Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe

by Three at Wolfe's Door

  He made it “roe-day-oh” with the accent on the “day.” I nodded. “Madison Square Garden has no sky. But about this toad. We’re supposed to go out with them for coffee. How much of his hide do you need?”

  “I’ll take a fair-sized patch.” There was a glint in his eye. “Enough so he’ll have to lick it till it gets a scab. The trouble is this blamed blowout, I don’t want to stink it up my first time here, if it wasn’t for that I’d just handle it. I’d get him to provoke me.”

  “Hasn’t he already provoked you?”

  “Yeah, but I’m leaving that out. I was thinking you might even like to show him and me something. Have you got a car?”

  I said I had.

  “Then when we get through here you might like to take him and me to show us some nice little spot like on the river bank. There must be a spot somewhere. It would be better if you was there anyhow because if I kinda lost control and got too rough you could stop me. When I’m worked up I might get my teeth on the bit.”

  “Or I could stop him if necessary.”

  The glint showed again. “I guess you don’t mean that. I wouldn’t like to think you mean that.”

  I grinned at him, Archie to Cal. “What the hell, how do I know? You haven’t named him. What if it’s Mel Fox? He’s bigger than you are, and Saturday night at the Garden I saw him bulldog a steer in twenty-three seconds. It took you thirty-one.”

  “My steer was meaner. Mel said so himself. Anyway it’s not him. It’s Wade Eisler.”

  My brows went up. Wade Eisler couldn’t bulldog a milk cow in twenty-three hours, but he had rounded up ten million dollars, more or less, and he was the chief backer of the World Series Rodeo. If it got out that one of the cowboy contestants had taken a piece of his hide it would indeed stink it up, and it was no wonder that Cal Barrow wanted a nice little spot on a river bank. I not only raised my brows; I puckered my lips.

  “Ouch,” I said. “You better let it lay, at least for a week, until the rodeo’s over and the prizes awarded.”

  “No, sir. I sure would like to, but I got to get it done. Today. I don’t rightly know how I held off when I got here and saw him here. It would be a real big favor, Mr. Goodwin. Here in your town. Will you do it?”

  I was beginning to like him. Especially I liked his not shoving by overworking the “Archie.” He was a little younger than me, but not much, so it wasn’t respect for age; he just wasn’t a fudger.

  “How did he provoke you?” I asked.

  “That’s private. Didn’t I say I’m leaving that out?”

  “Yes, but I can’t leave it out too. I don’t say I’ll play if you tell me, but I certainly won’t if you don’t. Whether I play or not, you can count on me to leave it out—or keep it in. As a private detective I get lots of practice keeping things in.”

  The gray-blue eyes were glued on me. “You won’t tell anyone?”

  “Right.”

  “Whether you help me or not?”

  “Right.”

  “He got a lady to go to his place last night by telling her he was having a party, and when they got there there wasn’t any party, and he tried to handle her. Did you see the scratch on his cheek?”

  “Yes, I noticed it.”

  “She’s not very big, but she’s plenty active. All she got was a little skin off her ear when her head hit a corner of a table.”

  “I noticed that too.”

  “So I figure he’s due to lose a bigger—” He stopped short. He slapped the saddle. “Now, damn it, that’s me every time. Now you know who she is. I was going to leave that out.”

  “I’ll keep it in. She told you about it?”

  “Yes, sir, she did. This morning.”

  “Did she tell anyone else?”

  “No, sir, she wouldn’t. I got no brand on her, nobody has, but maybe some day when she quiets down a little and I’ve got my own corral … You’ve seen her on a bronc.”

  I nodded. “I sure have. I was looking forward to seeing her off of one, closer up, but now of course I’ll keep my distance. I don’t want to lose any hide.”

