“Aw, he wasn’t really all that bad, Archie,” Saul said, surprising us as he stepped into the kitchen. “Although he did hold on to that strap pretty tightly most of the way, especially when we went through those tunnels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I don’t think I went over the speed limit once on the whole trip, or we would have gotten here sooner.”
“You deserve a medal,” I told him. “Did he complain a lot?”
“Not really, although his expressions, as seen through the rearview mirror, varied from anger to terror. The one good part of the trip was when we pulled off the road at a rest stop and had a delicious picnic of cold chicken and a Waldorf salad that Fritz had prepared.”
“So at least he has been fed, which is good to know. I suppose I had better go up and see how he’s doing after his harrowing voyage,” I said. “Wish me luck.”
The door to what for now was Wolfe’s room was open, and I looked in. He sat in a chair that could accommodate his bulk—barely—and was reading a book.
“Can I get you anything, beer perhaps?”
He looked up and dipped his chin slightly—a nod. I went to the kitchen, where Mom and Saul were talking, and took two chilled beers and the stein from the refrigerator, putting everything on a tray, along with an opener. I then went back upstairs and, doing my best Fritz Brenner impression, placed the presentation on a small table next to Wolfe. I got another nod for a thanks.
“I take it you are comfortable.”
“Comfortable enough,” Wolfe grumped.
“Glad to hear it. Before we get to business, as I believe we ultimately will, I know you have started thinking about dinner. I will just say this to you: don’t worry; you will be pleasantly surprised.”
As I began to catch up with all that had been happening under my nose, I realized based on the items Mom had gotten at the grocery store that she was planning to serve pork tenderloin in casserole again. At the time, I thought it odd she would have the same meal twice in the space of a few days, but now I realized what was going on. She had mastered this dish, which she again served with carrots, celery, and onions, and she hoped the menu and the preparation would measure up to Wolfe’s high standards.
I left the man to his book and his beer and went downstairs to help with the dinner for the four of us.
* * *
3 The Black Mountain by Rex Stout
Chapter 26
Back downstairs, I found Saul Panzer in the living room with what he told me was scotch and water over ice. “I didn’t even know Mom had scotch around,” I remarked.
“All I had to do was ask. She told me she keeps all sorts of libations for guests. And by the way, this happens to be a fine label,” he said, raising his glass in a salute.
“Well, after the day you have had, you’re entitled to a drink, or maybe more than one.”
As we were talking, my mother came in and asked me, “When do you have dinner in the brownstone?”
“Usually seven fifteen, sometimes seven thirty. Why?”
“I want to make Mr. Wolfe feel at home, and because we are in the same time zone as New York, he will be able to eat at the usual hour.”
“Really, Mom, don’t you think you’re overindulging him?”
“I believe you told me once that your boss has said, if I remember the quote, ‘a guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality.’ And after all, Mr. Wolfe is a guest in my house, as are you, Mr. Panzer.”
“Well, I for one have never been called a jewel before, but, hey, I kind of like the sound of it,” Saul said.
“Oh brother, now see what you’ve started, Mom? You’re going to spoil these two guys rotten.”
“And why shouldn’t I? They are here to help, are they not?”
“Yes, but just don’t go overboard, or they’ll take advantage of your cushion of hospitality.”
“Seems like a pretty comfortable cushion to me,” Saul said.
“See, Mom, the smugness has already set in. And if you think Mr. Panzer here is fussy, just wait till Nero Wolfe begins to demand things.”
“Oh, pshaw,” she said, waving my concern away with a hand. “I am sure that they will prove to be perfect guests.”
“Of course, we will,” Saul piped up.
“Okay, just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I told my mother.
The meal was a great success, and if Wolfe was surprised at the quality of my mother’s cooking, he didn’t show it. He had two full helpings of the pork, as did Saul. And as he always does in the brownstone, Wolfe set the conversation topic, which this night was the history of Ohio.
“Mrs. Goodwin, I am sure I do not have to tell you that this very community we are in was an early capital of the territory before Ohio became a state,” Wolfe said.
“No, I was well aware of that,” my mother said. “Most of the early growth was in the southern part of the state because of all the traffic on the Ohio River before there were decent roads.”
Well, that set the two of them off, and they spent the rest of the meal, including Mom’s strawberries Romanoff (which I know she also learned about from Fritz Brenner), swapping facts about Ohio’s history, including many I never learned in school or else had long forgotten.
After dinner, she surprised me yet again by giving Wolfe, Saul, and me cognac, in snifters no less, and then poured some for herself. The brandy was not Remisier, that nectar Wolfe serves at home to special guests. But to my semitrained palate, what we were sipping seemed more than adequate, and apparently Wolfe thought so, too.
“Mrs. Goodwin, this has been an elegant dinner,” he said. “I would like to reciprocate tomorrow, although it will necessitate a visit to one or more groceries. I will prepare a list and of course pay for the ingredients.”
“You will not pay a single penny,” my mother replied. “I will welcome your presence in my kitchen and I will be happy to learn from you, as I have learned from Mr. Brenner on my visits to New York.”
