As Fritz brought in the Strawberries Romanoff that evening, Wolfe came close to breaking one of his sacred rules.  He never discusses business over meals, but the details of the refreshments for one of his gatherings fall into a gray area between business and hospitality.  "Fritz.  Did you set the wine out to breathe, so that it will be ready before they arrive?" 

Fritz managed to give an impression of raised eyebrows without actually twitching a muscle.  I grinned.  "Yes," he said, "and I have brought out the glasses.  All is prepared." 

Wolfe grunted.  He knew he had just shown his nerves, but he was smart enough not to compound his mistake by trying to follow through with Fritz.  After dinner, he pretended that it was a normal evening, and picked up the book he was reading, something called The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. 

I used the time to catch up the germination records.  Day in and day out, about a quarter of my working hours are spent updating the records of Wolfe's efforts in the greenhouse.  Sometimes I feel like finding the client who gave him that first orchid, the one that died when he tried to tend it, and asking her what the heck she was thinking about.  But, she was the wife of the same guy who had called Wolfe "insufferably blithe", so she was probably just trying to teach Wolfe a lesson.  It was typical of him that, when he was supposed to be learning a lesson, Horstmann had to clean the blackboards and I had to write out the lines.

I will say one thing for them:  mystic masters are prompt.  By five after eight, they had all shown up and were seated in the office.  I had put Fischer in the red leather chair, just on a hunch.  It had been a good hunch, too, because none of the others had tried to supplant him.  I placed Miss Lee in the yellow chair next to my desk.  True, she was annoying, but she did have points of interest, especially in the high heels and green silk sheath she was wearing.  I caught myself wondering what it would be like to dance with someone who could anticipate your next move and squashed the thought flat.

Wolfe marched in bearing the precious bottle, followed by Fritz with a tray of glasses, small plates, and a decanter.  There were murmurs of appreciation all around.  They obviously recognized the vintage.  Fischer spoke for all of them.  "I got to hand it to you, Wolfe.  You know how to treat a guest." 

Wolfe inclined his head about an eighth of an inch.  Holding the baby kept him from having to shake hands or bow.  No sense in killing one bird per stone when you can get two.  He made a gesture to Fritz, and the glasses were filled and passed around.  I looked at my glass with interest.  The contents seemed unremarkable: ruby red, like any of the Burgundies or Chardonnays I had tried at Wolfe's table over the years.

I was surprised when each of our guests produced a wrapped up bundle that proved to contain baked goods.  When I glanced at Fritz to see how he was taking this trespass, he was serene.  In fact, he took the goodies, put them on plates, and portioned them out with that slight flourish that, in a lesser man, I would call showing off.  It must have been a magician's ritual, because they made a big production out of sampling each other's offerings.  Even Wolfe joined in, and he would rather kiss a debutant than eat a stranger's baking.

My share was heavy on M. De Blieu's contribution, and he had obviously forgotten the baking soda again.  I copied the others in nibbling at everything on my plate, but managed some sleight of hand of my own with most of De Blieu's cookies.  I've eaten at Wolfe's table long enough that I have standards to maintain.

Wolfe raised his glass and said, "Truth."  He drank.  The others followed him.  I took a sip myself.

It was Fritz's voice. "Somebody came to get him, and he told me he was going for you.  Archie, where are you? Mr.  Wolfe said---"

I was having a hard time holding the phone, and it dropped to the floor, the whole works, and my head fell into my hands with my eyes closed, and I suppose what I was doing you would call crying.

We had a long discussion later as to whether or not Wolfe should have warned me about what the tipple would do to my memory before company came calling.  I almost dropped my glass, which would have spilt the stuff all across Wolfe's beloved Keraghan.  No one else showed any visible reaction, but the office had fallen silent.  It could be because of their reverence towards such a fine vintage, but somehow I doubted it.  I took another, cautious, sip.

I wanted to jump through the window and catch the son-of-a-the sharpshooter, and give him personal treatment.  And Wolfe wasn't dead, he was still sitting up.  But the blood had looked plenteous.  I jumped to the side of the bed.

He had his lips compressed tight, but he opened them to demand, "Where is it? Is it my skull?"  He shuddered.  "Brains?" 

"Hell, no."  I was looking, and I was so relieved my voice cracked.  "Where would brains come from?" 

I unclenched my fingers from the stem of the glass before I snapped it.  There was only so much I could take of that.  My heart was pounding as if it was going to burst free from my ribcage.  I caught Wolfe's eye, and he nodded, almost imperceptibly, at the glass.  I picked it up and drained it with a gulp.  Only a few things I have done, down through the years, were tougher.

It would have been easier to keep cool during a forest fire than during that onslaught.

As it ended, he said my name.

"Archie." 

I fell back into the past, through the red heart of candor.  I was a man, cupping one hand over an orchid, shielding it from thudding blows.  I was a youngster, trying to steer a car skidding into a tree, half-hearing the annoyed grunt from the seat behind me.  I was a fresh kid, staring suspiciously at a fat man in a fancy suit who seemed to be able to read my mind.