  His hand left the saddle. “I guess you just say things. I got no claim. I’m a friend of hers and she knows it, that’s all. A couple of years ago I was wrangling dudes down in Arizona and she was snapping sheets at the hotel, and we kinda made out together and I guess I come in handy now and then. I don’t mind coming in handy as long as I can look ahead. Right now I’m a friend of hers and that suits me fine. She might be surprised to know how I—”

  His eyes left me and I turned. Nero Wolfe was there, entering from the terrace. Somehow he always looks bigger away from home, I suppose because my eyes are so used to fitting his dimensions into the interiors of the old brownstone on West 35th. There he was, a mountain coming at us. As he approached he spoke. “If I may interrupt?” He allowed two seconds for objections, got none, and went on. “My apologies, Mr. Barrow.” To me: “I have thanked Miss Rowan for a memorable meal and explained to her. To watch the performance I would have to stretch across that parapet and I am not built for it. If you drive me home now you can be back before four o’clock.”

  I glanced at my wrist. Ten after three. “More people are coming, and Lily has told them you’ll be here. They’ll be disappointed.”

  “Pfui. I have nothing to contribute to this frolic.”

  I wasn’t surprised; in fact, I had been expecting it. He had got what he came for, so why stick around? What had brought him was the grouse. When, two years back, I had returned from a month’s visit to Lily Rowan on a ranch she had bought in Montana (where, incidentally, I had met Harvey Greve, Cal Barrow’s friend), the only detail of my trip that had really interested Wolfe was one of the meals I described. At that time of year, late August, the young blue grouse are around ten weeks old and their main item of diet has been mountain huckleberries, and I had told Wolfe they were tastier than any bird Fritz had ever cooked, even quail or woodcock. Of course, since they’re protected by law, they can cost up to five dollars a bite if you get caught.

  Lily Rowan doesn’t treat laws as her father did while he was piling up the seventeen million dollars he left her, but she can take them or leave them. So when she learned that Harvey Greve was coming to New York for the rodeo, and she decided to throw a party for some of the cast, and she thought it would be nice to feed them young blue grouse, the law was merely a hurdle to hop over. Since I’m a friend of hers and she knows it, that will do for that. I will add only a brief report of a scene in the office on the ground floor of the old brownstone. It was Wednesday noon. Wolfe, at his desk, was reading the Times. I, at my desk, finished a phone call, hung up, and swiveled.

  “That’s interesting,” I said. “That was Lily Rowan. As I told you, I’m going to a roping contest at her place Monday afternoon. A cowboy is going to ride a horse along Sixty-third Street, and other cowboys are going to try to rope him from the terrace of her penthouse, a hundred feet up. Never done before. First prize will be a saddle with silver trimmings.”

  He grunted. “Interesting?”

  “Not that. That’s just games. But a few of them are coming earlier for lunch, at one o’clock, and I’m invited, and she just had a phone call from Montana. Twenty young blue grouse, maybe more, will arrive by plane Saturday afternoon, and Felix is going to come and cook them. I’m glad I’m going. It’s too bad you and Lily don’t get along—ever since she squirted perfume on you.”

  He put the paper down to glare. “She didn’t squirt perfume on me.”

  I flipped a hand. “It was her perfume.”

  He picked up the paper, pretended to read a paragraph, and dropped it again. He passed his tongue over his lips. “I have no animus for Miss Rowan. But I will not solicit an invitation.”

  “Of course not. You wouldn’t stoop. I don’t—”

  “But you may ask if I would accept one.”

  “Would you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. She asked me to invite you, but I was afraid y
ou’d decline and I’d hate to hurt her feelings. I’ll tell her.” I reached for the phone.

  I report that incident so you’ll understand why he got up and left after coffee. I not only wasn’t surprised when he came and interrupted Cal Barrow and me, I was pleased, because Lily had bet me a sawbuck he wouldn’t stay for coffee. Leaving him there with Cal, I went to the terrace.

  In the early fall Lily’s front terrace is usually sporting annual flowers along the parapet and by the wall of the penthouse, and a few evergreens in tubs scattered around, but for that day the parapet was bare, and instead of the evergreens, which would have interfered with rope whirling, there were clumps of sagebrush two feet high in pots. The sagebrush had come by rail, not by air, but even so the part of Lily that had ordered it and paid for it is not my part. That will be no news to her when she reads this.

