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

She was smiling at me. “I leave the office at five o’clock.”

“And what, go home?”

She nodded. “I usually get home a little before five-thirty. And take a bath, and start cooking dinner. This time of year, grandmother gets home from the Square around seven, and I have dinner ready for her. Sometimes Roy or Leon eats with us.”

“Could you eat early tomorrow and come to Nero Wolfe’s house at seven o’clock? And tell him about the trouble you’re in? Tell him all about it?”

She frowned at me, hesitating. I covered her hand, on the tablecloth, with mine. “Look, sister,” I said, “it’s possible that you’re headed for something terrible yourself. I’m not trying to pretend-”

I stopped because I felt a presence, and I felt eyes. I glanced up, and there were the eyes looking down at me, one on each side of Lily Rowan’s pretty little nose.

I tried to grin at her. “Why-hello there-”

“You,” Lily said, in a tone to cut my throat. “On duty, huh? You louse!”

I think she was going to smack me. Anyhow, it was obvious that she wasn’t going to care what she did, and intended to proceed without delay, so it was merely a question of who moved first and fastest. I was out of my chair, on my feet across the table from her, in half a second flat, with a gesture to Ann, and Ann passed that test too, a fairly tough one, with flying colors. As fast as I moved she was with me, and before even Lily Rowan could get any commotion started we had my cap from the hat-check girl and were out on the sidewalk.

As the taxi rolled away with us I patted Ann’s hand and said, “Good girl. Apparently she was upset about something.”

“She was jealous,” Ann chuckled. “My lord, she was jealous. Lily Rowan jealous of me!”

When I left her at 316 Barnum Street, it was agreed that she would be at Nero Wolfe’s place at 7:00 the next day. Even so, as the taxi took me back to 35th Street, I was not in a satisfactory frame of mind, and it wasn’t improved by finding pinned to my pillowcase a note which said:

Dear Archie, Miss Rowan telephoned four times, and when I told her you were not here she said I was a liar. I am sorry there is no bacon or ham or pancake flour or anything like that in the house.

Fritz

Chapter 6

I slept because I always sleep, but my nerves must have been in bad shape, because when my eyes opened and read the clock at 6:50 I was immediately wide awake. I would have given my next two promotions for the satisfaction of planting myself in the downstairs hall and glaring at Wolfe and Fritz as they left on their way to the training field, but knowing that would be a bad blunder in strategy I restrained myself. All I did was open my door so I could hear noises, and when, promptly at 7:00 I heard the street door open and close, I went to a window and leaned out for a look. And there they went, off toward the river, Wolfe in the blue serge pants and my maroon sweater and heavy shoes, no hat, at a gait he probably thought was a stride, swinging his arms. It was simply too damn pathetic.

On that heavy gray March morning my Ann Amory operation looked pretty hopeless, but it was all I had, so I prepared to give it the works. After orange juice and ham and eggs and pancakes and two cups of coffee at Sam’s Place, I went back to the house and spent an hour at the typewriter and telephone cleaning up a few personal matters that had collected in my absence, and was just finishing up when, a little after 9:00, here came the Commandos back. My plan was to ignore them entirely, so I didn’t turn around when footsteps in the hall stopped at the open office door, but Wolfe’s voice sounded:

“Good morning, Archie. I spend the day upstairs. Did you sleep well?”

It was his regular morning question that he had asked me 4,000 times, and it made me homesick. I admit it. It softened me up. I swiveled my chair to face him, but that hardened me again, just one look at him.

“Fine, thanks,” I said coldly. “You messed my drawers up, I suppose looking for that sweater. I have something to say to you. I am speaking for the United States Army. There is one thing you are better qualified to do than anyone else, in connection with undercover enemy activities in this country. It is a situation requiring brains, which you used to have and sometimes used. The Commander in Chief, the Secretary of War, and the General Staff, also Sergeant York, respectfully request you to cut the comedy and begin using them. You are wrong if you think your sudden appearance in the front lines will make the Germans laugh themselves to death. They have no sense of humor.”

I thought that might make him mad enough to forget himself and enter the office, and if I once got him in there it would be a point gained, but he merely stood and scowled at me.

“You said,” he growled, “that you’re on furlough.”

“I did not. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. That shows the condition you’re in. A thousand times, right in this room, I’ve heard you give people hell for inexact statements. What I said was that my furlough is two weeks. I did not say that I’m on it now. Nor did I mention-”

“Pfui!” he sputtered scornfully, and turned and started up the stairs. Which was another phenomenon I had never seen before, him mounting those stairs. It had cost him $7,000 to install the elevator.

I got my cap and left the house and started to work.

I tried to inject some enthusiasm into the day’s operations, and I did do my best, but at no point did any probability appear that I was going to turn up anything that could be used for a lever to pry Wolfe loose. It was a different problem from any that had ever confronted me before, because, since he was hell-bent for heroism, no appeal to his cupidity would work. In the condition he had got himself into, the only weak spot where I might break through was his vanity.

I learned from friends at Centre Street that the investigation of Mrs. Leeds’ death had never gone beyond the precinct, so I went there and made inquiries. The sergeant didn’t bother to look up the record. Nothing to it. The doctor had certified coronary thrombosis at the age of 87, and the neighborhood gossip about Mrs. Chack pinch-hitting for the vengeance of God because she got impatient with Him for waiting so long was the bunk.

Around noon I dropped in at 316 Barnum Street, and found Leon Furey still in bed, or anyhow still in pajamas. He said he had to sleep late because he did his hawk hunting mostly at night. I learned that killing hawks was his only visible means of support, that the Army had turned him down on account of a leaky valve, that Roy Douglas lived on the floor above him, the one next to the roof, and a few other items, but nothing that seemed likely to help me any. I found Roy up on the roof, in his loft. He wouldn’t let me in and wasn’t inclined for conversation. He said he was busy working on the widower system, and all I got out of him was that the widower system was a method of keeping a male pigeon away from his mate for a certain period, and letting him in with her for a couple of minutes just before shipping him to the liberation point for a race, the result being that he flew to get back as he had never flown before. I disapproved of it on moral grounds, but that didn’t seem to interest Roy either, so I left him to his widower system, descended again to the street, and began exploring the community.