The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe

by Josh Pachter

  And then the payoff: “Told you about the so-called brains we have on this barge. Well, I find there is another mastermind on board who is a horse of a different color. He is a specialist in murder, too, but from another angle, and he is having fun and games while the Sherlocks sleep. He does not know I have found him out, but, next time we meet, FIREWORKS MAY BE EXPECTED. THE REAL NAME OF THIS CROOK IS NOT ON HIS PASSPORT. IT IS GIB.”

  It ended there. By that time, I was goggle-eyed. This murder had been screwy enough before. Now it was for Kraft-Ebbing’s casebook. I got up and carried the goddamn thing to Beare’s cabin, holding it by the edges just as a matter of principle. I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any prints.

  Beare was ordering breakfast. He nodded politely and said, “Good morning, Ernie.”

  When the steward had gone, I told him what I had.

  Beare shrugged and picked up the book he was reading.

  “You don’t think it’s a clue?”

  “No.”

  “You think it’s a frame?”

  “No.” He turned a page.

  “Okay, I get it, you’re not interested.”

  “Ernie.” Beare put his book down on his belly. “I am aware that, ever since this murder was discovered, you have been trying to needle me into undertaking its investigation.”

  “I thought it might occupy your mind,” I said earnestly. “The good secretary always tries to—”

  “Pfui. Even if we were at home instead of—”

  He closed his eyes and came to a full stop. It was practically the only time I’ve ever heard him leave a sentence unfinished. He opened his eyes and said patiently, “Even if we were not at home, I would not take the case. Why should I? There is no client, no fee. Public spirit? I do not condone the murder even of a scurrilous quidnunc, but its investigation does not devolve onto me; there are representatives of the constituted authorities aboard who have it in hand. This paper should be taken at once to the official in charge.”

  “Just admit you’re too lazy—”

  “Enough, Ernie. I do not know the facts, but, viewing the case cursorily, I doubt if it is soluble. A dolt could get away with a crime under such circumstances. The obstacles in the way of detecting him are insuperable. We cannot trace the histories of scores of passengers. We cannot distinguish between their normal behavior and their abnormal deviations. We cannot check alibis. The murderer may be some ordinary seaman with a grudge against passengers. He may be a rival journalist, traveling incognito. He may be the captain.”

  Making a speech meant Beare was feeling more at ease, anyway. “You’re the boss,” I said, just to keep things going. “And if one of the other detectives solves the case—well, you’ll still be the fattest one, they can’t take that away from you.”

  Beare scowled. “Least of all will you move me by appeals to my spirit of emulation. My taste runs neither to socialized detection nor”—he grimaced—“to relay races.” He picked up his book and I beat it, carrying the paper.

  In my cabin, I looked at it again. I hated to let it go just like that, and I played around with the idea of a little investigating on my own, but in the end I decided to take it to the first officer. After all, we had been pally over gin and orange, and he had confided in me his plans for the future, so I ought to play fair. When I finally tracked him down and showed him the paper, he got as excited as if it was going to have the murderer’s signature on it. But when he’d read it through he said:

  “I can’t understand this. It’s daft! There’s something strange about it. Has Mr. Beare seen it? What does he think?”

  “He won’t touch it.”

  “But what the devil does it mean? Do you think Price had discovered that he was going to be killed?”

  “It reads that way. I wish he’d had time to go on, or more space—it breaks off short.”

  “Do you think he was going to give the actual name? But what begins with G-I-B?”

  “My guess is he was going to write ‘gibberish,’” I told him. “But I’ve got other questions. Who took the paper out of the machine, and why was it put in my cabin?”

  Mr. Waggish gave a groan. “Perhaps there’s a third person at work? It’s daft, completely daft!”

  “Cheer up,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, “I don’t care, personally. In fact, I’m rather enjoying the experience, it’s different from the usual crossing. But the Old Man—he’s already all fouled up like Christ in a whirlpool. And if we have to wait in quarantine because of this—”

  “Quarantine?”

