Rex Stout - Fer-De-Lance

"What time did you go up?"

"Around six o’clock. Of course it wasn’t dark until nearly nine, but I wanted to be ahead of the twilight."

"You got well ahead of it all right. When did you get back?"

"Ten or a little after. Skinner would know that too; we fooled around with the timer till midnight."

"Did you go up alone?"

"Completely." Manuel Kimball smiled at me with his lips, but it appeared to me that his eyes weren’t co-operating. "You must admit, Mr. Goodwin, that I’m being pretty tolerant. What the devil has my flying Monday night or any other night got to do with you? If I wasn’t so curious I might have reason to be a little irritated. Don’t you think?"

"Sure." I grinned. "I’d be irritated if I was you. But anyway I’m much obliged. Routine, Mr. Kimball, just the damn routine." I got up and shook a leg to get the cuff of my trousers down. "And I am much obliged and I appreciate it. I should think it would be more fun flying at night than in the daytime."

He was on his feet too, polite. "It is. But do not feel obliged. It is going to distinguish me around here to have talked to Nero Wolfe’s man."

He called the fat butler to bring my hat.

Half an hour later, headed south around the curves of the Bronx River Parkway, I was still rolling him over on my mind’s tongue. Since there was no connection at all between him and Barstow or the driver or anything else, it could have been for no other reason than because he made me nervous. And yet Wolfe said that I had no feeling for phenomena! The next time he threw that at me I would remind him of my mysterious misgivings about Manuel Kimball, I decided. Granted, of course, that it turned out that Manuel had murdered Barstow, which I had to confess didn’t seem very likely at that moment.

When I got home, around half-past eight, Wolfe had finished dinner. I had phoned from the drugstore on the Urand Concourse, and Fritz had a dish of flounder with his best cheese sauce hot in the oven, with a platter of lettuce and tomatoes and plenty of good cold milk. Considering mv thin lunch at the Barstows’ and the hour I was getting my knees under the table, it wasn’t any too much. I cleaned it up. Fritz said it seemed good to have me busy and out working again.

I said. "You’re darned right it. does. This dump would be about ready for the sheriff if it wasn’t for me.

Fritz giggled. He’s the only man I’ve ever known who could giggle without giving you doubts about his fundamentals.

Wolfe was in his chair in the office, playing with flies. He hated flies and very few ever got in there, but two had somehow made it and were fooling around on his desk. Much as he hated them, he couldn’t kill them; he said that while a live fly irritated him to the point of hatred, a killed one outraged his respect for the dignity of death, which was worse. My opinion was it just made him sick. Anyway, he was in his chair with the swatter in his hand, seeing how close to the fly he could lower it without the fly taking off. When I went in he handed me the swatter and I let them have it and raked them into the wastebasket.

"Thank you," Wolfe said. "Those confounded insects were trying to make me forget that one of the Dendrobiums chlorostele is showing two buds."

"No! Really?"

He nodded. "That one in half sunlight. The others have been moved over."

"One for Horstmann."

"Yes. Who killed Barstow?"

I grinned. "Give me a chance. The name just escapes me-I’ll remember it in a minute."

"You should have written it down… No, just your light. That’s better. Did you get enough to eat? Proceed."

That report was an in-between; I wasn’t proud of it or ashamed of it either. Wolfe scarcely interrupted once throughout; he sat as he always did when I had a long story; leaning back, his chin on his chest, his elbows on the arms of the chair with his fingers interlaced on his belly, his eyes half closed but always on my face. Halfway through he stopped me to have Fritz bring some beer, then with two bottles and a glass within reach at the edge of the table he resumed his position. I went on to the end. It was midnight.

He sighed. I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk. When I got back he was pinching the top of his ear and looking sleepy.

"Perhaps you had an impression," he said.

I sat down again. "Vague. Pretty watery. Mrs. Barstow is just some kind of a nut. She might have killed her husband or she might not, but of course she didn’t kill Carlo Maffei. For Miss Barstow you can use your own impression. Out. Her brother is out too, I mean on Maffei, his alibi for the fifth is so tight you could use it for a vacuum. Dr. Bradford must be a very interesting person, I would like to meet him some time. As for Manuel Kimball, I suppose there’s no chance he killed Barstow, but I’ll bet he runs river angels with his airplane."

"Why? Is he cruel? Does he sneer? Do his eyes focus badly?"

"No. But look at his name. He made me nervous. He looks like a Spaniard. What’s he doing with the name Kimball?"

"You haven’t seen his father."

"I know. Of course the had news about the golf bag never being in his locker threw me off my stride and I was looking for something to kick."

"Bad news? Why bad?"

"Well, good Lord. We thought we had the membership of the Green Meadow Club to run through the sifter, and now we’ve got everybody that’s been in Barstow’s home at the university for the past nine months."

"Oh no. By no means. No known poison, exposed to the air, by being smeared on a needle for instance, will retain an efficacy sufficient to kill a man as Barstow was killed for more than a day or two. Probably only a few hours. It depends on the poison.

I grinned at him. "That’s a help. What else did you read?"

"A few interesting things. Many tiresome ones. So the golf bag’s itinerary is not bad news at all. Its later disappearance interests us only indirectly, for we never could have expected to come upon the driver. But who caused it to disappear and why?"

"Sure. But as far as that’s concerned, who came to ask you to return the reward unopened and why? We already knew there’s someone in that family with funny ideas."

Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. "It is easier to recognize a style from a sentence than from a single word. But as for that, the removal of the golf bag from the scene was direct, bold and forthright, while the visit to our office, though direct enough, was merely desperate."

I said, "Doctors know all about poisons.

"Yes. This one-this Dr. Bradford-is satisfactorily forthright. Three times today I was told that he was too busy to come to the telephone, and the indication was that that condition could be expected to continue. You are intending to resume in the morning?"

I nodded. "The club first, I thought, then the coroner, then back to town for Doc Bradford’s office. I’m sorry old Kimball’s gone; I’d like to clean up that foursome. You don’t think Saul Panzer would enjoy a trip to Chicago?"

"It would cost a hundred dollars."

"That’s not much of a chunk out of fifty grand."