housekeeper, Mrs. Cassie O'Shea, who is a widow; a nurse. Miss Sylvia Marcy; and a so-called secretary, Miss Dorothy Riff. They're all after him, and I think one of them is getting him, but I don't know which one and I can't find out. The trouble is, I have developed a formula for getting on terms with women, but in this case I can't use it and I'm lost. I need to know as soon as possible which one of those women is landing my brother-in-law." Wolfe snorted. "So you can intervene? With your formula?" "Good God, no." Lewent was shocked. "It would be a damned nuisance, and anyway there would soon be another one and I would have time for nothing else. Also I would like to get back to Europe before the holidays. I merely want to engage her sympathetic interest. I want to secure her friendship. I want to make absolutely certain that she will be permanently well disposed toward me after she lands Huck. That will take me three weeks if it is Miss Marcy or Miss Riff, four if it is Mrs. O'Shea. It is not a sordid familial flimflam. It's a perfectly legitimate inquiry. Isn't it?" "I suppose so," Wolfe conceded. "But it's fantastic." "Not at all. It's practical and damned sensible.