“We will talk tomorrow,” Wolfe said. “At present, I need to spend some time with Archie. We have a great deal to discuss.”
“Mrs. Goodwin, do you know how to play gin rummy?” Saul asked. “I would be happy to teach you.”
“I played it for years with my late husband, Mr. Panzer, and I think I can remember everything I need to.”
“Just remember not to play him for money, Mom,” I said as Wolfe and I went up to his room.
“Sorry there’s no elevator here,” I said as he settled into the easy chair my mother had hauled in from one of the other bedrooms. “But I think you can handle a single flight of stairs.”
He drew in a bushel of air and let it out slowly, ignoring my comment. “It sounds as if you are flummoxed, am I correct?”
“That is as good a word as any,” I conceded.
“Very well. Report.”
What he said in that single word was that he wanted me to recite every conversation I had taken part in relating to Logan Mulgrew’s death since my arrival in Ohio. If that sounds like a tall order, it is. But Nero Wolfe was well aware that I possessed what one of my high school teachers had referred to as “total recall”—that is, the ability to repeat, verbatim, long stretches of dialogue. It was possibly the only quality I possessed that Wolfe envied.
“This is going to take a while,” I told him. “I’ll get you some beer.”
Once Wolfe had started in on the first of the two bottles of Remmers I had brought up, he nodded for me to begin. As I was downstairs getting his beer, I quickly calculated that I had talked to nine people about Mulgrew, some of them more than once.
I began with Aunt Edna, who had been the trigger, more or less, of the whole damned business. What ensued over the next ninety minutes was the longest recitation of this kind I had ever done. Wolfe interrupted me no more than a half-dozen times, and then only with brief questions.
When that happens, and it has taken anywhere from less than a minute to more than a half hour, Wolfe ends by opening his eyes as if he had been asleep and he invariably has come up with a solution to whatever mystery we had been working on. Such was not to be the case now, however.
“I am going to bed,” he stated. It was then I realized how tired I was, and how dry my mouth was from all the yapping I had done. I wished him a good night, closed the door behind me, and went down to the kitchen for a glass of milk.
Chapter 27
The next morning, I was shocked again by the Trumpet. It did not carry a single word about the Mulgrew death. Could it be a lawsuit had been filed, and that the editors were lying low?
My mother, in her determination to cater to Wolfe, had prepared a breakfast tray for him and took it up to his room, apparently making sure he was treated like the aforementioned jewel on a cushion of hospitality.
“How did your game go last night?” I asked Saul as he came down and sat at the dining room coffee, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“Your mom’s good, did you know that?”
“I never played cards with her, but I can remember as a kid hearing her and my father playing, and it seemed like she cried ‘Gin!’ a lot.”
“Well, she cried ‘Gin!’ a lot last night, too. The evening ended up pretty much in a draw.”
“That’s better than I usually do against you. And I’ll bet she hasn’t played in years, unless one of her church groups has a gin rummy table. But I know that she does play a lot of bridge.”
“That’s a tough game,” Saul said. “It’s got to sharpen her card sense.”
“What has got to sharpen my card sense?” Mom asked as she came into the room.
“Playing bridge,” I told her. “I understand you gave Saul a rough time with the cards.”
“Oh, I think he must have won in the end,” she declared. “He plays very well.”
“As I have found, much to my regret,” I said. “How is my boss doing this morning?”
“He was very polite when I delivered his breakfast. I think he was happy with it.”
“What did you give him?”
“Coffee, of course, orange juice, fresh peaches, blueberry muffins, hashed brown potatoes, an omelet, and broiled ham.”
“Did it occur to you that if he stays a few days, he will come to expect this kind of treatment every morning?”
“And he will get this kind of treatment every morning, Archie. He has come here to help you, and that is the very least I can do.”
“See, Saul, what I have to bear up under—a mother who is truly a saint.”
“Archie, stop it! Mr. Panzer doesn’t want to listen to that kind of talk.”
“Please call me Saul. I can’t think of anybody else who starts my name with a ‘Mister.’”
“All right, Saul it is,” Mom said, laughing. “Mr. Wolfe—or should I now refer to him as Nero?—has given me a list of groceries to get for a meal he is preparing tonight. He suggested you might be available to drive me, as I understand he and Archie will want to talk this morning.”
“It would be my pleasure,” Saul said.
“Off the two of you go, then,” I told them. “I’ve got business of my own.”
My business consisted of a call to Katie Padgett, to find out what was going on at the Trumpet. She answered after a couple of rings, “Padgett, newsroom.”
“Goodwin, Portsmouth Road.”
“Archie! I didn’t expect to hear from you. I know you’re miffed about some of what I’ve been writing.”
“Speaking of what you have been writing, I didn’t see a single word about Mulgrew in today’s edition. What’s going on at the paper?”
“Somebody, I don’t know who, has filed a suit against us, and the owner of the paper sent down an order that until we hear from him or her, nothing more can be written about Mulgrew’s death. We can’t even run any letters from readers about it.”
