I don’t know how many guesses there have been in the past year, around bars and dinner tables, as to how Nero Wolfe got hold of the black orchids. I have seen three different ones in print — one in a Sunday newspaper magazine section last summer, one in a syndicated New York gossip column a couple of months ago, and one in a press association dispatch, at the time that a bunch of the orchids unexpectedly appeared at a certain funeral service at the Belford Memorial Chapel.

So here in this book are two separate Nero Wolfe cases, two different sets of people. The first is the low-down on how Wolfe got the orchids. The second tells how he solved another murder, but it leaves a mystery, and that’s what’s biting me. If anyone who knows Wolfe better than I do — but wait till you read it.

Archie Goodwin

Chapter 1

That wasn’t the first time I ever saw Bess Huddleston.

A couple of years previously she had phoned the office one afternoon and asked to speak to Nero Wolfe, and when Wolfe got on the wire she calmly requested him to come at once to her place up at Riverdale to see her. Naturally he cut her off short. In the first place, he never stirred out of the house except in the direction of an old friend or a good cook; and secondly, it hurt his vanity that there was any man or woman alive who didn’t know that.

An hour or so later here she came, to the office — the room he used for an office in his old house on West 35th Street, near the river — and there was a lively fifteen minutes. I never saw him more furious. It struck me as an attractive proposition. She offered him two thousand bucks to come to a party she was arranging for a Mrs. Somebody and be the detective in a murder game. Only four or five hours’ work, sitting down, all the beer he could drink, and two thousand dollars. She even offered an extra five hundred for me to go along and do the leg work. But was he outraged! You might have thought he was Napoleon and she was asking him to come and deploy the tin soldiers in a nursery.

After she had gone I deplored his attitude. I told him that after all she was nearly as famous as he was, being the most successful party-arranger for the upper brackets that New York had ever had, and a combination of the talents of two such artists as him and her would have been something to remember, not to mention what I could do in the way of fun with five hundred smackers, but all he did was sulk.

That had been two years before. Now, this hot August morning with no air conditioning in the house because he distrusted machinery, she phoned around noon and asked him to come up to her place at Riverdale right away. He motioned to me to dispose of her and hung up. But a little later, when he had gone to the kitchen to consult with Fritz about some problem that had arisen in connection with lunch, I looked up her number and called her back. It had been as dull as a blunt instrument around the office for nearly a month, ever since we had finished with the Nauheim case, and I would have welcomed even tailing a laundry boy suspected of stealing a bottle of pop, so I phoned and told her that if she was contemplating a trip to 35th Street I wanted to remind her that Wolfe was incommunicado upstairs with his orchid plants from nine to eleven in the morning, and from four to six in the afternoon, but that any other time he would be delighted to see her.

I must say he didn’t act delighted, when I ushered her in from the hall around three o’clock that afternoon. He didn’t even apologize for not getting up from his chair to greet her, though I admit no reasonable person would have expected any such effort after one glance at his dimensions.

“You,” he muttered pettishly, “are the woman who came here once and tried to bribe me to play the clown.”

She plopped into the red leather chair I placed for her, got a handkerchief out of her large green handbag, and passed it across her forehead, the back of her neck, and her throat. She was one of those people who don’t look much like their pictures in the paper, because her eyes made her face and made you forget the rest of it when you looked at her. They were black and bright and gave you the feeling they were looking at you when they couldn’t have been, and they made her seem a lot younger than the forty-seven or forty-eight she probably was.

“My God,” she said, “as hot as this I should think you would sweat more. I’m in a hurry because I’ve got to see the Mayor about a Defense Pageant he wants me to handle, so I haven’t time to argue, but your saying I tried to bribe you is perfectly silly. Perfectly silly! It would have been a marvelous party with you for the detective, but I had to get a policeman, an inspector, and all he did was grunt. Like this.” She grunted.

“If you have come, madam, to—”

“I haven’t. I don’t want you for a party this time. I wish I did. Someone is trying to ruin me.”

“Ruin you? Physically, financially—”

“Just ruin me. You know what I do. I do parties—”

“I know what you do,” Wolfe said curtly.

“Very well. My clients are rich people and important people, at least they think they’re important. Without going into that, they’re important to me. So what do you suppose the effect would be — wait, I’ll show it to you—”

She opened her handbag and dug into it like a terrier. A small bit of paper fluttered to the floor, and I stepped across to retrieve it for her, but she darted a glance at it and said, “Don’t bother, wastebasket,” and I disposed of it as indicated and returned to my chair.

Bess Huddleston handed an envelope to Wolfe. “Look at that. What do you think of that?”

Wolfe looked at the envelope, front and back, took from it a sheet of paper which he unfolded and looked at, and passed them over to me.

“This is confidential” Bess Huddleston said.

“So is Mr. Goodwin,” Wolfe said dryly.

I examined the exhibits. The envelope, stamped and postmarked and slit open, was addressed on a typewriter:

Mrs. Jervis Horrocks

902 East 74th Street

New York City

The sheet of paper said, also typewritten:

Was it ignorance or something else that caused Dr. Brady to prescribe the wrong medicine for your daughter? Ask Bess Huddleston. She can tell you if she will. She told me.

There was no signature. I handed the sheet and envelope back to Wolfe.

Bess Huddleston used her handkerchief on her forehead and throat again. “There was another one,” she said, looking at Wolfe but her eyes making me feel she was looking at me, “but I haven’t got it. That one, as you see, is postmarked Tuesday, August 12th, six days ago. The other one was mailed a day earlier, Monday, the 11th, a week ago today. Typewritten, just like that. I’ve seen it. It was sent to a very rich and prominent man, and it said — I’ll repeat it. It said: ‘Where and with whom does your wife spend most of her afternoons? If you knew you would be surprised. My authority for this is Bess Huddleston. Ask her.’ The man showed it to me. His wife is one of my best—”

“Please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “Are you consulting me or hiring me?”

“I’m hiring you. To find out who sent those things.”

“It’s a mean kind of a job. Often next to impossible. Nothing but greed could induce me to tackle it.”