  I glanced around. Lily was in a group seated to the right, with Wade Eisler on one side and Mel Fox on the other. In dash she wasn’t up to the two cowgirls there, Nan Karlin in her pink silk shirt and Anna Casado, dark-skinned with black hair and black eyes, in her yellow one, but she was the hostess and not in competition. In situations that called for dash she had plenty. The other four were standing by the parapet at the left—Roger Dunning, the rodeo promoter, not in costume; his wife Ellen, former cowgirl, also not in costume; Harvey Greve in his brown shirt and red neck rag and corduroy pants and boots; and Laura Jay. Having Laura Jay in profile, I could see the bandage on her ear through the strands of her hair, which was exactly the color of the thyme honey that Wolfe gets from Greece. At the dinner table she had told me that a horse had jerked his head around and the bit had bruised her, but now I knew different.

  Stepping across to tell Lily I was leaving but would be back in time for the show, I took a side glance at Wade Eisler’s plump, round face. The scratch, which began an inch below his left eye and slanted down nearly to the corner of his mouth, hadn’t gone very deep and it had had some fifteen hours to calm down by Cal Barrow’s account, but it didn’t improve his looks any, and there was ample room for improvement. He was one of those New York characters that get talked about and he had quite a reputation as a smooth operator, but he certainly hadn’t been smooth last night—according to Laura Jay as relayed by Cal Barrow. The cave-man approach to courtship may have its points if that’s the best you can do, but if I ever tried it I would have more sense than to pick a girl who could rope and tie a frisky calf in less than a minute.

  After telling Lily I would be back in time for the show and was looking forward to collecting the sawbuck, I returned to the living room. Wolfe and Cal were admiring the saddle. I told Cal I would think it over and let him know, went to the foyer and got Wolfe’s hat and stick, followed him down the flight of stairs to the tenth floor, and rang for the elevator. We walked the two blocks to the parking lot where I had left the Heron sedan, which Wolfe had paid for but I had selected. Of course a taxi would have been simpler, but he hates things on wheels. To ride in a strange vehicle with a stranger driving would be foolhardy; with me at the wheel in a car of my choice it is merely imprudent.

  Stopped by a red light on Park Avenue in the Fifties, I turned my head to say, “I’m taking the car back because I may need it. I may do a little errand for one of the cowboys. If so I probably won’t be home for dinner.”

  “A professional errand?”

  “No. Personal.”

  He grunted. “You have the afternoon, as agreed. If the errand is personal it is not my concern. But, knowing you as I do, I trust it is innocuous.”

  “So do I.” The light changed and I fed gas.

  II

  It was ten minutes to four when I got back to the parking lot on 63rd Street. Walking west, I crossed Park Avenue and stopped for a look. Five cops were visible. One was talking to the driver of a car who wanted to turn the corner, two were standing at the curb talking, and two were holding off an assortment of pedestrians who wanted to get closer to three mounted cowboys. The cowboys were being spoken to by a man on foot, not in costume. As I moved to proceed one of the cops at the curb blocked me and spoke. “Do you live in this block, sir?”

  I told him no, I was going to Miss Lily Rowan’s party, and he let me pass. The New York Police Department likes to grant reasonable requests from citizens, especially when the request comes from a woman whose father was a Tammany district leader for thirty years. There were no parked cars on that side of the street, but twenty paces short of the building entrance a truck with cameras was hugging the curb, and there was another one farther on, near Madison Avenue.

  When I had left with Wolfe Lily had had nine guests; now she had twenty or more. Three of the new arrivals were cowboys, making six with Cal Barrow, Harvey Greve, and Mel Fox; the rest were civilians. They were all on the terrace. The civilians were at the parapet, half at one end and half at the other, leaving the parapet clear for thirty feet in the middle. The cowboys, their ten-gallon hats on their heads and their ropes in their hands, were lined up facing a tall skinny man in a brown suit. At the man’s elbow was Roger Dunning, the promoter. The man was speaking.

  “… and that’s the way it’s going to be. I’m the judge and what I say goes. I repeat that Greve hasn’t done any practicing, and neither has Barrow or Fox. I have Miss Rowan’s word for that, and I don’t think you want to call her a liar. I’ve told you the order, but you don’t move in until I call your name. Remember what I said, if you take a tumble off a bronc it’s four feet down; here it’s a hundred feet down and you won’t get up and walk. Once again, no hooligan stuff. There’s not supposed to be any pedestrians on this side of the street from four o’clock to five, but if one comes out of a house and one of you drops a loop on him you won’t sleep in a hotel room tonight. We’re here to have some fun, but don’t get funny.” He looked at his watch. “Time to go. Fox, get—”

  “I want to say something,” Roger Dunning said.

