by Fer-De-Lance
Anderson said, “Get in here. I want a showdown.”
I shook my head. Maybe it was just contrariness, but I was set on carrying it out exactly as Wolfe had ordered. “That’s not next on the program.” Corbett had come up, around on the other side of the roadster, and now he stuck his face in at the window and said to Anderson, “If he’s got anything you want I’d be glad to get it for you.”
I had my mouth open to invite him formally when I heard my name called. I turned. Skinner had left the hangar and was approaching me; in one hand he had a golf driver and in the other an envelope. I stared at him. He was saying, “I forgot. You’re Mr. Goodwin? Mr. Kimball left these for you.”
I got to him and grabbed. The driver! I looked at it, but there was nothing to see; in outward appearance it was just a golf club. But of course it was it. Lovin’ babe! I tucked it under my arm and looked at the envelope; on the outside was written, Mr. Nero Wolfe. It was unsealed, and I pulled out the contents, and had in my hand the set of photostats I had missed from the safe. They were fastened with a paper clip, and slipped under the clip was a piece of paper on which I read: Thank you, Nero Wolfe. In appreciation of your courtesy I am leaving a small gift for you. Manuel Kimball. I looked up at the sky. The red and blue airplane of the leading character in Wolfe’s charade was still there, higher I thought, circling, with the other plane above. I put the photostats back into the envelope.
Corbett was in front of me. “Here, I’ll take that.”
“Oh no. Thanks, I can manage.”
He sprang like a cat and I wasn’t expecting it. It was neat. He got the envelope with one hand and the driver with the other. He started for the roadster. Two jumps put me in front of him, and he stopped. I wasn’t monkeying. I said, “Look out, here it comes,” and plugged him on the jaw with plenty behind it. He wobbled and dropped his loot, and I let him get his hands up, and then feinted with my left and plugged him again. That time he went down. His boy friend came running up, and Skinner from his side. I turned to meet the boy friend, but Anderson’s voice, with more snap in it than I knew he had, came from the roadster:
“Curry! Lay off! Cut it!”
Curry stopped. I stepped back. Corbett got up, glaring wild. Anderson again: “Corbett, you too! Lay off!”
I said, “Not on my account, Mr. Anderson. If they want to play snatch and run I’ll take them both on. They need to be taught a little respect for private property.”
I stooped to pick up the driver and the envelope. It was while I was bent over, reaching down, that I heard Skinner’s yell.
“Good God! He’s lost it!”
For an instant I imagined he meant I had lost the driver, and I thought he was crazy. Then as I straightened up and glanced at him and saw where he was looking, I jerked my eyes and my head up. It was Manuel Kimball’s plane directly overhead, a thousand feet up. It was twisting and whirling as if it had lost its senses, and coming down. It seemed to be jerking and coiling back and forth, it didn’t look as if it was falling straight, but I suppose it was. It was right above us—faster—I stared with my mouth open—
“Look out!” Skinner was shouting. “For God’s sake!”
We ran for the hangar door. Anderson was out of the roadster and with us. We got inside the door and turned in time to see the crash. Black lightning split the air. A giant report, not thunderous like a big gun, an instantaneous ear-splitting snap. Pieces flew; splinters lay at our feet. It had landed at the edge of the concrete platform, not ten yards from Corbett’s car. We jumped out and ran for the wreckage, Skinner calling, “Look out for an explosion!”
What I saw first wasn’t pretty. The only way I knew it had been E. D. Kimball was that it was mixed up with a strap in the position of the back seat and Skinner had said that the old gentleman had gone up for a ride. Apparently it had landed in such a way that the front seat had got a different kind of a blow, for Manuel Kimball could have been recognized by anybody. His face was still together and even pretty well in shape. Skinner and I got him loose while the others worked at the old gentleman. We carried them away from there and inside the hangar and put them on some canvas on the floor.