“Certainly.” Bess Huddleston nodded impatiently. “I know how to charge too. I expect to get soaked. But where will I be if this isn’t stopped and stopped quick?”

“Very well. Archie, your notebook.”

I got it out and got busy. She reeled it off to me while Wolfe rang for beer and then leaned back and closed his eyes. But he opened one of them halfway when he heard her telling me about the stationery and the typewriter. The paper and envelopes of both the anonymous letters, she said, were the kind used for personal correspondence by a girl who worked for her as her assistant in party-arranging, named Janet Nichols; and the letters and envelopes had been typed on a typewriter that belonged to Bess Huddleston herself which was used by another girl who worked for her as her secretary, named Maryella Timms. Bess Huddleston had done no comparing with a magnifying glass, but it looked like the work of that typewriter. Both girls lived with her in her house at Riverdale, and there was a large box of that stationery in Janet Nichols’ room.

Then if not one of the girls — one of the girls? Wolfe muttered, “Facts, Archie.” Servants? No use to bother about the servants, Bess Huddleston said; no servant ever stayed with her long enough to develop a grudge. I passed it with a nod having read about the alligators and bears and other disturbing elements in newspaper and magazine pieces. Did anyone else live in the house? Yes, a nephew, Lawrence Huddleston, also on the payroll as an assistant party-arranger, but, according to Aunt Bess, not on any account to be suspected. That all? Yes. Any persons sufficiently intimate with the household to have had access to the typewriter and Janet Nichols’ stationery?

Certainly, as possibilities, many people.

Wolfe grunted impolitely. I asked, for another fact, what about the insinuations in the anonymous letters? The wrong medicine and the questionable afternoons? Bess Huddleston’s black eyes snapped at me. She knew nothing about those things. And anyway, they were irrelevant. The point was that some malicious person was trying to ruin her by spreading hints that she was blabbing guilty secrets about people, and whether the secrets happened to be true or not had nothing to do with it. Okay, I told her, forget about where Mrs. Rich Man spends her afternoons, maybe at the ball game, but as a matter of record did Mrs. Jervis Horrocks have a daughter, and had she been sick, and had Dr. Brady attended her? Yes, Bess Huddleston said impatiently, Mrs. Horrocks’ daughter had died a month ago and Dr. Brady had been her doctor. Died of what? Tetanus. How had she got tetanus? By scratching her arm on a nail in a riding-academy stable.

Wolfe muttered, “There is no wrong medicine—”

“It was terrible,” Bess Huddleston interrupted, “but it has nothing to do with this. I’m going to be late for my appointment with the Mayor. This is perfectly simple. Someone wanted to ruin me and conceived this filthy way of doing it, that’s all. It has to be stopped, and if you’re as smart as you’re supposed to be, you can stop it. Of course, I ought to tell you, I know who did it.”

I cocked my head at her. Wolfe’s eyes opened wide.

“What? You know?”

“Yes, I think I know. No, I do know.”

“Then why, madam, are you annoying me?”

“Because I can’t prove it. And she denies it.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe shot a sharp glance at her. “You seem to be less intelligent than you look. If, having no proof, you charged her with it.”

“Did I say charged her with it? I didn’t. I discussed it with her, and also with Maryella, and my nephew, and Dr. Brady, and my brother. I asked them questions. I saw I couldn’t handle it. So I came to you.”

“By elimination — the culprit is Miss Nichols.”

“Yes.”

Wolfe was frowning. “But you have no proof. What do you have?”

“I have — a feeling.”

“Pfui. Based on what?”

“I know her.”

“You do.” Wolfe continued to frown, and his lips pushed out, once, and in again. “By divination? Phrenology? What specific revelations of her character have you observed? Does she pull chairs from under people?”

“Cut the glitter,” Bess Huddleston snapped, frowning back at him. “You know quite well what I mean. I say I know her, that’s all. Her eyes, her voice, her manner—”

“I see. Flatly, you don’t like her. She must be either remarkably stupid or extremely clever, to have used her own stationery for anonymous letters. Had you thought of that?”

“Certainly. She is clever.”

“But knowing she did this, you keep her in your employ, in your house?”

“Of course I do. If I discharged her, would that stop her?”

“No. But you say you think her guilty because you know her. That means you knew a week ago, a month ago, a year ago that she was the sort of person who would do this sort of thing. Why didn’t you get rid of her?”

“Because I—” Bess Huddleston hesitated. “What difference does that make?” she demanded.

“It makes a big difference to me, madam. You’ve hired me to investigate the source of those letters. I am doing so now. I am considering the possibility that you sent them yourself.”

Her eyes flashed at him. “I? Nonsense.”

“Then answer me.” Wolfe was imperturbable. “Since you knew what Miss Nichols was like, why didn’t you fire her?”

“Because I needed her. She’s the best assistant I’ve ever had. Her ideas are simply... take the Stryker dwarf and giant party... that was her idea... this is confidential... some of my biggest successes...”

“I see. How long has she worked for you?”

“Three years.”

“Do you pay her adequately?”

“Yes. I didn’t, but I do now. Ten thousand a year.”

“Then why does she want to ruin you? Just cussedness? Or has she got it in for you?”

“She has — she thinks she has a grievance.”

“What about?”

“Something...” Bess Huddleston shook her head. “That’s of no importance. A private matter. It wouldn’t help you any. I am willing to pay your bill for finding out who sent those letters and getting proof.”

“You mean you will pay me for fastening the guilt on Miss Nichols.”

“Not at all. On whoever did it.”

“No matter who it is?”

“Certainly.”

“But you’re sure it’s Miss Nichols.”

“I am not sure. I said I have a feeling.” Bess Huddleston stood up and picked up her handbag from Wolfe’s desk. “I have to go. Can you come up to my place tonight?”

“No. Mr.—”

“When can you come?”

“I can’t. Mr. Goodwin can go—” Wolfe stopped himself. “No. Since you have already discussed it with all of those people, I’d like to see them. First the young women. Send them down here. I’ll be free at six o’clock. This is a nasty job and I want to get it over with.”

