About the Author
Rex Stout (1886–1975) wrote dozens of short stories, novellas, and full-length mystery novels, most featuring his two indelible characters, the peerless detective Nero Wolfe and his handy sidekick, Archie Goodwin.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
I began it “NW” and signed it “AG” not to be different, but from habit. Nearly all of my written communications to Nero Wolfe over the years had been on a sheet of a memo pad, for Fritz to take up to his room on his breakfast tray, or put by me on his desk when he was upstairs in bed and I had returned from an evening errand. They had all begun “NW” and ended “AG” so this did too, though it wasn’t scribbled. It was typed on an Underwood on a table in a corner of the big room in Lily Rowan’s cabin in a corner of her ranch, and it was in the airmail envelope I poked through the slot in the post office in Timberburg, the county seat, that Saturday morning—on a letterhead that had Bar JR Ranch, Lame Horse, Montana in big type across the top. Not as elegant as the one with her New York penthouse address. Below, it said:
Friday 8:13 pm
August 2, 1968
NW:
It’s a real mess here and I’m stuck. I didn’t go into details on the phone Monday because someone at the exchange might be cooperating with the sheriff or the county attorney (in New York he would be district attorney), or there might even be a tap on Miss Rowan’s line. Modern science certainly gets around.
Since you never forget anything or anybody you remember Harvey Greve, who once told you there in the office that he had bought a lot of livestock, horses and cattle and calves, for Roger Dunning, which helped do for Dunning. I believe I have mentioned that he has been running Miss Rowan’s ranch for the last four years, and he still is—or was until six days ago, last Saturday, when he was charged with murder and parked in the cooler—namely the county jail. A dude named Philip Brodell had been shot in the back and then in the front while he was picking huckleberries. As I have told you, these mountain huckleberries are different. This time I’ll try to bring you some.
Miss Rowan and I have decided that Harvey didn’t do it, and I’m stuck. If it had been plain and simple that he did it I would have been back there to keep your desk dusted when I was supposed to, day before yesterday. Miss Rowan has hired a lawyer from Helena with a reputation that stretches from the Continental Divide to the Little Missouri, and it would be his problem. But I suspect he doesn’t see it as we do. His head’s on it, but I don’t think his heart’s in it. Mine is, and one will get you fifty that Harvey’s clean. So you see how it is, I’ve got a job. Even if I had no obligation to Miss Rowan as her guest and an old friend, I’ve known Harvey Greve too long and too well to bow out and leave him in a squeeze.
Of course from July 31, day before yesterday, I’m on leave of absence without pay. I hope to be back soon, but as it stands now I have no suggestions for a replacement for Harvey in the jug, and it looks like—excuse it, as if—there’ll have to be one with good credentials. If you want to have Saul or Orrie at my desk, my strictly personal things are up in my room, so all my secrets are safe. Television here is often a bust, and I have got to be back in time for the World Series. Give Theodore my regards and tell Fritz my first thought every morning is him—the breakfast in his kitchen I’m missing. In these parts the two favorite nicknames for pancakes are torture disks and gut plasters.
AG
When he got it, probably Monday, he would lean back and glare at my chair for a good ten minutes.
As I left the post office I took a look at my shopping list. The population of Timberburg was only 7463, but it was the biggest batch between Helena and Great Falls, and its customers covered a lot of territory—from the Fishtail River, where the hills graduated into mountains, east to where the range got so flat you could see a coyote two miles off. So in about an hour I got everything on my list, with four stops on the main drag and two on side streets. The items:
Big Six Mix pipe tobacco for Mel Fox. With Harvey in the coop he was too busy at the ranch to go shopping.
Fly swatters for Pete Ingalls. He never raised his foot to the stirrup without one dangling from his saddle horn, for horse flies.
Typewriter ribbon for the Underwood.
Tube of toothpaste and a belt, for me personally.
My best belt had got chewed by a porcupine when I—but that’s a long story.
A magnifying glass and a notebook that would go in my hip pocket, for me professionally. On a job in New York I never go on an errand without those two articles, and I was on a job now. Probably I wouldn’t have any use for them, but a habit is a habit. Psychology.
My last stop was the public library, to consult a book that probably wouldn’t be there, but it was—Who’s Who in America. Not the latest, 1968–1969, but the 1966–67 was good enough. There was no entry for Philip Brodell, and there never would be since he was now a corpse, but his father, Edward Ellis Brodell, had about a third of a column. I knew he was still alive, having exchanged some words with him a week ago, when he had come to gather facts and raise some hell and get his son’s body to take home. Born in St. Louis in 1907, he had done all right and was now the owner and publisher of the St. Louis Star-Bulletin. Who’s Who had no information about who was going to kill his son.
With all my purchases in the big paper bag I had requested for the fly swatters, I wasn’t much encumbered when I entered the Continental Café at a quarter past noon, sent my eyes around, spotted an attractive female in an olive-green shirt and dark green slacks at a table in the rear, and headed for her. When I got there and pulled a chair back she said, “Either you’re pretty fast or you didn’t finish your list.”
“Got everything.” I sat and put the bag on the floor. “I may not be fast but I’m lucky.” I tipped my head at her martini glass. “Carson’s?”
“No. They haven’t got any. You can’t tell me gins are all alike. There’s split-pea soup.”
That was good news because his split-pea soup was the one dish the Continental cook had a right to be proud of. A waitress came and took our order for two double bowls of soup, plenty of crackers, one milk, and one coffee, and while we were waiting for it I fished in the bag for the belt and the magnifying glass to show Lily that Timberburg was as good as New York when you needed things.
The soup was up to expectations. When our bowls were nearly empty and the crackers low I said, “I not only finished up my list, I dug up some facts. At the library in Who’s Who. Philip Brodell’s father’s father’s name was Amos. His father is a member of three clubs, and his father’s wife’s maiden name was Mitchell. That’s a break. Real progress.”
“Congratulations.” She took a cracker. “Let’s go and tell Jessup. You’re the doctor, but how could Who’s Who possibly have helped?”
“It couldn’t. But when you’re up a stump you always try things that can’t help and about once a year one does.” I swallowed the last spoonful of soup. “I’ve got to say something.”
“Good. Like?”
“Like it is. Look, Lily. I’m a good investigator with a lot of experience. But this is the sixth day since Harvey was charged and I have got nowhere. Not a glimmer of a lead. I may be only half as smart as I think I am, but also I’m handicapped. I don’t belong here. I’m a dude. I’m all right for things like packing in or fishing or a game of pinochle or even a dance at the hall, but this is murder, and I’m a dude. Hell, I’ve been out here a lot, and I’ve known Mel Fox for years, and even he has gone cagey on me. They all have. I’m a goddam dude. There must be private detectives in Helena, and there may be a good one. A native. Dawson would know.”
She put her coffee cup down. “You’re suggesting that I hire a native to help you.”
“Not to help me. If he’s any good he wouldn’t help me. He would just go to work.”
“Oh.” Her blue eyes widened and fastened on me. “You’re checking out.”
“I am not. In the letter I just mailed to Mr. Wolfe I said I hoped to be back for the World Series. I’m staying and making motions, but damn it, I’m handicapped. I’m only suggesting that maybe you should ask Dawson.”
