Rex Stout - Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“He does not like you. He likes no woman.”

“Well, he likes my being interested in his orchids. And besides, I wrote him that I had a case for him and would pay him myself. He wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone.”

I looked at her. “What kind of a case?”

A corner of her mouth went up. “Like to know?”

“Go to the devil.”

“Now, Escamillo. Am I your bauble?”

“No.”

“I am too. I like the way your nose twitches when you smell a case. This is about a friend of mine, or anyway a girl I know, named Ann Amory. I was worried about her.”

“I can’t see you being worried about a girl named Ann Amory, or any girl except one named Lily Rowan.”

Lily patted my arm. “That sounds more like you. Anyway, I wanted an excuse to see Nero Wolfe, and Ann was in trouble. All she really wanted was advice. She had found out something about somebody and wanted to know what to do about it.”

“What had she found out about who?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. Her father used to work for my father, and I helped her out when he died. She works at the National Bird League and gets thirty dollars a week.” Lily shivered. “Good lord, think of it, thirty dollars a week! Of course that’s no worse than thirty dollars a day; you couldn’t possibly live anyhow. She came and asked me to send her to a lawyer and she certainly was upset. All she would tell me was that she had learned something terrible about someone, but from several things she let slip I think it’s her fiance. I thought Nero Wolfe would be better for her than any lawyer.”

“And he wouldn’t see you?”

“No.”

“Ann didn’t mention any names at all?”

“No.”

“Where does she live?”

“Downtown, not far from you-316 Barnum Street.”

“Who is her fiance?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Lily patted my arm. “Listen, you big rugged hero. Where shall we have dinner tonight? My place?”

I shook my head. “I’m on duty. Your attitude on bases in Ireland is subversive. For all I know, you’re an Irish spy. I regard you as irresistible, but I’ve got my honor to think of. I warned you that day in the Methodist tent that my spiritual side-”

She cut me off and so it went. So it went for another hour, until we touched ground again at LaGuardia Airport. I wasn’t able to duck her there. For the sake of decorum I split a taxi with her to Manhattan, but in front of the Ritz, where she had her own tower, and where I knew she would be disinclined to tear up sidewalks. I got myself transferred to another taxi with my bags and gave the driver the address of Wolfe’s house on 35th Street.

In spite of the encounter with Lily, as I rolled downtown and then turned west, I’m here to tell you it was okay with me. I don’t know why it seemed as if I’d been away a lot longer than two months, but it did. I recognized stores and buildings, as if I owned them, that I didn’t remember ever bothering to look at before. I hadn’t sent a wire because I thought it would be fun to surprise them, and naturally I was looking forward to seeing Theodore up in the plant rooms with the orchids, and Fritz in the kitchen stirring things in bowls and sniffing and tasting, and Nero Wolfe himself seated at his desk, frowning at a page of the atlas or maybe growling at a book he was reading- No, he wouldn’t be in the office. He didn’t come down from the plant rooms until six o’clock, so he would be up there with Theodore. I would say hello to Fritz in the kitchen and then sneak up to my room and wait until after I heard the elevator descending, bringing Wolfe down to the office.

Chapter 3

That was the worst shock I ever got in my life, bar none.

I let myself in with my key, which was still on my ring, dropped my bags in the hall, entered the office, and didn’t believe my eyes. Stacks of unopened mail were on Wolfe’s desk. I walked over to it and saw that it hadn’t been dusted for ten years, and neither had mine. I turned around to face the door and felt myself swallowing. Either Wolfe or Fritz was dead, the only question was which. Next thing I knew I was in the kitchen, and what I saw there convinced me that they both were dead. They must be. The rows of pots and pans were dusty too, and the spice jars.

I swallowed again. I opened a cupboard door and saw not a damn thing but a dish of oranges and six cartons of prunes. I opened the refrigerator, and that finished it. There was nothing there but four heads of lettuce, four tomatoes, and a dish of applesauce. I dashed out and made for the stairs.

One flight up, both Wolfe’s room and the spare were uninhabited, but the furniture looked normal. Same for the two rooms on the floor above, one of which was mine. I kept going, on up to the plant rooms. In the four growing-rooms there was nothing under the glass but orchids, hundreds of them in bloom, but in the potting-room I finally found a sign of human life, namely a man. It was Theodore Horstmann, on a stool at the bench, making entries in a propagation record book which I had formerly kept.

I demanded, “Where’s Wolfe? Where’s Fritz? What the hell’s going on here?”

Theodore finished a word, blotted it, turned on the stool, and squeaked at me:

“Why, hello, Archie. They’re out exercising. Only they call it training. They’re out training.”

“Are they well? Alive?”

“Of course they’re alive. They’re training.”

“Training what?”

“Training each other. Or perhaps more accurately, training themselves. They’re going into the Army, to fight. I am going to stay here as caretaker. Mr. Wolfe was going to dispose of the plants, but I persuaded him to leave them with me. Mr. Wolfe doesn’t work with the plants any more; he only comes up here to sweat. He has to sweat all he can in order to reduce his weight, and then he has to get hardened up, so he and Fritz go over by the river and walk fast. Next week they’re going to start to run. He is dieting and he has stopped drinking beer. Last week he caught cold but he’s over it now. He won’t buy any bread or cream or butter or sugar or lots of things and I have to buy my own meat.”

“Where do they train?”

“Over by the river. Mr. Wolfe obtained permission from the authorities to train on a pier because the boys on the street ridiculed him. From seven to nine in the morning and four to six in the afternoon. Mr. Wolfe is very persistent. He spends the rest of the time up here sweating. He doesn’t talk much, but I heard him telling Fritz that if two million Americans will kill ten Germans apiece-”

I had had enough of Theodore’s squeak. I left him, went back down to the office, got a cloth and dusted my desk and chair, sat down and elevated my dogs, and scowled at the stacks of mail on Wolfe’s desk.

Good God, I thought, what a homecoming this turned out to be. I might have known something like this would happen if I left him to manage himself. It is not only bad, it may be hopeless. The fathead. The big fat goop. And I told that general I know how to handle him. Now what am I going to do?

At 5:50 I heard the front door open and close, and footsteps in the hall, and there was Nero Wolfe looking in at me from the threshold with Fritz back of him.