“My God,” Bess Huddleston said, her eyes snapping at him, “you would have made a wonderful party! If I could sell it to the Crowthers I could make it four thousand — only there won’t be many more parties for me if we don’t get these letters stopped. I’ll phone the girls—”

“Here’s a phone,” I said.

She made the call, gave instructions to one she called Maryella, and departed in a rush.

When I returned to the office after seeing the visitor to the door, Wolfe was out of his chair. There was nothing alarming about that, since it was one minute to four and therefore time for him to go up to the orchids, but what froze me in my tracks was the sight of him stooping over, actually bending nearly double, with his hand in my waste-basket.

He straightened up.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I inquired anxiously.

Ignoring that, he moved nearer the window to inspect an object he held between his thumb and forefinger. I stepped over and he handed it to me and I took a squint at it. It was a snapshot of a girl’s face, nothing special to my taste, trimmed off so it was six-sided in shape and about the size of a half dollar.

“Want it for your album?” I asked him.

He ignored that too. “There is nothing in the world,” he said, glaring at me as if I had sent him an anonymous letter, “as indestructible as human dignity. That woman makes money killing time for fools. With it she pays me for rooting around in mud. Half of my share goes for taxes which are used to make bombs to blow people to pieces. Yet I am not without dignity. Ask Fritz, my cook. Ask Theodore, my gardener. Ask you, my—”

“Right hand.”

“No.”

“Prime minister.”

“No.”

“Pal.”

“No!”

“Accomplice, flunkey, Secretary of War, hireling, comrade...” He was on his way out to the elevator. I tossed the snapshot onto my desk and went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.

Chapter 2

You’re late,” I told the girls reproachfully as I showed them into the office. “Mr. Wolfe supposed you would be here at six o’clock, when he comes down from the plant rooms, and it’s twenty after. Now he’s gone to the kitchen and started operations on some corned beef hash.”

They were sitting down and I was looking them over.

“You mean he’s eating corned beef hash?” Maryella Timms asked.

“No. That comes later. He’s concocting it.”

“It’s my fault,” Janet Nichols said. “I didn’t get back until after five, and I was in riding clothes and had to change. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t look much like a horseback rider. Not that she was built wrong, she had a fairly nice little body, with good hips, but her face was more of a subway face than a bridle-path face. Naturally I had been expecting something out of the ordinary, one way or another, since according to Bess Huddleston she was an anonymous letter writer and had thought up the Stryker dwarf and giant party, and to tell the truth I was disappointed. She looked more like a school teacher — or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she looked like what a school teacher looks like before the time comes that she absolutely looks like a school teacher and nothing else.

Maryella Timms, on the other hand, was in no way disappointing, but she was irritating. Her hair started far back above the slant of her brow, and that made her brow look even higher and broader than it was, and noble and spiritual. But her eyes were very demure, which didn’t fit. If you’re noble and spiritual you don’t have to be demure. There’s no point in being demure unless there’s something on your mind to be demure about. Besides, there was her accent. Cawned beef ha-a-sh. I am not still fighting the Civil War, and anyway my side won, but these Southern belles — if it sounds like a deliberate come-on to me then it does. I was bawn and braht up in the Nawth.

“I’ll see if I can pry him loose,” I said, and went to the hall and through to the kitchen.

The outlook was promising for getting Wolfe to come and attend to business, because he had not yet got his hands in the hash. The mixture, or the start of it, was there in a bowl on the long table, and Fritz, at one side of the table, and Wolfe, at the other, were standing there discussing it. They looked around at me as I would expect to be looked at if I busted into a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

“They’re here,” I announced. “Janet and Maryella.”

From the expression on his face as his mouth opened it was a safe bet that Wolfe was going to instruct me to tell them to come back tomorrow, but he didn’t get it out. I heard a door open behind me and a voice floated past:

“Ah heah yawl makin’ cawned beef ha-a-sh....”

That’s the last time I try to reproduce it.

The owner of the voice floated past me too, right up beside Wolfe. She leaned over to peer into the bowl.

“Excuse me,” she said, which I couldn’t spell the way she said it anyhow, “but corned beef hash is one of my specialties. Nothing in there but meat, is there?”

“As you see,” Wolfe grunted.

“It’s ground too fine,” Maryella asserted.

Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz’s cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life’s toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone. To tone down the corned flavor and yet preserve its unique quality, to remove the curse of its dryness without making it greasy — the theories and experiments had gone on for years. He scowled at her, but he didn’t order her out.

“This is Miss Timms,” I said. “Mr. Wolfe. Mr. Brenner. Miss Nichols is in—”

“Ground too fine for what?” Wolfe demanded truculently. “This is not a tender fresh meat, with juices to lose—”

“Now you just calm down.” Maryella’s hand was on his arm. “It’s not ruined, only it’s better if it’s coarser. That’s far too much potatoes for that meat. But if you don’t have chitlins you can’t—”

“Chitlins!” Wolfe bellowed.

Maryella nodded. “Fresh pig chitlins. That’s the secret of it. Fried shallow in olive oil with onion juice—”

“Good heavens!” Wolfe was staring at Fritz. “I never heard of it. It has never occurred to me. Fritz? Well?”

Fritz was frowning thoughtfully. “It might go,” he conceded. “We can try it. As an experiment.”

Wolfe turned to me in swift decision. “Archie, call up Kretzmeyer and ask if he has pig chitlins. Two pounds.”

“You’d better let me help,” Maryella said. “It’s sort of tricky....”

That was how I came to get so well acquainted with Janet that first day. I thought I might as well have company driving down to the market for chitlins, and Maryella was glued to Wolfe, and as far as that’s concerned Wolfe was glued to her for the duration of the experiment, so I took Janet along. By the time we got back to the house I had decided she was innocent in more ways than one, though I admit that didn’t mean much, because it’s hard for me to believe that anyone not obviously a hyena could pull a trick like anonymous letters. I also admit there wasn’t much sparkle to her, and she seemed to be a little absent-minded when it came to conversation, but under the circumstances that wasn’t surprising, if she knew why she had been told to go to Nero Wolfe’s office, as she probably did.

