Rex Stout - The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

Wolfe sipped coffee, put the cup down, and said, "I have fourteen bottles left."

"My God," Lon said, and sniffed the brandy. It was funny about him. With his slicked-back hair and his neat little tight-skinned face he looked like nobody in particular, but somehow he always seemed to fit, whatever he was doing-in his room on the twentieth floor in the Gazette building, two doors down from the publisher's corner room, or dancing with a doll at the Flamingo, or at the table with us in Saul Panzer's apartment where we played poker. Or sniffing a fifty-year-old cognac.

He took a sip. "Anything you want," he said. "Barring nothing."

"Actually," Wolfe said, "it isn't very special. Certainly not fantastic. First a question: Do you know of any connection, however remote, between Mrs Lloyd Bruner and the Federal Bureau of Investigation?"

"Sure I do. Who doesn't? She sent a million people copies of Fred Cook's book, including our publisher and editor. It's the latest status symbol, and damn it, I didn't get one. Did you?"

"No. I bought mine. Do you know of any action the Bureau has taken in reprisal? This is a private and confidential conversation."

Lon smiled. "Any action they might take would also be private and confidential. You'll have to ask J. Edgar Hoover-unless you already know. Do you?"

"Yes."

Lon's chin jerked up. "The hell you do. Then the people who pay his salary should know."

Wolfe nodded. "That would be your view, naturally. You seek information in order to publish it; I seek it for my private interest. At the moment I seek it only to decide where my interest lies. I have no client and no commitment, and I should make it clear that even if I commit myself and go to work I shall probably never be able to give you any publishable information, no matter what the outcome is. If I can, I will, but I doubt it. Are we in your debt?"

"No. On balance, I'm in yours.

"Good. Then I'll draw on it. Why did Mrs Bruner send those books?"

"I don't know." He sipped brandy and moved his lips and cheeks to spread it around before swallowing. "Presumably as a public service. I bought five copies myself and sent them to people who should read them but probably won't. A man I know gave thirty copies as Christmas presents."

"Do you know if she had any private reason for animus against the FBI?

"No."

"Have you heard any suggestion of such an animus? Any surmise?"

"No. But evidently you have. Look, Mr Wolfe. Strictly off the record, who wants to hire you? If I knew that, I might be able to furnish a fact or two."

Wolfe refilled his cup and put the pot down. "I may not be hired," he said. "If I am, it's quite possible that you will never know who hired me. As for facts, I know what I need. I need a list of all the cases on which FBI agents have recently worked, and are now working, in and around New York. Can you supply that?"

"Hell no." Lon smiled. "I'll be damned. I was thinking-it was incredible, but I was thinking, or rather I was asking if it was possible that Hoover wanted you to work on Mrs Bruner. That would be an item. But if you- I'll be damned."

His eyes narrowed. "Are you going to perform a public service?"

"No. Nor, it may be, a private one. I'm considering it. Do you know how I can get such a list?"

"You can't. Of course some of their jobs are public knowledge, like the jewel snatch at the Natural History Museum and the bank truck at that church in Jersey-half a million in small bills. But some of them are far from public. You read that book. Of course there's talk, there's always talk, not for print. Would that help?"

"It might, especially if it was of something questionable, possibly extralegal. Is it?"

"Certainly. It's no fun talking about something that isn't questionable." He glanced at his watch. "I have twenty minutes. If I may have another small ration of brandy, and if it is understood that this is private, and if you're headed where you seem to be, I'll be glad to chip in." He looked at me. "You'll need your notebook, Archie."

Twenty minutes later his brandy glass was empty again, I had filled five pages of my notebook, and he was gone. I won't report on the contents of the five pages because very little of it was ever used, and also because some of the people named wouldn't appreciate it. At the time, as I returned to the office after seeing Lon out, my mind was on Wolfe, not the notebook. Was he actually considering it? No. Impossible. He had merely been passing the time, and of course trying to get a rise out of me. The question was how to handle it. He would be expecting me to blow my top. So I walked in and to my desk, grinned at him, said, "That was fun," yanked the five pages from the notebook, tore them in half, and was going to tear again but he bellowed, "Stop that!"

I raised one eyebrow, something he can't do. "Sorry," I said, perfectly friendly. "A souvenir?"

"No. Please sit down."

I sat. "Have I missed something?"

"I doubt it. You seldom do. A hypothetical question: If I told you that I have decided to keep that hundred thousand dollars, what would you say?"

"What you said. Preposterous."

"That's understood. But go on."

"In full?"

"Yes."

"I would say that you should sell the house and contents and go live in a nursing home, since you're obviously cracked. Unless you intend to gyp her, just sit on it."

"No."

"Then you're cracked. You've read that book. We couldn't even get started. The idea would be to work it so you could say to the FBI, 'Lay off,' and make it stick. Nuts. Merely raising a stink wouldn't do it. They would have to be actually cornered, the whole damn outfit. Out on a limb. All right, say we try to start. We pick one of these affairs"-I tapped the torn sheets from the notebook-"and make some kind of a stab at it. From then on, whenever I left the house I'd spend all my time ditching tails, and good ones. Everyone connected with that affair would be pegged. Our phone would be tapped. So would other phones-for instance, Miss Rowan's, and Saul's and Fred's and Orrie's, whether we got them in or not. And of course Parker's. They might or might not try a frame, probably they wouldn't have to, but if they did it would be good. I'd have to sleep here in the office. Windows and doors, even one with a chain bolt, are pie for them. They could monitor our mail. I am not piling it on. How many of those things they would do would depend, but they can do all of them. They have all the gimmicks there are, including some I have never heard of."

I crossed my legs. "We'd never get to first base. But say we did, say we actually got a wedge started in some kind of a crack, then they would really operate. They have six thousand trained men, some of them as good as they come, and three hundred million dollars a year. I would like to borrow the dictionary to look up a stronger word than 'preposterous.' "

I uncrossed my legs. "Also, what about her? I do not believe that she is merely being annoyed. One will get you twenty that she's scared stiff. She knows there's some dirt somewhere, if not on her then on her son or daughter or brother, or even on her dead husband, and she's afraid they'll find it. She knows they're not just riding her; they're after something that would really hurt, and that would take a lot of sting out of the book. As for the hundred grand, for her that's peanuts, and anyway she's in a tax bracket that makes it petty cash."