  “If we can’t deliver the murderer on arrival, we’ll have to moor offshore. And then the skipper will really blow up, and we’ll have the hell of a trip back home. He hates every day we spend in sight of land.”

  I could have told him that was nothing to what Beare felt about every day in sight of open ocean, but I let it go. I said so long and went back to Beare’s cabin. The time had come for some more needling, this time a good jab, hypodermic size.

  Beare was sitting up reading. He put his book down and said, “Three more nights until we dine again at home. I shall radiogram ahead about the menu. There will be saucisse minuit—”

  “That would be nice,” I said wistfully.

  Beare blinked, and I guessed he was looking at me suspiciously as I turned my back and went to the porthole to look out at the fog. I gave him the latest weather report and began a blow-by-blow description of the movie I hadn’t gone to in the dining saloon.

  “Ernie. What the devil are you insinuating?”

  “Nothing, probably,” I said cheerily. “With all these great Sherlocks on board, the crime ought to be solved before too long. Chances are we won’t be delayed more than one or two nights.”

  “Ernie!”

  I explained what the first officer had told me.

  Beare’s chin quivered. “Confound it!” He drew a deep breath. “Very well. Tell me what has been done so far.”

  So that was how we got into the case. Beare sat there scowling while I went over it in detail, leaving nothing out, not even the flutter of an eyelid. I gave him everything I knew, which was what I’d seen myself and what Waggish and the other detectives had found out.

  “Where is that paper now?” he asked when I had finished.

  “I gave it to Waggish, like you said.”

  “I want to see it. And I want to see the suspects. Get them here in an hour. Bring Miss Price earlier. It is unlikely she knows as little about her uncle as she claims.”

  “The suspects?”

  “Everyone who was there when the blackjack was stolen.”

  “You think the killer must be limited to that group?”

  “No, the limitation is not absolute. The person who took the blackjack might conceivably have given it to another person and is lying about the theft, not because he is guilty of murder, but from fear of the killer or in hope of blackmailing him.”

  “If anyone but the murderer took it, he’s a sap not to say so. The murderer won’t let him stay alive much longer.”

  Beare nodded. “True. But then the suspects in this case do not appear to be distinguished by acumen. At any rate, although the limitation is not absolute, it is the soundest working hypothesis we have. We cannot hold out for absolute truth: ‘He who would fix his condition upon incontestable reasons of preference must live and die inquiring and debating.’”

  I was on my way out, but I stopped. “Confucius?”

  Beare frowned. “Samuel Johnson.”

  The Archie Hunters

  by Jon L. Breen

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: “The Archie Hunters” was written on a manual typewriter in the airfield flight dispensary where I was employed during my one overseas year as a US Army draftee. (No, I’m not a doctor, and I was sadly miscast as a medic. Most of the work I did was clerical.) I had sold three storie
s to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, all of them in the parody or pastiche category, so I naturally submitted this one. But I must have known Fred Dannay would never buy it. I’ll quote from his rejection letter of November 21, 1968: “I don’t care for a combination of Mike Hammer and Nero Wolfe (and therefore of Spillane and Stout). I wouldn’t want to publish any Mike Hammer pastiche or parody, and I don’t want, in any other pastiche or parody, the kind of political motivation you’ve used in ‘The Archie Hunters.’” He did add, “Your handling of Nero and Archie is first-rate,” and went on to suggest pairing Nero Wolfe with another fictional detective, which I never did.

  In terms of the magazine’s policy and his own good taste, Fred was certainly right to reject the story. I put it aside, deciding I didn’t really like it. All my other parodies and pastiches were born of admiration for the target authors’ works, and, while Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe are among my favorites, I was not a fan of Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer. Besides, the story was so much of its time that it seemed hopelessly dated just a few years later. When I learned from Josh Pachter that he was assembling a collection of Wolfe-inspired stories, though, I pulled it out of the files, found it better than I remembered, and decided the current political scene (you know what I mean) gave it a new resonance. So here it is, and—apart from the correction of obvious typos, of which editor Pachter found a shocking number—it’s just as I composed it on that army typewriter.

