Warning
In a way this is a phony. A lot of the talk I report was in languages I am not on speaking terms with, so even with the training I’ve had there is no use pretending that here it is, word for word. But this is what happened, and since I had to know what was going on to earn my keep, Nero Wolfe put it in English for me every chance he got. For the times when it had to be on the fly, and pretty sketchy, I have filled it in as well as I could. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to tell it at all, but I hated to skip it. ARCHIE GOODWIN
I
That was the one and only time Nero Wolfe had ever seen the inside of the morgue.
That Thursday evening in March I barely caught the phone call. With a ticket for a basketball game at the Garden in my pocket, I had dined in the kitchen, because I would have to leave the house at ten to eight, and Wolfe refuses to sit at table with one who has to pack it in and run. And that time I couldn’t eat early because Fritz was braising a wild turkey and had to convey it to the dining room on a platter for Wolfe to see whole before wielding the knife. Sometimes when I have a date for a game or a show I get things from the refrigerator around six-thirty and take my time, but I wanted some of that hot turkey, not to mention Fritz’s celery sauce and corn fritters.
I was six minutes behind schedule when, as I pushed my chair back and got erect, the phone rang. After asking Fritz to get it on the kitchen extension and proceeding to the hall, I had got my topcoat from the rack and was putting it on when Fritz called to me, “Archie! Sergeant Stebbins wants you!”
I muttered something appropriate for muttering but not for printing, made it to the office and across to my desk, lifted the receiver, and told it, “Shoot. You may have eight seconds.”
It took more like eight times eighty, not because Purley Stebbins insisted on it, but I did after he had given me the main fact. When I had hung up I stood a while, frowning at Wolfe’s desk. Many times through the years I have had the job of reporting something to Wolfe that I knew he wouldn’t enjoy hearing, but this was different. This was tough. I even found myself wishing I had got away two minutes sooner, and then, realizing that that would have been tougher — for him, at least — I went to the hall, crossed it to the dining room, entered and spoke.
“That was Purley Stebbins. Half an hour ago a man came out of a house on East Fifty-fourth Street and was shot and killed by a man waiting there in a parked car. Papers found—”
Wolfe cut me off. “Must I remind you that business shall not intrude on meals?”