Some Buried Caesar (29 page)

“Shut up.”

I kicked the door further open and stood there, listening for the sound of a gunshot or a racing engine or whatever I might hear. But the first pertinent sound, within the 5 minutes he had mentioned, was his returning footsteps on the stairs. He came down the hall, as he had promised, on his feet, entered without glancing at me, walked to Wolfe and handed him something, and went to his chair and sat down.

“That’s what I said I’d show you.” He seemed more out of breath than the exertion of his trip warranted, but otherwise under control. “That’s what I killed Buckingham with.” He turned his eye to me. “I haven’t got any pencil or paper. If you’ll let me have that pad …”

Wolfe held the thing daintily with thumb and forefinger, regarding it—a large hypodermic syringe. He lifted his gaze. “You had anthrax in this?”

“Yes. Five cubic centimeters. A culture I made myself from the tissues of Caesar’s heart the morning I found him dead. They gave me hell for cutting him
open, but—” He shrugged. “I did that before I got the idea of saying the carcass was Buckingham instead of Caesar. I only about half knew what I was doing that morning, but it was in my mind to use it on myself—the poison from Caesar’s heart. Watch out how you handle that. It’s empty now, but there might be a drop left on the needle, though I just wiped it off.”

“Will anthrax kill a man?”

“Yes. How sudden depends on how he gets it. In my case collapse will come in maybe twenty minutes, because I shot more than two cubic centimeters of that concentrate in this vein.” He tapped his left forearm with a finger. “Right in the vein. I only used half of it on Buckingham.”

“Before you left for Crowfield Tuesday afternoon.”

“Yes.” McMillan looked at me again. “You’d better give me that pad and let me get started.”

I got out the pad and tore off the three top sheets which contained the sketches, and handed it to him, with my fountain pen. He took it and scratched with the pen to try it, and asked Wolfe, “Do you want to dictate it?”

“No. Better in your own words. Just—it can be brief. Are you perfectly certain about the anthrax?”

“Yes. A good stockman is a jack of all trades.”

Wolfe sighed, and shut his eyes.

I sat and watched the pen in McMillan’s hand moving along the top sheet of the pad. Apparently he was a slow writer. The faint scratch of its movement was the only sound for several minutes. Then he asked without looking up:

“How do you spell ‘unconscious’? I’ve always been a bad speller.”

Wolfe spelled it for him, slowly and distinctly.

I watched the pen starting to move again. My gun, in my pocket, was weighting my coat down, and I transferred it back to the holster, still looking at the pen. Wolfe, his eyes closed, was looking at nothing.

T
hat was two months ago.

Yesterday, while I was sitting here in the office typing from my notebook Wolfe’s dictated report on the Crampton-Gore case, the phone rang. Wolfe, at his desk in his oversize chair, happening not to be pouring beer at the moment, answered at his instrument. After a second he grunted and muttered:

“She wants Escamillo.”

I lifted my receiver. “Hello, trifle. I’m busy.”

“You’re always busy.” She sounded energetic. “You listen to me a minute. You probably don’t know or don’t care that I seldom pay any attention to my mail except to run through it to see if there’s a letter from you. I’ve just discovered that I did after all get an invitation to Nancy’s and Jimmy’s wedding, which will be tomorrow. I know you did. You and I will go together. You can come—”

“Stop! Stop and take a breath. Weddings are out. They’re barbaric vestiges of … of barbarism. I doubt if I’d go to my own.”

“You might. You may. For a string of cellophane pearls I’d marry you myself. But this wedding will be
amusing. Old Pratt and old Osgood will be there and you can see them shake hands. Then you can have cocktails and dinner with me.”

“My pulse remains steady.”

“Kiss me.”

“Still steady.”

“I’ll buy you some marbles and an airgun and roller skates …”

“No. Are you going to ring off now?”

“No. I haven’t seen you for a century.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to the Strand tomorrow evening at 9 o’clock to watch Greenleaf and Baldwin play pool. You can come along if you’ll promise to sit quietly and not chew gum.”

“I wouldn’t know a pool from a pikestaff. But all right. You can come here for dinner—”

“Nope. I’ll eat at home with my employer. I’ll meet you in the lobby of the Churchill at 8:45.”