Skinner said, “You’d better move your cars. An explosion might come yet.” I said, “When I move my car I’ll keep on moving it. Now’s a good time. Mr. Anderson. You may remember that Nero Wolfe promised I would be diffident. That’s me.” I pulled the documents from my pocket and handed them to him. “Here’s your proof. And there’s your man on the floor, the one with the face.”
I picked up Manuel Kimball’s envelope and the golf driver from the floor where I had dropped them, and beat it. It took me maybe four seconds to get the roadster started and out of there and shooting down the road.
At the entrance, turning onto the highway, I stopped long enough to call to Durkin, “Call your playmates and come on home. The show’s over.”
I got to White Plains in twenty-two minutes. The roadster never did run nicer. I telephoned Wolfe at the same drugstore where two weeks before I had phoned him that Anderson had gone to the Adirondack and I had only Derwin to bet with. He answered right off, and I gave him the story, brief but complete.
He said, “Good. I hope I haven’t offended you, Archie. I thought it best that your mind should not be cluttered with the lesser details. Fritz is preparing to please your palate.—By the way, where is White Plains? Would it be convenient for you to stop on your way at Scarsdale? Gluekner has telephoned me that he has succeeded in hybridizing a Dendrobium Melpomene with a Findlayanum and offers me a seedling.”
Chapter 19
It certainly didn’t look like much. It was a sick-looking pale blue, and was so small you could get it in an ordinary envelope without folding it. It looked even smaller than it was because the writing in the blank spaces was tall and scrawly; but it was writing with character in it. That, I guessed, was Sarah Barstow. The signature below, Ellen Barstow, was quite different—fine and precise. It was Saturday morning, and the check had come in the first mail; I was giving it a last fond look as I handed it in at the teller’s window. I had phoned Wolfe upstairs that a Barstow envelope was there and he had told me to go ahead and open it and deposit the check.
At eleven o’clock Wolfe entered the office and went to his desk and rang for Fritz and beer. I had the Barstow case expense list all typed out for his inspection, and as soon as he had finished glancing through the scanty mail I handed it to him. He took a pencil and went over it slowly, checking each item. I waited. When I saw him hit the third item from the bottom and stop at it, I swallowed.
Wolfe raised his head. “Archie, We must get a new typewriter.”
I just cleared my throat. He went on, “This one is too impulsive. Perhaps you didn’t notice: it has inserted an extra cipher before the decimal point in the amount opposite Anna Fiore’s name. I observe that you carelessly included the error in summing up.”
I managed a grin. “Oh! Now I get you. I forgot to mention it before. Anna’s nest-egg has hatched babies, it’s a thousand dollars now. I’m taking it down to her this afternoon.”
Wolfe sighed. The beer came, and he opened a bottle and gulped a glass. He put the expense list under the paperweight with the mail and leaned back in his chair. “Tomorrow I shall cut down to five quarts.”
My grin felt better. I said, “You don’t have to change the subject. I wouldn’t make the mistake of calling you generous even if you said to double it; you’d still be getting a bargain. Do you know what Anna will do with it? Buy herself a husband. Look at all the good you’re doing.”
“Confound it. Don’t give her anything. Tell her the money cannot be found.”
“No, sir. I’ll give her the money and let her dig her own grave. I’m not violent, the way you are, and I don’t put myself up as a substitute for fate.”
Wolfe opened his eyes. He had been drowsy for three days, and I thought it was about time something woke him up. He murmured, “Do you think you’re saying something, Archie?”<
br />
“Yes, sir. I’m asking where you got the breezy notion of killing E. D. Kimball.”
“Where his son got the notion, you mean?”
“No, you. Don’t quibble. You killed him.”
Wolfe shook his head. “Wrong, Archie. I quibble? E. D. Kimball was killed by the infant son whom he deserted sitting on the floor among his toys in a pool of his mother’s blood.—If you please. Properly speaking, E. D. Kimball was not killed last Wednesday morning, but on Sunday June fourth. Through one of the unfortunate accidents by which blind chance interferes with the natural processes of life and death, Barstow died instead. It is true that I helped to remedy that error. I had Durkin deliver to Manuel Kimball copies of our evidence against him, and I telephoned Manuel Kimball that he was surrounded, on the earth and above the earth. I left it to nature to proceed, having ascertained that E. D. Kimball was at home and would not leave that morning.”