  The newsstand guy’s beady little eyes bulged with fear. I had the little runt by the shirtfront and his feet were dangling helplessly over the sidewalk. We were drawing a big crowd now—you usually can in the Times Square district at noon.

  “Mack,” he squealed like a cornered rat. “Mack, I’m your buddy. What’d I do?”

  “You only played into the hands of the dirty, lousy, rotten Commies, that’s all you did, you lousy punk.” I shoved the copy of the East Village Udder under his nose. “Isn’t there enough filth and rottenness in the world without scum like you peddling crap like this to our youth?”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about it, Mack. It’s just another weekly rag the distributor brings me every Tuesday. I didn’t know …”

  My fist left his face a bloody pulp and half his teeth in place. My second blow took care of what remained. I let go of his shirtfront and let him dribble to the sidewalk like a glob of ketchup out of a new bottle. Watching him writhing and moaning, I felt a tear of nostalgia come to my eye, remembering when he was my buddy and I bought good clean literature like Rogue, The National Review, and Ayn Rand novels at his stand before the Commies got to him. I get real sentimental that way, so I kicked him in the head two or three times till he stopped moaning.

  The crowd just watched me. That was OK. I didn’t expect applause.

  I took the dirty rag with me, though I could hardly stomach its stench. At the edge of the crowd, a cop I call a pal clapped my shoulder and said, “Nice work, Mack,” and I grinned at him and walked up Broadway. The cops are all right in my book. They do a hell of a job. Fighting crime these days is like getting in the ring with Joe Louis with your hands tied. I could never take the restraints or I’d be a cop myself. But as a private cop I can mete out justice more directly and more efficiently.

  Back in the office, I turned the pages of the East Village Udder, wanting to puke. All the perverts and deviates and weirdos spewed out their mental diseases on the pages of the crummy rag. Especially in the back where they had the classified ads. If anybody had told me I’d ever answer one of those ads, I’d have rearranged his face until my knuckles bled. But I did answer one, not one from some queer who wanted a roommate for a lasting love relationship or a wife-swapping society in suburban New Jersey, but one from a guy in my own racket who was in trouble.

  The ad read this way:

  Private investigator seeks associate on short-term basis for missing-persons case.

  Must be discreet, good at legwork, and able to report activities literately, cogently, and accurately to office-based supervisor.

  Contact Nero Wolfe, West 35th Street

  I knew that name. I’d never met Wolfe, but I knew him by reputation, and I knew his leg man, Archie Goodwin, a good guy though a little politer and softer than I think a private op ought to be. This ad from Wolfe could mean only one thing: the missing person he was talking about was Archie Goodwin. Now cops watch out for other cops, and I think private cops ought to do the same thing, especially when they’re straight guys like Archie Goodwin. So I went to West 35th Street to see Nero Wolfe and offer him my help.

  Wolfe’s layout was an old brownstone that had seen better days. I’d rung the doorbell twice before a little pipsqueak with a chef’s apron on answered the door.

  “Yes, sir?” he said. I could tell right away he was some sort of a foreigner.

  “I want to see Wolfe.”

  The squirt looked at his watch and back at me, licking his lips fearfully. “No one can see Mr. Wolfe at this hour, sir. It is his time with the plants.”

  “With the plants?”

  “The orchids. Always every afternoon Mr. Wolfe works with his orchids, no matter what. If you could come back …”

  I could feel hot, vengeful rage waxing up inside me. I could not understand, and when Mack Himmler cannot understand something, somebody is likely to wind up with smashed-up features and a bad bellyache.

  “Archie Goodwin missing, maybe dead or dying, and the great Nero Wolfe spends his almighty time screwing around with goddam orchids! Where’s the gross slob’s greenhouse?”