“My God, these public assignations—”

“I am perfectly willing to be seen with you in public.”

“8:45 tomorrow.”

“Right.”

I replaced the instrument and turned to my typewriter. Wolfe’s voice came:

“Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get the dictionary and look up the meaning of the word ‘spiritual.’”

I merely ignored it and started on paragraph 16 of the report.

M
y library owes no debt to Mr. Dewey’s decimals, none to alphabetical order. The Nero Wolfe novels are shelved among “books of comfort,” which I loosely define as novels riveting enough to hold my attention in the dreaded dentist’s chair, yet never filled with onstage gore. Reading a Nero Wolfe is akin to visiting the home of an old friend or returning to the same inn on Cape Cod each year, nodding in delight at the familiar star-patterned quilt on the same canopied bed in the usual room, finding the idyllic view from the patio unchanged, unspoiled.

During stressful times I’ve devoured the Wolfe novels, charging so briskly through the canon that many of the titles seem interchangeable. Caught without reading material in an airport, I have, more than once, purchased a title I already own, only to discover the error at ten thousand feet. I’ll cheerfully reread a Wolfe novel for the fourth or fifth time rather than resort to an airline magazine.

What should the reader expect from a Nero Wolfe novel—besides superb plotting, well-developed main characters, and crisp prose?

A quick summary of the house rules:

At 325 West Thirty-fifth Street, Wolfe devotes the hours of 9 to 11
A.M
. and 4 to 6
P.M
. to the cultivation and propagation of orchids.

Theodore Horstmann, gardener par excellence, supervises Wolfe’s participation in the above.

Fritz prepares outstanding cuisine.

No interruptions are allowed during meals; conversation is encouraged.

All guests and clients are offered refreshment.

Archie Goodwin, Wolfe’s stalwart assistant, answers the door. He is available for a wisecrack. He’ll punch a bad guy in the jaw. He’ll dance with a woman if she’s on the “right” side of thirty, and he can samba and rumba with the best.

Other than a well-heeled widow or two (clients), murderesses (surely more than statistically justifiable), and the occasionally glimpsed Lily Rowan, (whose name combines both flower and tree; perhaps she should be kept in the potting shed),
no women are allowed
within the all-male clubhouse on West Thirty-fifth. They are not even to be included among the cleaning crew. The entire gender is suspect and illogical. Each and every one might burst into tears, which would be
intolerable
!

Since the maintenance of the brownstone requires a substantial monthly outlay of cash, Nero Wolfe uses his Holmesian powers of observation and deduction to solve crimes that have baffled, or will soon baffle, the New York police force.

The Golden Spiders
is atypical Stout, atypical Wolfe, and as such I take particular delight in introducing it to both devoted fans and new readers. The novel begins with humor, involves a child, and contains a personal element of vengeance. All rarities.

The opening of a Nero Wolfe novel is usually a set piece, a ritualistic “feather-duster” scene, containing the obligatory paragraphs defining Fritz’s and Theodore’s roles in the Thirty-fifth Street ménage as well as a description of the red leather chair and the immense globe in Wolfe’s spacious book-lined office.

As practiced by Rex Stout, the consummate pro, the detective novel generally begins with the client’s initial visit, scheduled well within Wolfe’s carefully prescribed hours. The client sits in the red leather chair. The client may be telling the truth; the client may be lying. If the client has sufficient financial assets, Wolfe takes the case.

The Golden Spiders
starts in the kitchen with a fit of Wolfian petulance brought on by a disagreement over the proper preparation of starlings. Archie, amused by Wolfe’s childish behavior, invites a child, a neighborhood tough who’d never ordinarily be admitted to Wolfe’s presence, much less considered as a client, to join Wolfe at the table, shattering precedent and rules alike.

Archie’s playfulness has terrible consequences.