I delivered the chitlins to the hash artists in the kitchen and then joined Janet in the office. I had been telling her about orchid hybridizing on the way back uptown, and when I went to my desk to get a stack of breeding cards I was going to show her, I noticed something was missing. So I gave her the cards to look at and excused myself and returned to the kitchen, and asked Wolfe if anyone had been in the office during my absence. He was standing beside Maryella, watching Fritz arrange the chitlins on a cutting board, and all I got was a growl.

“None of you left the kitchen?” I insisted.

“No,” he said shortly. “Why?”

“Someone ate my lollipop,” I told him, and left him with his playmates and returned to the office. Janet was sitting with the cards in her lap, going through them. I stood in front of her and inquired amiably:

“What did you do with it?”

She looked up at me. That way, with her head tilted up, from that angle, she looked kind of pretty.

“What did I — what?”

“That snapshot you took from my desk. It’s the only picture I’ve got of you. Where did you put it?”

“I didn’t—” Her mouth closed. “I didn’t!” she said defiantly.

I sat down and shook my head at her. “Now listen,” I said pleasantly. “Don’t lie to me. We’re comrades. Side by side we have sought the chitlin in its lair. The wild boar chitlin. That picture is my property and I want it. Let’s say it fluttered into your bag. Look in your bag.”

“It isn’t there.” With a new note of spunk in her voice, and a new touch of color on her cheeks, she was more of a person. Her bag was beside her on the chair, and her left hand was clutching it.

“Then I’ll look in your bag.” I started for her.

“No!” she said. “It isn’t there!” She put a palm to her stomach. “It’s here.”

I stopped short, thinking for a second she had swallowed it. Then I returned to my chair and told her, “Okay. You will now return it. You have three alternatives. Either dig it out yourself, or I will, or I’ll call in Maryella and hold you while she does. The first is the most ladylike. I’ll turn my back.”

“Please.” She kept her palm against her stomach. “Please! It’s my picture!”

“It’s a picture of you, but it’s not your picture.”

“Miss Huddleston gave it to you.”

I saw no point in denying the obvious. “Say she did.”

“And she told you... she... she thinks I sent those awful letters! I know she does!”

“That,” I said firmly, “is another matter which the boss is handling. I am handling the picture. It is probably of no importance except as a picture of the girl who thought up the Stryker dwarf and giant party. If you ask Mr. Wolfe for it he’ll probably give it to you. It may even be that Miss Huddleston stole it; I don’t know. She didn’t say where she got it. I do know that you copped it from my desk and I want it back. You can get another one, but I can’t. Shall I call Maryella?” I turned my head and looked like a man about to let out a yell.

“No!” she said, and got out of her chair and turned her back and went through some contortions. When she handed me the snapshot I tucked it under a paperweight on Wolfe’s desk and then went to help her collect the breeding cards from the floor where they had tumbled from her lap.

“Look what you did,” I told her, “mixed them all up. Now you can help me put them in order again....”

It looked for a minute as if tears were going to flow, but they didn’t. We spent an hour together, not exactly jolly, but quite friendly. I avoided the letter question, because I didn’t know what line Wolfe intended to take.

When he finally got at it there was no line to it. That was after nine o’clock, when we assembled in the office after the hash and trimmings had been disposed of. The hash was okay. It was good hash. Wolfe had three helpings, and when he conversed with Maryella, as he did through most of the meal, he was not only sociable but positively respectful. There was an unpleasant moment at the beginning, when Janet didn’t take any hash and Fritz was told to slice some ham for her, and Maryella told her resentfully:

“You won’t eat it because I cooked it.”

Janet protested that that wasn’t so, she just didn’t like corned beef.

In the office, afterwards, it became apparent that there was no love lost between the secretary and the assistant party-arranger. Not that either accused the other of writing the poison-pen letters; there were no open hostilities, but a few glances I observed when I looked up from my notebook, and tones of voice when they addressed each other, sounded as if there might be quite a blaze if somebody touched a match to it. Wolfe didn’t get anything, as far as I could see, except a collection of unimportant facts. Both the girls were being discreet, to put it mildly. Bess Huddleston, according to them, was a very satisfactory employer. They admitted that her celebrated eccentricities made things difficult sometimes, but they had no kick coming. Janet had worked for her three years, and Maryella two, and they hadn’t the slightest idea who could have sent those dreadful letters, and Bess Huddleston had no enemies that they knew of... oh, of course, she had hurt some people’s feelings, but what did that amount to, and there were scores of people who could have got at Janet’s stationery during the past months but they couldn’t imagine who, and so forth and so on. Yes, they had known Mrs. Jervis Horrocks’ daughter, Helen; she had been a close friend of Maryella’s. Her death had been a shock. And yes, they knew Dr. Alan Brady quite well. He was fashionable and successful and had a wonderful reputation for his age. He often went horseback riding with one of them or with Bess Huddleston. Riding academy? No, Bess Huddleston kept horses in her stable at her place at Riverdale, and Dr. Brady would come up from the Medical Center when he got through in the afternoon — it was only a ten-minute drive.

And Bess Huddleston had never been married, and her brother Daniel was some kind of a chemist, not in society, very much not, who showed up at the house for dinner about once a week; and her nephew, Larry, well, there he was, that was all, a young man living there and getting paid for helping his aunt in her business; and there were no other known relatives and no real intimates, except that Bess Huddleston had hundreds of intimates of both sexes and all ages....

It went on for nearly two hours.

After seeing them out to their car — I noticed Maryella was driving — I returned to the office and stood and watched Wolfe down a glass of beer and pour another one.