“Who do you think is behind the suit?”
“If I were to guess, I would lay odds it’s that damned Carrie Yeager. Oh, I know what you’re going to say, Archie. You think that I am out to get her.”
“I’m going to reserve judgment for now. What does the Trumpet’s new young editor think of this development?”
“As you can guess, he’s not very happy. ‘I thought I was coming to a paper that wanted to shake things up,’ he told me. ‘But now it looks like this place is as spineless as other dailies that I’ve worked on.’”
“Do you think he will quit?”
“I hope not, but he might. And here I thought I was getting a great opportunity to show what I can do. This doesn’t seem fair. I feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under me.”
“Maybe you’re being tested to see how you respond to adversity,” I said, not really believing it.
Katie’s own “maybe” in response lacked conviction, and we ended the call.
I then went up to Wolfe’s room and found him reading a book, The Sea Around Us, by Rachel Carson.
“I understand you are doing the cooking tonight,” I told him.
Looking up, he said, “Do you find that surprising?”
“Not in the least. I am eagerly anticipating whatever you come up with. Mom and Saul are out right now getting your ingredients.”
Wolfe started to go back to his book, but I was not done. “I went through today’s Trumpet, and they didn’t carry a single word on the Mulgrew death, so I called Katie Padgett. She tells me a lawsuit has been filed, and the owner of the paper has ordered that there be no more coverage of the case until further notice.”
“A lawsuit is hardly surprising, given the slipshod journalism the publication indulges in, as based on that issue you showed me,” Wolfe said. “Mr. Cohen of the Gazette would be appalled, despite the aggressive journalism his newspaper often practices.”
“Yeah, the Gazette is tough but fair. What is our next move?”
“It is always wiser, given the choice, to trust to inertia; it is the greatest force in the world.”
“I’ve heard those words, or similar ones, from you before. I gather you have not yet developed a plan.”
“Gather what you will, Archie. I am in no mood today for impetuosity.”
“Heaven forbid that you should ever be impetuous. I know your book must be fascinating, so I will leave you to it,” I said, resisting the temptation to slam the door behind me on the way out.
Chapter 28
On the one hand, I was both surprised and pleased that Nero Wolfe had gone against the grain, traveling several hundred miles in an automobile, an almost unthinkable and reckless enterprise for him. On the other hand, I was frustrated with his inertia, to use the man’s own term.
I was hired by Wolfe years ago at least in part to serve as a burr under his saddle. He knows damned well that he often needs to be goaded into action, and I see myself as the goader-in-chief. It can be a thankless task, however, because he is every bit as stubborn as I am. At this time, I saw us as being in a war of wills—a war that I was determined to win.
I was back downstairs when my mother and Saul came in carrying a bunch of bulging grocery bags. “Well, that was interesting,” she said.
“What was interesting, Mom?”
“We were at Kroger’s, in the meat department, when who did we run into but your aunt Edna.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yes, uh-oh. As will not surprise you, she was very curious as to why I was with Saul. I had no choice but to introduce them to each other, and she said, ‘Saul Panzer, my, w
hat an unusual name. And where do you happen to be from, Mr. Panzer?’
“Saul, bless him, let me do all the talking. So I told Edna that Saul was staying with us, along with Nero Wolfe. And I wish you could have seen her eyes—bigger than saucers, they were. I’m sorry that I let the cat out of the bag, but I did not feel that I had any other choice.”
“You really didn’t, Mom.”
“And now, of course, thanks to our family’s very own town crier, word will be all over town and throughout the county that Mr. Wolfe is here.”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later, Mrs. Goodwin,” Saul said. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“I agree with Saul,” I said. “It saves us having to pussyfoot around until Wolfe finally starts kicking his gray matter into high gear. By the way, what’s he making for dinner tonight?”
“Planked porterhouse steak,” Mom said. “Saul and I were able to get a fine cut, two inches thick as specified by Mr. Wolfe, to be served with mashed potatoes, mushrooms, and slices of fresh lime. Fortunately, I have an oak cooking plank that I haven’t used in ages.”
“I’ve eaten Wolfe’s planked steak, although not for several years, and I can tell you that we are all in for a fine dinner tonight,” I said. “Even Fritz Brenner, who does not always approve of the dishes his boss cooks, has praised this one.”
Mom and Saul put away the groceries and gave me two out-of-town newspapers I had requested for Wolfe, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, the New York Gazette not being available at the local magazine and cigar shop; I took them up to him and said, “The grocery items you requested have been purchased and will be ready for you—after lunch, of course.” He gave me his version of a nod and began tackling the newspapers.
“Oh, and speaking of lunch, it will be served at one, chicken with mushrooms and tarragon.” Another nod. He really was resting on that cushion of hospitality, thanks to my overindulgent mother.
I went down to the living room and sat with my last cup of coffee of the morning, wondering who would be the first to call as word of Wolfe being in town got around. I gave odds of three-to-two for Katie Padgett, two-to-one for Aunt Edna, and three-to-one for Police Chief Blankenship.
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