Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 32
Page 1
“I FOUND ANOTHER CORPSE,” I TOLD HIM. “THIS TIME—”
I stopped because he was having a fit. He had closed his right hand to make a fist and was hitting the desk with it, and he was bellowing. He was roaring something in a language that was probably the one he had used as a boy in Montenegro, the one that he and Marko Vukcic had sometimes talked. He had roared like that when he heard that Marko had been killed, and on three other occasions over the years.
Fritz, entering with beer, stopped and looked at me reproachfully. Wolfe quit bellowing as abruptly as he had started, glared at Fritz, and said coldly, “Take that back. I don’t want it.”
“But it will do—”
“Take it back. I shall drink no beer until I get my fingers around the creature’s throat.”
Fritz opened his mouth, closed it again, turned, and went.
“God help us,” I said, and sat.
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PRINTING HISTORY
Viking edition published October 1959
Mystery Guild edition published February 1960
Bantam edition published December 1960
10 printings through April 1989
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1959 by Rex Stout.
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Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
1
I divide the books Nero Wolfe reads into four grades: A, B, C, and D. If, when he comes down to the office from the plant rooms at six o’clock, he picks up his current book and opens to his place before he rings for beer, and if his place was marked with a thin strip of gold, five inches long and an inch wide, which was presented to him some years ago by a grateful client, the book is an A. If he picks up the book before he rings, but his place was marked with a piece of paper, it is a B. If he rings and then picks up the book, and he had dog-eared a page to mark his place, it is a C. If he waits until Fritz has brought the beer and he has poured to pick up the book, and his place was dog-eared, it’s a D. I haven’t kept score, but I would say that of the two hundred or so books he reads in a year not more than five or six get an A.
At six o’clock that Monday afternoon in May I was at my desk, checking the itemization of expenses that was to accompany the bill going to the Spooner Corporation for a job we had just finished, when the sound came of his elevator jolting to a stop and his footsteps in the hall. He entered, crossed to the oversized made-to-order chair behind his desk, sat, picked up Why the Gods Laugh, by Philip Harvey, opened to the page marked with the strip of gold, read a paragraph, and reached to the button at the edge of his desk without taking his eyes from the page. As he did so, the phone rang.
I got it. “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speaking.” Up to six o’clock I say “Nero Wolfe’s office.” After six I say “residence.”
A tired baritone said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Wolfe. This is Philip Harvey.”
“He’ll want to know what about. If you please?”
“I’ll tell him. I’m a writer. I’m acting on behalf of the National Association of Authors and Dramatists.”
“Did you write a book called Why the Gods Laugh?”
“I did.”
“Hold the wire.” I covered the transmitter and turned. “If that bo
ok has any weak spots here’s your chance. The guy who wrote it wants to speak to you.”
He looked up. “Philip Harvey?”
“Right.”
“What does he want?”
“He says he’ll tell you. Probably to ask you what page you’re on.”
He closed the book on a finger to keep his place and took his phone. “Yes, Mr. Harvey?”
“Is this Nero Wolfe?”
“Yes.”
“You may possibly have heard my name.”
“Yes.”
“I want to make an appointment to consult you. I am chairman of the Joint Committee on Plagiarism of the National Association of Authors and Dramatists and the Book Publishers of America. How about tomorrow morning?”
“I know nothing about plagiarism, Mr. Harvey.”
“We’ll tell you about it. We have a problem we want you to handle. There’ll be six or seven of us, members of the committee. How about tomorrow morning?”
“I’m not a lawyer. I’m a detective.”
“I know you are. How about ten o’clock?”
Of course that wouldn’t do, since it would take more than an author, even of a book that rated an A, to break into Wolfe’s two morning hours with the orchids, from nine to eleven. Harvey finally settled for a quarter past eleven. When we hung up I asked Wolfe if I should check, and he nodded and went back to his book. I rang Lon Cohen at the Gazette and learned that the National Association of Authors and Dramatists was it. All the dramatists anyone had ever heard of were members, and most of the authors, the chief exceptions being some scattered specimens who hadn’t decided if they cared to associate with the human race—or had decided that they didn’t. The Book Publishers of America was also it, a national organization of all the major firms and many of the minor ones. I passed the information along to Wolfe, but I wasn’t sure he listened. He was reading.