“That picture of the culprit,” I said, “is there under your paperweight if you want it. She did. I mean she wanted it. In my absence she swiped it and hid it in a spot too intimate to mention in your presence. I got it back — no matter how. I expected her to ask you for it, but she didn’t. And if you think you’re going to solve this case by—”

“Confound the case.” Wolfe sighed clear to the beer he had swallowed. “I might have known better. Tomorrow go up there and look around. The servants, I suppose. Make sure of the typewriter. The nephew. Talk with him and decide if I must see him; if so, bring him. And get Dr. Brady here. After lunch would be best.”

“Sure,” I said sarcastically.

“Around two o’clock. Please get your notebook and take a letter. Get it off tonight, special delivery. To Professor Martingale of Harvard. Dear Joseph. I have made a remarkable discovery, comma, or rather, comma, have had one communicated to me. You may remember our discussion last winter regarding the possibility of using pig chitlins in connection with...”

Chapter 3

Ever since an incident that occurred when Wolfe sent me on an errand in February, 1935, I automatically ask myself, when leaving the office on a business chore, do I take a gun? I seldom do; but if I had done so that Tuesday afternoon I swear I would have found use for it. As sure as my name is Archie and not Archibald, I would have shot that goddamn orangutan dead in his tracks.

Formerly it took a good three-quarters of an hour to drive from 35th Street to Riverdale, but now, with the West Side Highway and the Henry Hudson Bridge, twenty minutes was ample. I had never seen the Huddleston place before, but since I read newspapers and magazines the trick fence was no surprise to me. I parked the roadster at a wide space on the drive which ran parallel with the fence, got a gate open and went through, and started up a path across the lawn towards the house. There were trees and bushes around, and off to the right an egg-shaped pool.

About twenty paces short of the house I suddenly stopped. I don’t know where he had appeared from, but there he was straddling the path, big and black, his teeth flashing in a grin if you want to call it that. I stood and looked at him. He didn’t move. I thought to myself, nuts, and moved forward, but when I got closer he made a certain kind of a noise and I stopped again. Okay, I thought, if this is your private path why didn’t you say so, and I sashayed off to the right, seeing there was another path the other side of the pool. I didn’t actually turn but went sort of sidewise because I was curious to see what he was going to do, and what he did was stalk me, on all fours. So it happened that my head was twisted to keep an eye on him when I backed into a log there on the grass at the edge of the pool and went down flat, nearly tumbling into the water, and when I sprang to my feet again the log was crawling along the ground length-wise towards me. It was one of the alligators. The orangutan was sitting down laughing. I don’t mean he was making a laughing noise, but by his face he was laughing. That’s when I would have shot him. I circled around the pool and got to the other path and headed for the house, but there he was, straddling the path ten yards ahead of me, making the noise again, so I stopped.

A man’s voice said, “He wants to play tag.”

I had been too preoccupied to see the man, and anyway he had just stepped from behind a shrub at the end of a terrace. With a glance I saw that he was clad in a green shirt and brick-colored slacks, was about my age or a little younger, and seemed to be assuming a supercilious attitude.

He said, “He wants to play tag.”

I said, “I don’t.”

He said, “If you offend him he’ll bite you. Start past him on the grass and dodge when he goes to touch you. Dodge three times and then let him tag you, and say ‘Mister’ in an admiring voice. That’s all. His name is Mister.”

“I could turn around and go home.”

“I wouldn’t try that. He would resent it.”

“I could sock him one.”

“You might. I doubt it. If you hurt him and my aunt ever catches you... I suppose you’re Archie Goodwin? I’m Larry Huddleston. I didn’t send those letters and don’t know who did or who might. My aunt will be down later, she’s upstairs arguing with Brother Daniel. I can’t invite you in until you get past Mister.”

“Does everyone who comes here have to play tag with this damn overgrown orangutan?”

“He’s not an orangutan; he’s a chimpanzee. He doesn’t often play with strangers. It means he likes you.”

I had to go through with it. I took to the grass, was intercepted, dodged three times, said ‘Mister’ in as admiring a tone of voice as I could manage, and was by. Mister emitted a little squeal and scampered off to a tree and bounded up to a limb. I looked at the back of my hand and saw blood. The nephew asked, not with great concern:

“Did he bite you?”

“No, I fell down and must have scratched it. It’s just a scratch.”

“Yeah, I saw you trip over Moses. I’ll get you some iodine.”

I said it wasn’t worth bothering about, but he took me across the terrace into the house, into a large living room, twice as long as it was broad, with big windows and a big fireplace, and enough chairs and divans and cushions for a good-sized party right there. When he opened a cupboard door in the wall near the fireplace a shelf was disclosed with a neat array of sterilized gauze, band-aids, adhesive tape, and salve....

As I dabbed iodine on the scratch I said, for something to say, “Handy place for a first-aid outfit.”

He nodded. “On account of Mister. He never bites deep, but he often breaks somebody’s skin. Then Logo and Lulu, sometimes they take a little nip—”

“Logo and Lulu?”

“The bears.”

“Oh, sure. The bears.” I looked around and then put the iodine bottle on the shelf and he closed the door. “Where are they now?”

“Having a nap somewhere. They always nap in the afternoon. They’ll be around later. Shall we go out to the terrace? What’ll you have, scotch, rye, bourbon?”

It was a nice spot, the terrace, on the shady side of the house with large irregular flagstones separated by ribbons of turf. I sat there for an hour with him, but about all I got out of it was three highballs. I didn’t cotton to him much. He talked like an actor; he had a green handkerchief in the breast pocket of his shirt, to match the shirt; he mentioned the Social Register three times in less than an hour; and he wore an hexagonal wrist watch, whereas there’s no excuse for a watch to be anything but round. He struck me as barely bright enough for life’s simplest demands, but I admit he might have been a darb at a party. I must say he didn’t turn loose any secrets. He was pretty indignant about the letters, but about all I learned from him was that he knew how to use a typewriter, that Maryella had gone downtown on some errands, and that Janet was out horseback riding with Dr. Brady. He seemed to be a little cynical about Dr. Brady, but I couldn’t get the slant.

