Fer-de-Lance (Nero Wolfe, #1)

by Rex Stout

major domo;

Nero Wolfe, the eccentric genius swathed in his one-seventh of a ton, is a combination of Sherlock Holmes in his more contemplative moments and Baroness Orczy’s sedentary Old Man in the Corner.

We read Nero Wolfe because we like a good mystery. We reread him not for the plots, which have neither the human complexity of Raymond Chandler’s nor the ingenuity of Agatha Christie’s, but for the chemistry between the orchid-fancying enfant terrible and his optimistic-cynical amanuensis and all-around dogsbody, and for the insular complacency of life in the old townhouse where world-class meals are served three times daily; the Cattleyas Laelias continue to get on splendidly with the Laeliocattleya Lustre; a peek through the tricked-up waterfall picture in Wolfe’s office may provide a glimpse of the Great Man relaxing in his custom-built chair with some arcane volume or pushing his lips in and out with his eyes closed over some dense pattern of facts while his legman sits by the telephone, waiting for his cue to gather all the suspects and other interested parties for the denouement. This is a world where all things make sense in time, a world better than our own. If you are an old hand making a return swing through its orbit, welcome back; pull up the red leather chair and sit down. If this is your first trip, I envy you the surprises that await you behind that unprepossessing front door. —Loren D. Estleman

There was no reason why I shouldn’t have been sent for the beer that day, for the last ends of the Fairmont National Bank case had been gathered in the week before and there was nothing for me to do but errands, and Wolfe never hesitated about running me down to Murray Street for a can of shoe-polish if he happened to need one.

“What you are getting is a free but valuable lesson,” Wolfe said. “You are young and can use it. Since I entered this room you have made nothing but mistakes. You were without courtesy, which was offensive. You made a statement contrary to fact, which was stupid. You confused conjecture with knowledge, which was disingenuous. Would you like me to explain what you should have done? My motives are entirely friendly.” O’Grady was blinking. “I don’t charge you with motives—” “Good. Of course you had no way of knowing how ill-advised it was to imply that I made a journey to Carlo Maffei’s room; unfamiliar with my habits, you were not aware that I would not undertake that enterprise though a Cattleya Dowiana aurea were to be the reward. Certainly not for some papers and—as you say—things. Archie Goodwin,” a finger circled in my direction, “doesn’t mind that sort of thing, so he went. What you should have done was this. First, answered me when I wished you good morning. Second, made your request courteous, complete, and correct as to fact. Third—though this was less essential—you might as a matter of professional civility have briefly informed me that the body of the murdered Carlo Maffei has been found and identified and that the assistance of these papers is required in the attempt to discover the assassin. Don’t you agree with me that that would have been better, Mr. O’Grady?”

You know, Mr. Townsend, it is our good fortune that the exigencies of birth and training furnish all of us with opportunities for snobbery. My ignorance of this special nomenclature provided yours; your innocence of the elementary mental processes provides mine. As to the object of your visit, you can sell me nothing; these things will forever remain completely useless to me. You can reassemble your bundle and take it with you, but let us assume that I should purchase three of these clubs and that the profit on each should be one dollar. Three dollars? If I give you that amount will it be satisfactory?”

He sighed. “Must I again remind you, Archie, of the reaction you would have got if you had asked Velasquez to explain why Aesop’s hand was resting inside his robe instead of hanging by his side? Must I again demonstrate that while it is permissible to request the scientist to lead you back over his footprints, a similar request of the artist is nonsense, since he, like the lark or the eagle, has made none? Do you need to be told again that I am an artist?”

“All right,” I said. “But what if the girl had just looked and Said no, she never saw one anywhere?” “I have told you before, Archie, that even for your amusement I shall not advise replies to hypothetical questions.” “Sure, that’s an easy out.” Wolfe shook his head regretfully. “To reply is to admit the validity of your jargon, but I have learned not to expect better of you. How the devil do I know what I would have done if anything? Probably bade her good night. Would I have found varnish for my picture elsewhere? Maybe; maybe not. Shall I ask you how you would have seen to eat if your head had been put on backwards?” I grinned. “I wouldn’t have starved. Neither will you; if I know anything I know that. But how did you know that Maffei had been murdered?”

As long as I live I’ll never forget the time he had a bank president pinched, or rather I did, on no evidence whatever except that the fountain pen on his desk was dry. I was never so relieved in my life as I was when the guy shot himself an hour later. But there was no use trying to get Wolfe to pull up a little; I hardly ever wasted time on that any more. If I undertook to explain how easy he might be wrong he would just say, “You know a fact when you see it, Archie, but you have no feeling for phenomena.” After I had looked up the word phenomena in the dictionary I couldn’t see that he had anything, but there was no use arguing with him.

myrmidon

Kimball was listening to me with a frown, with the worry and amusement both gone. He went on frowning. When he finally spoke all he said was, “Poppycock.” “No,” I said. “You can’t make it poppycock just by pronouncing it. Anyway, poppycock or not, it was your driver Barstow used on the first tee. You remember that?”

Wolfe was saying, “You are perfectly correct, Mr. Kimball. A man’s time is his own only by sufferance. There are many ways in which he may be dispossessed: flood, famine, war, marriage—not to speak of death, which is the most satisfactory of all because it closes the question finally.”

“Good. You came because you were confused. That is not a desirable condition for a man in the extreme of danger, as you are.

“It’s too bad, Mr. Kimball.” “It is. But you caught the crow, now you can eat it.” “No. You misunderstand me. I mean it’s too bad that you are dealing with me. I am perhaps the only man on this hemisphere whom your courage and wit cannot defeat, and by incredibly bad luck you find yourself confronted by me. I am sorry; but just as you have assumed a task suitable for your abilities, I have found one congenial for mine. You will forgive me for wheeling onto your flank, since you have made it impossible for me to meet you frontally. I hardly suppose that you expected your direct attack to gain its feigned objective; you could hardly have had so poor an opinion of me as that. Your true objective must have been concealed, and probably it was the discovery of the nature and extent of the evidence I have so far acquired. But surely you know that, for how else could I have foretold the result of the autopsy?—I beg you, let me finish. Yes, I know when and where and by whom the golf driver was made, I know where the man who made it is now, and I know what results to expect from the advertisement which I inserted in this morning’s newspapers and which you have perhaps seen.”

“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 ...

“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.

REX STOUT, the creator of Nero Wolfe, was born in Noblesville, Indiana, in 1886, the sixth of nine children of John and Lucetta Todhunter Stout, both Quakers.

During World War II, Rex Stout waged a personal campaign against Nazism as chairman of the War Writers’ Board, master of ceremonies of the radio program “Speaking of Liberty,” and as a member of several national committees. After the war, he turned his attention to mobilizing public opinion against the wartime use of thermonuclear devices, was an active leader in the Authors’ Guild and resumed writing his Nero Wolfe novels. Rex Stout died in 1975 at the age of eighty-nine. A month before his death, he published his seventy-second Nero Wolfe mystery, A Family Affair. Ten years later, a seventy-third Nero Wolfe was discovered and published in Death Times Three.