That evening around midnight, when I got home after taking a friend to a show, A Barrel of Love, by Mortimer Oshin, Wolfe had just finished his book and was making room for it on one of the shelves over by the big globe. As I tried the door of the safe I spoke.
“Why not leave it on your desk?”
He grunted. “Mr. Harvey’s self-esteem needs no sop. If he were not so skillful a writer he would be insufferable. Why curry him?”
Before I went up two flights to my room I looked up “curry” in the dictionary. Check. I won’t live long enough to see the day when Wolfe curries anybody including me.
2
At 11:20 the next morning, Tuesday, Wolfe, seated at his desk, sent his eyes from left to right and back again, rested them on Philip Harvey, and inquired, “You’re the spokesman, Mr. Harvey?”
Since Harvey had made the appointment and was chairman of the committee, I had put him in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk. He was a middle-aged shorty with a round face, round shoulders, and a round belly. The other five were in an arc on yellow chairs that I had had ready for them. Their names, supplied by Harvey, were in my notebook. The one nearest me, the big blond guy in a brown suit with tan stripes, was Gerald Knapp, president of Knapp and Bowen. The one next to him, the wiry-looking bantam with big ears and slick black hair, was Reuben Imhof of the Victory Press. The female about my age who might have been easy to look at if her nose would stop twitching was Amy Wynn. I had seen a couple of reviews of her novel, Knock at My Door, but it wasn’t on Wolfe’s shelves. The tall gray-haired one with a long bony face was Thomas Dexter of Title House. The one at the far end of the arc, with thick lips and deep-set dark eyes, slouching in his chair with his left ankle on his right knee, was Mortimer Oshin. He had written the play, A Barrel of Love, which I had seen last evening. He had lit three cigarettes in eight minutes, and with two of the matches he had missed the ashtray on a stand at his elbow and they had landed on the rug.
Philip Harvey cleared his throat. “You’ll need all the details,” he said, “but first I’ll outline it. You said you know nothing about plagiarism, but I assume you know what it is. Of course a charge of plagiarism against a book or a play is dealt with by the author and publisher, or the playwright and producer, but a situation has developed that needs something more than defending individual cases. That’s why the NAAD and the BPA have set up this joint committee. I may say that we, the NAAD, appreciate the cooperation of the BPA. In a plagiarism suit it’s the author that gets stuck, not the publisher. In all book contracts the author agrees to indemnify the publisher for any liabilities, losses, damages, expenses—”
Reuben Imhof cut in. “Now wait a minute. What is agreed and what actually happens are two different things. Actually, in a majority of cases, the publisher suffers—”
“The suffering publisher!” Amy Wynn cried, her nose twitching. Mortimer Oshin had a comment too, and four of them were speaking at once. I didn’t try to sort it out for my notebook.
Wolfe raised his voice. “If you please! You started it, Mr. Harvey. If the interests of author and publisher are in conflict, why a joint committee?”
“Oh, they’re not always in conflict.” Harvey was smiling, not apologetically. “The interests of slave and master often jibe; they do in this situation. I merely mentioned en passant that the author gets stuck. We deeply appreciate the cooperation of the BPA. It’s damned generous of them.”
“You were going to outline the situation.”