  “I can’t tell you—”

  I hit the little twerp so hard he bounced off the wall at the other side of the room. I walked toward him with an I’m-not-finished-with-you leer and even though the shrimp couldn’t talk because his mouth was full of blood, he raised his finger to point to the stairway. I took the stairs two at a time.

  I found the plant room easy enough. I entered the room like the whole riot squad. There were two men in the room, one a frail-looking old fellow who about had cardiac arrest when he got a look at my ugly mug and the fury I had written across it, and the other the biggest, fattest guy I’ve ever run across, and he just looked at me with surprise and anger and curiosity evenly mixed on his still pokerish face but standing his ground. This must be Nero Wolfe.

  The very fact he stood his ground made me like the guy some, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to kick the crêpes suzettes out of him if I didn’t think he was square.

  “Are you Wolfe?” I asked menacingly, even though I didn’t really need to.

  “I am Nero Wolfe. May I ask—?”

  “You may listen, fat boy. My name’s Mack Himmler and I’ve come to help find Archie Goodwin who is my buddy. And I’d like to know why the hell you’re making with the flowers when you don’t know what happened to Archie Goodwin. Are you a goddam hippie or something?”

  “Mr. Himmler, I am not accustomed to being insulted in the sanctity of my own home, particularly not by unannounced intruders who violate the hard, unbending rule of the plant room. If I were to give up my orchids in a time of crisis, Mr. Himmler, my mental processes would be derailed and whatever intellect I would be able to bring to bear on the problem at hand would become useless. To this moment, Mr. Himmler, I have done everything I can to determine the whereabouts of Mr. Goodwin and the circumstances of his abrupt disappearance. I appreciate your offer of help, and I will be happy to acquaint you with the facts of the case as I know them. But first I ask that you kindly allow me to finish my session with my orchids. I also ask that you apologize to my friend Mr. Horstmann for the alarm you have caused him.”

  The other guy, who was shaking like a weight-reducing machine, grinned weakly and said, “That’s all right, Mr. Wolfe.”

  “Then let us continue, Theodore. I’ll see you downstairs, Mr. Himmler.”

  The bloated creep was trying to dismiss me, but I wasn’t quite
ready to be dismissed. I had to say my piece.

  “Look, Tubby, if that was my partner who was gone I’d find the guy behind it and make sure he died with a bullet in his belly like my buddy from World War Two who I’ve been avenging for twenty years by shooting bullets in people’s bellies did.”

  He still stood his ground. The guy was cool. If I was as fat as him my reference to a bullet in the belly would have me begging for mercy, even if my own personal belly wasn’t directly involved.

  “Mr. Himmler, I don’t admire your methods. In my present pickle, I am willing to accept your help, but I insist that you let me indulge my eccentricities. By the way, what have you done with Fritz?”

  “The chef? He’ll live.”

  “Mr. Himmler, did you manhandle Fritz?”

  “Oh, maybe a little.”

  “If your treatment of my chef has affected the palatability of my supper, I shall personally see to it that the State of New York revokes your license.”

  “I’ve been threatened with that before.”

  “I daresay.”

  I found myself grinning. In a cockeyed way, I was beginning to like the guy. I walked over and clapped his shoulder and said, “Nero, let’s be buddies.”

  I didn’t know a big pile of blubber could stiffen, but Wolfe managed it.

  “Little by little, Mr. Himmler, you are beginning to try my patience. I shall see you downstairs in one half hour, at which time you will kindly refrain from laying hands on my body.”

  Nobody pushes Mack Himmler around ordinarily, but Wolfe managed that, too. I went downstairs meekly and gave the cook some first aid, in return for which he gave me a beer.

  By the time Wolfe got through twiddling his thumbs in the plant room, I’d thought of plenty of questions to ask him. But when he finally came waddling into his office the first thing I wanted to know was why he’d stuck his ad in the Udder.

  He arched his eyebrows at me. “The East Village Udder, Mr. Himmler? I’d have guessed the Daily News. Are you an Udder reader?”