   We accept that the writer of amateur-sleuth detective novels has a built-in credibility problem. Why does our hardworking chef, writer, or actor keep stumbling over those unpleasant corpses? Why doesn’t the chef, writer, or actor behave in a normal fashion, i.e., call the police and leave the investigation to them? It’s less obvious that the writer of the professional detective series has her or his motivational problems as well. How does the detective become personally involved in each case? A fictional detective is not a neurosurgeon, for whom emotional detachment might be considered a plus. If she or he is to grasp and hold the reader, even the most curmudgeonly detective must find a reason beyond the check at the rainbow’s end to pursue a case to its conclusion. Generally, it’s Archie, our Everyman on a good day, who provides this sympathy, this bond. Rarely does Wolfe become engaged, much less enraged, by the crime in question.

Wolfe hates interruptions during meals. He dislikes children. He abhors deviations from his schedule. All of these indignities are heaped upon him in
The Golden Spiders
. They grate. They affect his appetite. They cause him to accept a retainer of four dollars and thirty cents from—horrors!—a teary-eyed woman.

They do my heart good.

I have loved and read these books all my life, and yet I rub my hands in secret satisfaction.

Let the old misogynist suffer.

Linda Barnes
June 1994

W
hen the doorbell rings while Nero Wolfe and I are at dinner, in the old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street, ordinarily it is left to Fritz to answer it. But that evening I went myself, knowing that Fritz was in no mood to handle a caller, no matter who it was.

Fritz’s mood should be explained. Each year around the middle of May, by arrangement, a farmer who lives up near Brewster shoots eighteen or twenty starlings, puts them in a bag, and gets in his car and drives to New York. It is understood that they are to be delivered to our door within two hours after they were winged. Fritz dresses them and sprinkles them with salt, and, at the proper moment, brushes them with melted butter, wraps them in sage leaves, grills them, and arranges them on a platter of hot polenta, which is thick porridge of fine-ground yellow cornmeal with butter, grated cheese, and salt and pepper.

It is an expensive meal and a happy one, and Wolfe always looks forward to it, but that day he put on an exhibition. When the platter was brought in, steaming, and placed before him, he sniffed, ducked
his head and sniffed again, and straightened to look up at Fritz.

“The sage?”

“No, sir.”

“What do you mean, no, sir?”

“I thought you might like it once in a style I have suggested, with saffron and tarragon. Much fresh tarragon, with just a touch of saffron, which is the way—”

“Remove it!”

Fritz went rigid and his lips tightened.

“You did not consult me,” Wolfe said coldly. “To find that without warning one of my favorite dishes has been radically altered is an unpleasant shock. It may possibly be edible, but I am in no humor to risk it. Please dispose of it and bring me four coddled eggs and a piece of toast.”

Fritz, knowing Wolfe as well as I did, aware that this was a stroke of discipline that hurt Wolfe more than it did him and that it would be useless to try to parley, reached for the platter, but I put in, “I’ll take some if you don’t mind. If the smell won’t keep you from enjoying your eggs?”

Wolfe glared at me.

That was how Fritz acquired the mood that made me think it advisable for me to answer the door. When the bell rang Wolfe had finished his eggs and was drinking coffee, really a pitiful sight, and I was toward the end of a second helping of the starlings and polenta, which was certainly edible. Going to the hall and the front, I didn’t bother to snap the light switch because there was still enough twilight for me to see, through the one-way glass panel, that the customer on the stoop was not our ship coming in.

I pulled the door open and told him politely, “Wrong number.”

I was polite by policy, my established policy of promoting the idea of peace on earth with the neighborhood kids. It made life smoother in that street, where there was a fair amount of ball throwing and other activities.

“Guess again,” he told me in a low nervous alto, not too rude. “You’re Archie Goodwin. I’ve gotta see Nero Wolfe.”

“What’s your name?”

“Pete.”

“What’s the rest of it?”

“Drossos. Pete Drossos.”

“What do you want to see Mr. Wolfe about?”

“I gotta case. I’ll tell him.”

He was a wiry little specimen with black hair that needed a trim and sharp black eyes, the top of his head coming about level with the knot of my four-in-hand. I had seen him around the neighborhood but had nothing either for or against him. The thing was to ease him off without starting a feud, and ordinarily I would have gone at it, but after Wolfe’s childish performance with Fritz I thought it would do him good to have another child to play with. Naturally he would snarl and snap, but if Pete got scratched I could salve him afterward. So I invited him in and escorted him to the dining room.