  “Sorry, Roger, no time. We promised to start on the dot. Fox, get set. The rest of you scatter.”

  He went to the parapet, to the left, and picked up a green flag on a stick that was there on a chair. Mel Fox stepped to the middle of the clear stretch, straddled the parapet, and started his noose going. The others went right and left to find spots in the lines of guests. I found a spot on the right that happened to be between Laura Jay and Anna Casado. Leaning over to get a view of the street, I saw I was blocking Laura Jay and drew in a little. The three mounted cowboys and the man I had seen talking to them were grouped on the pavement halfway to Park Avenue. The judge stuck his arm out with the green flag and dipped it, the man down with the mounted cowboys said something, and one of the ponies was off on the jump, heading down the middle of the lane between the curb on our side and the parked cars on the other. Mel Fox, leaning out from his hips, moved his whirling loop back a little, and then brought it forward and let it go. When it reached bottom it was a little too far out and the cowboy on the pony was twenty feet ahead of it. The instant it touched the pavement Fox started hauling it in; he had thirty seconds until the flag started number two. He had it up and a noose going in less than that, but the judge went by his watch. The flag dipped, and here came the second one. That was a little better; the rope touched the pony’s rump, but it was too far in. Fox hauled in again, shifted his straddle a little, and started another whirl. That time he nearly made it. Anna Casado, on my left, let out a squeal as the rope, descending smoothly in a perfect circle, brushed the edge of the cowboy’s hat. The audience clapped, and a man in a window across the street shouted “Bravo!” Fox retrieved his rope, taking his time, dismounted from the parapet, said something I didn’t catch because of other voices, and moved off as the judge called out, “Vince!”

  A chunky little youngster in a purple shirt, Levis, and working boots mounted the parapet. Saturday night I had seen him stick it out bareback on one of the roughest broncs I had ever seen—not speaking as an expert. He wasn’t so hot on a parapet. On his first try his loop turned
straight up, which could have been an air current, on his second it draped over a parked car across the street, and on his third it hit the asphalt ten feet ahead of the pony.

  Harvey Greve was next. Naturally I was rooting for him, since he had done me a lot of favors during the month I had spent at Lily’s ranch. Lily called something to him from the other end of the parapet, and he gave her a nod as he threw his leg over and started his loop. His first throw was terrible; the noose buckled and flipped before it was halfway down. His second was absolutely perfect; it centered around the cowboy like a smoke ring around a fingertip, and Harvey timed the jerk just right and had him. A yell came from the audience as the cowboy tightened the reins and the pony braked, skidding on the asphalt. He loosened the loop with one hand and passed it over his head, and as soon as it was free the judge sang out “Thirty seconds!” and Harvey started hauling in. His third throw sailed down round and flat, but it was too late by ten feet.

  As the judge called Barrow’s name and Cal stepped to the parapet, Laura Jay, on my right, muttered, “He shouldn’t try it.” She was probably muttering to herself, but my ear was right there and I turned my head and asked her why. “Somebody stole his rope,” she said.

  “Stole it? When? How?”

  “He don’t know. It was in the closet with his hat and it was gone. We looked all around. He’s using the one that was on that saddle and it’s new and stiff, and he shouldn’t—”

  She stopped and I jerked my head around. The flag had dipped and the target was coming. Considering that he was using a strange rope, and a new one, Cal didn’t do so bad. His loops kept their shape clear down, but the first one was short, the second was wide, and the third hit bottom before the pony got there. Neither of the last two ropers, one named Lopez and the other Holcomb, did as well. When Holcomb’s third noose curled on the curb below us the judge called, “Second round starts in two minutes! Everybody stay put!”

  There were to be three rounds, giving each contestant a total of nine tries. Roger Dunning was stationed near the judge, with a pad of paper and a pen in his hand, to keep score in case the decision had to be made on form and how close they came, but since Harvey Greve had got one that wouldn’t be necessary.