When it got five o’clock and his aunt hadn’t come down, he went to inquire, and in a moment returned and said I was to go up. He led me upstairs and showed me a door and beat it. I entered and found I was in an office, but there was no one there. It was a mess. Phone books were heaped on a chair. The blotters had been used since the Declaration of Independence. The typewriter wasn’t covered. I was frowning around when I heard steps, and Bess Huddleston trotted in, with a skinny specimen behind her. His eyes were as black as hers, but everything else about him was shrunk and faded. As she breezed past me she said:

“Sorry. How are you. My brother. Mr. Goldwyn.”

“Goodwin,” I said firmly, and shook brother’s hand. I was surprised to find he had a good shake. Sister was sitting at a desk, opening a drawer. She got out a checkbook, took a pen from a socket, made out a check, tried to blot it and made a smudge, and handed it to brother Daniel. He took one look at it and said:

“No.”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“I tell you, Bess, it won’t—”

“It will have to, Dan. At least for this week. That’s all there is to it. I’ve told you a thousand times—”

She stopped, looked at me, and looked at him.

“All right,” he said, and stuck the check in his pocket, and sat down on a chair, shaking his head and looking thoughtful.

“Now,” Bess turned to me, “what about it?”

“Nothing to brag about,” I told her. “There’s a slew of fingerprints on that letter and envelope, but since you discussed it with your brother and nephew and the girls and Dr. Brady, I suppose they all handled it. Did they?”

“Yes.”

I shrugged. “So. Maryella showed Mr. Wolfe how to make corned beef hash. The secret is chitlins. Aside from that, nothing to report. Except that Janet knows that you think she’s it. Also she wanted that picture.”

“What picture?”

“The snapshot of her you told me to throw in the wastebasket. It caught her eye and she wanted it. Is there any objection to her having it?”

“Certainly not.”

“Is there anything you want to say about it? That might help?”

“No, that picture has nothing to do with it. I mean that wouldn’t help you any.”

“Dr. Brady was requested to call at our office at two o’clock today but was too busy.”

Bess Huddleston went to a window and looked out and came back. “He wasn’t too busy to come and ride one of my horses,” she said tartly. “They ought to be back soon — I thought I heard them at the stable....”

“Will he come to the house?”

“He will. For cocktails.”

“Good. Mr. Wolfe told me to say that there is a remote chance there might be prints on the other letter. The one the rich man got.”

“It isn’t available.”

“Couldn’t you get it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Has he turned it over to the police?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“Okay. I’ve played tag with Mister and had a talk with your nephew. Now if I could see where Janet keeps her stationery, and take a sample from that typewriter. Is that the one?”

“Yes. But first come to Janet’s room. I’ll show you.”

I followed her. It was at the other end of the house, on that floor, one flight up, a pleasant little room and nice and neat. But the stationery was a washout. It wasn’t in a box. It was in a drawer of a writing table with no lock on it, and all you had to do was open the drawer with a metal ring for a puller, which couldn’t possibly have had a print, and reach in and take what you wanted, paper and envelopes both. Bess Huddleston left me there, and after a look around where there was nothing to look for, I went back to the office. Daniel was still there on the chair where we had left him. I ran off some sample lines on the typewriter, using a sheet of Janet’s paper, and was putting it in my pocket when Daniel spoke:

“You’re a detective.”

I nodded. “That’s what they tell me.”

“You’re finding out who sent those anonymous letters.”

“Right.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.”

“Anyone who sends letters like that deserves to be immersed to the chin in a ten percent solution of hydrofluoric acid.”

“Why, would that be painful?”

Daniel shuddered. “It would. I stayed here because I thought you might want to ask me something.”

“Much obliged. What shall I ask you?”

“That’s the trouble.” He looked dismal. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I wish to God there was. I have no information to offer, even no suspicions. But I would like to offer a comment. Without prejudice. Two comments.”

I sat down and looked interested. “Number one?” I said receptively.

“You can pass them on to Nero Wolfe.”

“I can and will.”

Daniel eyed me, screwing up his lips. “You mentioned five people to my sister just now. Her nephew, Larry — mine too — Miss Nichols and Miss Timms, Dr. Brady, and me. It is worth considering that four of us would be injured by anything that injured my sister. I am her brother and I have a deep and strong affection for her. The young ladies are employed by her and they are well paid. Larry is also well paid. Frankly — I am his uncle — too well. But for his aunt, he might earn four dollars a day as a helper on a coal barge. I know of no other occupation that would not strain his faculties beyond their limit. But the point is, his prosperity depends entirely on hers. So it is conceivable — I offer this merely as a comment — that we four may properly be eliminated from suspicion.”

“Okay,” I said. “That leaves one.”

“One?”

“Sure, Doc Brady. Of the five I mentioned, you rule out four. Pointing straight at him.”

“By no means.” Daniel looked distressed. “You misunderstand me. I know very little about Dr. Brady, though it so happens that my second comment concerns him. I insist it is merely a comment. You have read the letter received by Mrs. Horrocks? Then you have probably realized that while it purports to be an attack on Dr. Brady, it is so manifestly absurd that it couldn’t possibly damage him. Mrs. Horrocks’ daughter died of tetanus. There is no such thing as a wrong medicine for tetanus, nor a right one either, once the toxin has reached the nerve centers. The antitoxin will prevent, but never, or very rarely, will it cure. So the attack on Dr. Brady was no attack at all.”

“That’s interesting,” I admitted. “Are you a doctor?”

“No, sir. I’m a research chemist. But any standard medical treatise—”

“Sure. I’ll look it up. What reason do you suppose Doc Brady might have for putting your sister on the skids?”

“So far as I know, none. None whatever.”

“Then that lets him out. With everyone else out, there’s no one left but your sister.”

“My sister?”

I nodded. “She must have sent the letters herself.”

That made him mad. In fact he rather blew up, chiefly because it was too serious a matter to be facetious about, and I had to turn on the suavity to calm him down. Then he went into a sulk. After fooling around with him for another ten minutes and getting nothing for my trouble, I decided to move on and he accompanied me downstairs and out to the terrace, where we heard voices.