“Yes. In the past four years there have been five major charges of plagiarism.” Harvey took papers from his pocket, unfolded them, and glanced at the top sheet. “In February nineteen fifty-five, McMurray and Company published The Color of Passion, a novel by Ellen Sturdevant. By the middle of April it was at the top of the fiction best-seller list. In June the publishers received a letter from a woman named Alice Porter, claiming that the novel’s plot and characters, and all important details of the plot development, with only the setting and names changed, had been stolen from a story written by her, never published, entitled ‘There Is Only Love.’ She said she had sent the story, twenty-four typewritten pages, to Ellen Sturdevant in November nineteen fifty-two, with a note asking for suggestions for its improvement. It had never been acknowledged or returned. Ellen Sturdevant denied that she had ever seen any such story. One day in August, when she was at her summer home in Vermont, a local woman in her employ came to her with something she said she had found in a bureau drawer. It was twenty-four typewritten sheets, and the top one was headed, ‘There Is Only Love, by Alice Porter.’ Its plot and characters and many details were the same as those of Ellen Sturdevant’s novel, though in much shorter form. The woman, named Billings, admitted that she had been persuaded by Alice Porter to search the house for the typescript—persuaded by the offer of a hundred dollars if she found it. But, having found it, she had a pang of conscience and brought it to her employer. Mrs. Sturdevant has told me that her first impulse was to bum it, but on second thought she realized that that wouldn’t do, since Mrs. Billings couldn’t be expected to perjure herself on a witness stand, and she phoned her attorney in New York.”
Harvey upturned a palm. “That’s the meat of it. I may say that I am convinced, and so is everyone who knows her, that Ellen Sturdevant had never seen that typescript before. It was a plant. The case never went to trial. It was settled out of court. Mrs. Sturdevant paid Alice Porter eighty-five thousand dollars.”
Wolfe grunted. “There’s nothing I could do about it now.”
“We know you can’t. We don’t expect you to. But that’s only the beginning.” Harvey looked at the second sheet of paper. “In January nineteen fifty-six, Title House published Hold Fast to All I Give You, a novel by Richard Echols. Will you tell him about it, Mr. Dexter? Briefly?”
Thomas Dexter passed a hand over his gray hair. “I’ll make it as brief as I can,” he said. “It’s a long story. The publication date was January nineteenth. Within a month we were shipping five thousand a week. By the end of April nine thousand a week. On May sixth we got a letter from a man named Simon Jac
obs. It stated that in February nineteen fifty-four he had sent the manuscript of a novelette he had written, entitled ‘What’s Mine Is Yours,’ to the literary agency of Norris and Baum. Norris and Baum had been Echols’ agent for years. Jacob enclosed a photostat of a letter he had received from Norris and Baum, dated March twenty-sixth, nineteen fifty-four, returning the manuscript and saying that they couldn’t take on any new clients. The letter mentioned the title of the manuscript, ‘What’s Mine Is Yours.’ It was bona fide; there was a copy of it in Norris and Baum’s files; but no one there could remember anything about it. More than two years had passed, and they get a great many unsolicited manuscripts.”
Dexter took a breath. “Jacobs claimed that the plot of his novelette was original and unique, also the characters, and that the plot and characters of Hold Fast to All I Give You, Echols’ novel, were obviously a steal. He said he would be glad to let us inspect his manuscript—that’s how he put it—and would give us a copy if we wanted one. His presumption was that someone at Norris and Baum had either told Echols about it or had let him read it. Everyone at Norris and Baum denied it, and so did Echols, and we at Title House believe them. Utterly. But a plagiarism suit is a tricky thing. There is something about the idea of a successful author stealing his material from an unsuccessful author that seems to appeal to ordinary people, and juries are made up of ordinary people. It dragged along for nearly a year. The final decision was left to Echols and his attorney, but we at Title House approved of it. They decided not to risk a trial. Jacobs was paid ninety thousand dollars for a general release. Though we were not obligated by contract, Title House contributed one-fourth of it, twenty-one thousand, five hundred.”
“It should have been half,” Harvey said, not arguing, just stating a fact.
Wolfe asked, “Did you get a copy of Jacobs’ manuscript?”
Dexter nodded. “Certainly. It supported his claim. The plot and characters were practically identical.”
“Indeed. Again, Mr. Harvey, it seems to be too late.”