I said, “You told me once that I couldn’t conceal truth by building a glass house around it. What are you trying it for? You killed him.”
Wolfe’s cheeks folded. He poured another glass of beer and leaned back again and watched the foam. When nothing was left of it but a thin white rim he looked at me and sighed.
“The trouble is,” he murmured, “that as usual you are so engrossed in the fact that you are oblivious to its environment. You stick to it, Archie, like a leech on an udder. Consider the situation that faced me. Manuel had tried to kill his father. By an accident beyond his control the innocent Barstow had been killed instead. Evidence that would convict Manuel of murder was in my possession. How should I use it? Had I been able to afford the luxury of a philosophic attitude, I should of course not have used it at all, but that attitude was beyond my means, it was an affair of business. Put myself up as a substitute for fate? Certainly; we do it constantly; we could avoid it only by complete inaction. I was forced to act. If I had permitted you to get Manuel Kimball, without warning, and deliver him alive to the vengeance of the people of the State of New York, he would have gone to the chair of judicial murder a bitter and defeated man, his heart empty of one deep satisfaction life had offered to it; and his father equally bitter and no less defeated, would have tottered through some few last years with nothing left to trade. If I had brought that about I would have been responsible for it, to myself, and the prospect was not pleasing. Still I had to act. I did so, and incurred a responsibility which is vastly less displeasing. You would encompass the entire complex phenomenon by stating bluntly that I killed E. D. Kimball. Well, Archie. I will take the responsibility for my own actions; I will not also assume the burden of your simplicity. Somehow you must bear it.”
I grinned. “Maybe. I don’t mean maybe I can bear it, I mean maybe all you’ve just said. Also, maybe I’m simple. I’m so simple that a simple thought occurred to me as I was walking back from the bank this morning.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe gulped his glass of beer.
“Yes, sir. It occurred to me that if Manuel Kimball had been arrested and brought to trial you would have had to put on your hat and gloves, leave the house, walk to an automobile, ride clear to White Plains, and sit around a courtroom waiting for your turn to testify. Whereas now, natural processes being what they are, and you having such a good feeling for phenomena, you can just sit and hold your responsibilities on your lap.”
“Indeed,” Wolfe murmured.
The World of Rex Stout
Now, for the first time ever, enjoy a peek into the life of Nero Wolfe’s creator, Rex Stout, courtesy of the Stout estate. Pulled from Rex Stout’s own archives, here is rarely seen, never-before-published memorabilia. Each title in the Rex Stout Library will offer an exclusive look into the life of the man who gave Nero Wolfe life.
Fer-de-lance
From the files of Rex Stout, here are his own descriptions of his beloved characters, written in 1949 and not meant for publication at the time. Also included is a rough sketch by Rex Stout of Nero Wolfe’s brownstone office.
Nero Wolfe as a comic strip? Here is one panel of a Nero Wolfe comic, which originally ran the week of November 26, 1956.
Not for publication
Confidential Memo
From Rex Stout
September 15 1949
DESCRIPTION OF NERO WOLFE
Height 5 ft. 11 in. Weight 272 lbs. Age 56. Mass of dark brown hair, very little greying, is not parted but sweeps off to the right because he brushes with his right hand. Dark brown eyes are average in size, but look smaller because they are mostly half closed. They always are aimed straight at the person he is talking to. Forehead is high. Head and face are big but do not seem so in proportion to the whole. Ears rather small. Nose long and narrow, slightly aquiline. Mouth mobile and extremely variable; lips when pursed are full and thick, but in tense moments they are thin and their line is long. Cheeks full but not pudgy; the high point of the cheekbone can be seen from straight front. Complexion varies from some floridity after meals to an ivory pallor late at night when he has spent six hard hours working on someone. He breathes smoothly and without sound except when he is eating; then he takes in and lets out great gusts of air. His massive shoulders never slump; when he stands up at all be stands straight. He shaves every day. He has a small brown mole just above his right jawbone, halfway between the chin and the ear.