If that was a sample of a merry gathering arranged by Bess Huddleston, I’ll roll my own, though I admit that isn’t fair, since she hadn’t done any special arranging. She was lying on a porch swing with her dress curled above her knees by the breeze, displaying a pair of bare legs that were merely something to walk with, the feet being shod with high-heeled red slippers, and I don’t like shoes without stockings, no matter whose legs they are. Two medium-sized black bears were sitting on the flagstones with their backs propped against the frame of the swing, licking sticks of candy and growling at each other. Maryella Timms was perched on the arm of a chair with her hand happening to rest on the shoulder of Larry Huddleston, who was sitting at careless ease in the chair the way John Barrymore would. Janet Nichols, in riding clothes, was in another chair, her face hot and flushed, which made her look better instead of worse as it does most people, and standing at the other end of the swing, also in riding clothes, was a wiry-looking guy with a muscular face.

When Bess Huddleston introduced us, Dr. Brady and me, I started to meet him halfway for the handshake, but I had taken only two and a half steps when the bears suddenly started for me as if I was the meal of their dreams. I leaped sideways half a mile in one bound and their momentum carried them straight on by, but as I whirled to faced them another big black object shot past me from behind like a bat out of hell and I jumped again, just at random. Laughter came from two directions, and from a third Bess Huddleston’s voice:

“They weren’t after you, Mr. Goldwin, they smelled Mister coming and they’re afraid of him. He teases them.”

The bears were not in sight. The orangutan jumped up on the swing and off again. I said savagely, “My name is Goolenwangel.”

Dr. Brady was shaking my hand. He said with a laugh, “Don’t mind her, Mr. Goodwin. It’s a pose. She pretends she can’t remember the name of anyone not in the Social Register. Since her entire career is founded on snobbery—”

“Snob yourself,” Bess Huddleston snorted. “You were born to it and believe in it. With me it’s business. But for heaven’s sake let’s not — Mister, you devil, don’t you dare tickle my feet!”

Mister went right ahead. He already had the red slippers off, and, depositing them right side up on a flagstone, he proceeded to tickle the sole of her right foot. She screamed and kicked him. He tickled the other foot, and she screamed again and kicked him with that. That appeared to satisfy him, for he started off, but his next performance was unpremeditated. A man in a butler’s jacket, approaching with a tray of glasses and bottles, had just reached the end of the swing when Mister bumped him, and bumped him good. The man yelled and lost control, and down went the works. Dr. Brady caught one bottle on the fly, and I caught another, but everything else was shattered on the stones. Mister went twenty feet through the air and landed in a chair and sat there and giggled, and the man was trembling all over.

“For God’s sake, Haskell,” Bess Huddleston said, “don’t leave now, with guests coming for dinner. Go to your room and have a drink and lie down. We’ll clean this up.”

“My name is Hoskins,” the man said in a hollow tone.

“So it is. Of course it is. Go and have a drink.”

The man went, and the rest of us got busy. When Mister got the idea, which was at once, he waddled over to help, and I’ll say this much for him, he was the fastest picker-up of pieces of broken glass I have ever seen. Janet went and came back with implements, among them a couple of brooms, but the trouble was that you couldn’t make a comprehensive sweep of it on account of the strips of turf between the flagstones. Larry went for another outfit of drinks, and finally Maryella solved the problem of the bits of glass in the grass strips by bringing a vacuum cleaner. Bess Huddleston stayed on the swing. Dr. Brady carried off the debris, and eventually we got back to normal, everybody with a drink, including Mister, only his was non-alcoholic, or I wouldn’t have stayed. What that bird would have done with a couple of Martinis under his fur would have been something to watch from an airplane.

“This seems to be a day for breaking things,” Bess Huddleston said, sipping an old-fashioned. “Someone broke my bottle of bath salts and it splattered all over the bathroom and just left it that way.”

“Mister?” Maryella asked.

“I don’t think so. He never goes in there. I didn’t dare ask the servants.”

But apparently at the Huddleston place there was no such thing as settling down for a social quarter of an hour, whether Mister was drunk or sober, only the next disturbance wasn’t his fault, except indirectly. The social atmosphere was nothing to brag about anyhow, because it struck me that certain primitive feelings were being felt and not concealed with any great success. I’m not so hot at nuances, but it didn’t take a Nero Wolfe to see that Maryella was working on Larry Huddleston, that the sight of the performance was giving Dr. Brady the fidgets in his facial muscles, that Janet was embarrassed and trying to pretend she didn’t notice what was going on, and that Daniel was absentmindedly drinking too much because he was worrying about something. Bess Huddleston had her ear cocked to hear what I was saying to Dr. Brady, but I was merely dating him to call at the office. He couldn’t make it that evening, but tomorrow perhaps... his schedule was very crowded...

The disturbance came when Bess Huddleston said she guessed she had better go and see if there was going to be any dinner or anyone to serve it, and sat up and put on her slippers. That is, she put one on; the second one, she stuck her foot in, let out a squeak, and jerked the foot out again.

“Damn!” she said. “A piece of glass in my slipper! Cut my toe!”

Mister bounced over to her, and the rest of us gathered around. Since Brady was a doctor, he took charge of matters. I didn’t amount to much, a shallow gash half an inch long on the bottom of her big toe, but it bled some, and Mister started whining and wouldn’t stop. Brother Daniel brought first-aid materials from the living room, and after Brady had applied a good dose of iodine, he did a neat job with gauze and tape.

“It’s all right, Mister,” Bess Huddleston said reassuringly. “You don’t — hey!”

Mister had swiped the iodine bottle, uncorked it, and was carefully depositing the contents, drop by drop, onto one of the strips of turf. He wouldn’t surrender it to Brady or Maryella, but he gave it to his mistress on demand, after re-corking it himself, and she handed it to her brother.

It was after six o’clock, and I wasn’t invited to dinner, and anyway I had had enough zoology for one day, so I said good-bye and took myself off. When I got the roadster onto the highway and was among my fellows again, I took a long deep breath of the good old mixture of gasoline and air and the usual odors.

When I got back to the office Wolfe, who was making marks on a big map of Russia he had bought recently, said he would take my report later, so, after comparing the type on my sample with that on the Horrocks letter and finding they were written on the same machine, I went up to my room for a shower and a change. After dinner, back in the office, he told me to make it a complete recital, leaving out nothing, which meant that he had made no start and formed no opinion. I told him I preferred a written report, because when I delivered it verbally he threw me off the track by making faces and irritating me, but he leaned back and shut his eyes and told me to proceed.

It was nearly midnight when I finished, what with the usual interruptions. When he’s doing a complete coverage, he thinks nothing of asking such a question as, “Did the animal pour the iodine on the grass with its right paw or its left?” If he were a movable object and went places himself it would save me a lot of breath, but then that’s what I get paid for. Partly.

He stood up and stretched, and I yawned. “Well,” I asked offensively, “got it sewed up? Including proof?”

“I’m sleepy,” he said, starting off. At the door he turned. “You made the usual quantity of mistakes, naturally, but probably the only one of importance was your failure to investigate the matter of the broken bottle in Miss Huddleston’s bathroom.”

“Pah,” I said. “If that’s the best you can do. It was not a bottle of anonymous letters. Bath salts.”

“All the same it’s preposterous. It’s even improbable. Break a bottle and simply go off, leaving it scattered around? No one would do that.”

“You don’t know that orangutan. I do.”

“Not orangutan. Chimpanzee. It might have done it, yes. That’s why you should have investigated. If the animal did not do it, there’s something fishy about it. Highly unnatural. If Dr. Brady arrives by eight fifty-nine, I’ll see him before I go up to the plant rooms. Good night.”

Chapter 4

That was Tuesday night, August 19th. On Friday the 22nd Bess Huddleston got tetanus. On Monday the 25th she died. To show how everything from war to picnics depends on the weather, as Wolfe remarked when he was discussing the case with a friend the other day, if there had been a heavy rainfall in Riverdale between the 19th and 26th it would have been impossible to prove it was murder, let alone catch the murderer. Not that he showed any great — oh, well.

On Wednesday the 20th Dr. Brady came to the office for an interview with Wolfe, and the next day brother Daniel and nephew Larry came. About all we got out of that was that among the men nobody liked anybody. In the meantime, upon instructions from Wolfe, I was wrapping my tentacles about Janet, coaxing her into my deadly embrace. It really wasn’t an unpleasant job, because Wednesday afternoon I took her to a ball game and was agreeably surprised to find that she knew a bunt from a base on balls, and Friday evening we went to the Flamingo Roof and I learned that she could dance nearly as well as Lily Rowan. She was no cuddler and a little stiff, but she went with the music and always knew what we were going to do. Saturday morning I reported to Wolfe regarding her as follows:

1. If she was toting a grievance against Bess Huddleston, it would take a smarter man than me to find out what it was. 2. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with her except that she would rather live in the country than the city. 3. She had no definite suspicion about who had sent the anonymous letters or anyone’s motive for sending them.

Wolfe said, “Try Miss Timms for a change.”

I didn’t try to date Maryella for Saturday or Sunday, because Janet had told me they were all going to Saratoga for the weekend. Monday morning, I thought, was no time to start a romance, so I waited until afternoon to phone, got Maryella, and got the news. I went up to the plant rooms, where Wolfe was a sight to behold in his undershirt, cutting the tops from a row of vandas for propagation, and told him:

“Bess Huddleston is dead.”

“Let me alone,” he said peevishly. “I’m doing all I can. Someone will probably get another letter before long, and when—”

“No, sir. No more letters. I am stating facts. Friday evening tetanus set in from that cut on her toe, and about an hour ago she died. Maryella’s voice was choked with emotion as she told me.”

Wolfe scowled at me. “Tetanus?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That would have been a five thousand dollar fee.”

“It would have been if you had seen fit to do a little work instead of—”

“It was no good and you know it. I was waiting for another letter. File it away, including the letter to Mrs. Horrocks, to be delivered to her on request. I’m glad to be rid of it.”

I wasn’t. Down in the office, as I checked over the folder, consisting of the Horrocks letter, the snapshot of Janet, a couple of reports I had made and some memos Wolfe had dictated, I felt as if I was leaving a ball game in the fourth inning with the score a tie. But it looked as if nothing could be done about it, and certainly there was no use trying to badger Wolfe. I phoned Janet to ask if there was anything I could do, and she told me in a weak tired voice that as far as she knew there wasn’t.

According to the obit in the Times the next morning, the funeral service was to be Wednesday afternoon, at the Belford Memorial Chapel on 73rd Street, and of course there would be a big crowd, even in August, for Bess Huddleston’s last party. Cordially invited to meet death. I decided to go. Not merely, if I know myself, for curiosity or another look at Janet. It is not my custom to frequent memorial chapels to look at girls even if they’re good dancers. Call it a hunch. Not that I saw anything criminal, only something incredible. I filed past the casket with the throng because from a distance I had seen it and couldn’t believe it. But when I got close there it was. Eight black orchids that could have come from nowhere else in the world, and a card with his initials the way he scribbled them, “N.W.”

When I got home, and Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six o’clock, I didn’t mention it. I decided it wasn’t advisable. I needed to devote some thought to it.

It was that evening, Wednesday evening after the funeral, that I answered the doorbell, and who should I see on the stoop but my old colleague Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Squad. I hailed him with false enthusiasm and ushered him into the office, where Wolfe was making more marks on the map of Russia. They exchanged greetings, and Cramer sat in the red leather chair, took out a handkerchief and wiped perspiration from his exposed surfaces, put a cigar between his lips and sank his teeth in it.

“Your hair’s turning gray,” I observed. “You look as if you weren’t getting enough exercise. A brain-worker like you—”

“God knows why you keep him,” he said to Wolfe.

Wolfe grunted. “He saved my life once.”

“Once!” I exclaimed indignantly. “Beginning—”

“Shut up, Archie. What can I do for you, Inspector?”