DESCRIPTION OF ARCHIE GOODWIN
Height 6 feet. Weight 180 lbs. Age 32. Hair is light rather than dark, but just barely decided not to be red; he gets it cut every two weeks, rather short, and brushes it straight back, but it keeps standing up. He shaves four times a week and grasps at every excuse to make it only three times. His features are all regular, well-modeled and well-proportioned, except the nose. He escapes the ourse of being the movie acter type only through the nose. It is not a true pug and is by no means a deformity, but it is a little short and the ridge is broad, and the tip has continued on its own, beyond the cartilage, giving the impression of startling and quite independent initiative. The eyes are grey, and are inquisitive and quick to move. He is muscular both In appearance and in movement, and upright in posture, but his shoulders stoop a little in unconscious reaction to Wolfe’s repeated criticism that he is too self-assertive.
DESCRIPTION OF WOLFE’S OFFICE
The old brown stone on West 35th Street is a double-width bouse. Entering at the front door, which is seven steps up from the sidewalk, you are facing the length of a wide carpeted hall. At the right is an enormous coat rack, eight feet wide, then the stairs, and beyond the stairs the door to the dining room. There were originally two rooms an that side of the hall, but Wolfe had the partition removed and turned it into a dining room forty feet long, with a table large enough for six (but extensible) square in the middle. It (and all other rooms) are carpeted; Wolfe hates bare floors. At the far and of the big hall is the kitchen. At the left of the big hall are two doors; the first one is to what Archie calls the front room, and the second is to the office. The front room is used chiefly as an anteroom; Hero and Archie do no living there. It is rather small, and the furniture is a random mixture without any special character.
The off ice is large and nearly square. In the far corner to the left (as you enter from the hall) a small rectangle has been walled off to make a place for a John and a washbowl—to save steps for Wolfe. The door leading to it faocs you, and around the corner, along its other wall, is a wide and well-cushioned couch.
SKETCH OF OFFICE
In furnishings the room has no apparent unity but it has plenty of character. Wolf a permits nothing to be in it that he doesn’t enjoy looking at, and that has been the only criterion for admission. The globe is three feet in diameter. Wolfe’s chair was made by Meyer of cardato. His desk is of cherry, which of course clashes with the cardato, but Wolfe likes it. The couch is upholstered in bright yellow material which has to go to the cleaners every three months. The carpet was woven in Montenegro in the early nine-teenth century and has been extensively patched. The only wall dec
orations are three pictures: a Manet, a copy of a Corregio, and a genuine Leonardo sketch. The chairs are all shapes color, materials, and sizes. The total effect makes you blink with bewilderment at the first visit, but if you had Archie’s job and lived there you would probably learn to like it.
The Rex Stout Library
Fer-de-Lance
The League of Frightened Men
The Rubber Band
The Red Box
Too Many Cooks
Some Buried Caesar
Over My Dead Body
Where There’s a Will
Black Orchids
Not Quite Dead Enough
The Silent Speaker
Too Many Women
And Be a Villain
The Second Confession
Trouble in Triplicate
In the Best Families
Three Doors to Death
Murder by the Book
Curtains for Three
Prisoner’s Base
Triple Jeopardy
The Golden Spiders
The Black Mountain
Three Men Out
Before Midnight
Might As Well Be Dead
Three Witnesses
If Death Ever Slept
Three for the Chair
Champagne for One
And Four to Go
Plot It Yourself
Too Many Clients
Three at Wolfe’s Door
The Final Deduction
Gambit
Homicide Trinity
The Mother Hunt
A Right to Die
Trio for Blunt Instruments
The Doorbell Rang
Death of a Doxy
The Father Hunt
Death of a Dude
Please Pass the Guilt
A Family Affair
Death Times Three
Rex Stout