I was a small boy, running from my drunken father to hide behind my Uncle Jim, Jimmy the no-good, lard-assed, nance of a schoolteacher, Jim who knocked down the monster chasing me with one wild swing and then towed me out of the house with a hand still oozing blood from its split knuckles.

Archie.  He was standing in front of me, glaring.  He shifted the glare away from me and onto the man snoring thickly on the floor.  Do you wish to remain here?

I shrugged.  No, sir.  It was a long time ago and, anyway, he died a year later.  The booze got him.

Indeed.  I had assumed something of the sort lay behind your predilection for milk.

Milk is a, quote, sissy drink, end of quotation.  I grinned.

His grunt was approving.  He opened the front door.  Not that I consider you incapable, but you are a novice.  I thought you might wish for company on the trip back.

I won't argue with that.

Outside were the cornfields of Chillicothe, Ohio, but those fields had never been so still, as motionless as a painting on glass, as static as the dioramas you see over at the Natural History Museum.  I stepped down off the porch of the old Victorian onto the front walk.  As my foot touched the first flagstone, everything changed.

Just ahead of me, a young man in a battered, mud-green uniform staggered up the narrow path that switch-backed across the side of the mountain.  He stumbled, perilously close to where the edge of the trail fell off a couple of hundred feet, and I lunged forward to grab him and haul him back.  When I gripped his arm, he flailed at me, but it was weak and no wonder.  He was so thin that your hands could read the skull under his flesh.  Even so, I had no problem recognizing him as he babbled at me in his foreign lingo.  Experience had taught me to concentrate on the eyes. 

"Hvala Bogu," I said, "knock it off or you'll send us both over the cliff." 

His gaze focused, and he surprised me by replying in English, "Your accent is terrible."  He should talk.  He sounded like a Hollywood starlet pretending to be a Hungarian Countess.

"Yours is just as bad.  Ease up on the 'z' noises." 

The kid---Wolfe---was drifting in and out, but he tried to respond.  "Do you belong to it?" 

"Belong to what?"  I was checking my pockets.  I'm not usually such a slob, but I seemed to remember---

"It became me, when I died down there."  He gestured vaguely down the slope.  I didn't see anything below us in that direction but a saddle in the mountains with a few white boulders scattered across it.

I'd found what I was looking for:  De Blieu's cookies.  I'd shoved them into my pocket to get rid of them.  "Hold it.  Sit down before you fall down."  I eased him down onto the path.

"I already fell.  I tripped on the," he searched for a word, "altar block, and fell down, and de---died." 

"Hate to have to tell you this, but you did a rotten job of it."  While he pondered that statement, I took his canteen away from him and broke a piece off one of the cookies.  I fed it to him a bit at a time and made him sip some water with it, since I didn't want his stomach rejecting what he was eating.  In the state he was in, it might kill him.

He scowled.  "That is foul.  It is not well made." 

"Here you are, already a food critic.  You need the fuel.  Take a little more." 

He did, and then said, a bit stronger, "You shall not feed me.  It may be dangerous for you." 

"What a surprise."  I looked him over.  His uniform was a mess, ripped and soiled with mud and what appeared to be dried blood.  He didn't seem to be wounded, though, so the blood probably came out of other people.

Through the years, as near as I could tell, about three-quarters of what Wolfe had let slip about his background was lies.  It seems he hadn't fibbed about this, though.  The kid sitting in front of me would grow out to be Wolfe, and, from his uniform, he'd been fighting with the Montenegrins during the First World War.  I craned around, but I couldn't spot any Austrians coming to get us.

He laughed, and I started.  Wolfe does not laugh.  "They do not follow me, Yankee.  We are alone.  Not even the shepherds go to this place because it is said to be cursed, and now I know why, although I do not believe in cursing."  He yawned, and his eyelids drooped.

"Eat some more." 

The eyes snapped back open and my Wolfe was sitting there, looking at me.  I have eaten enough for the moment, Archie, but leave behind the remainder of M. De Blieu's cookies.  I will need them on the trail.

Yes, sir, I told him, and tied the cookies up in my handkerchief so that the wildlife wouldn't get at them.  I put them down on top of a rock and added, I feel like I'm trapped in the House of Mirrors at Coney Island.

Wolfe ignored me.  Instead he grunted his way to his feet, looked uphill, sighed deeply, and hiked.  I followed him without turning around to see if the kid reappeared once Wolfe moved away from him.

I trudged for a while before I could bring myself to ask, When he collapsed, did he really die?

Yes. 

Maybe it's patting my own back, but I would like to point out that I didn't stumble, or even break stride.  Okay.  Were you that kid?

Some might say so, but no.  I have his memories and, given the stubborn persistence of cerebral chemistry, much of his personality, but I can not claim to be him.  It is one reason among many that I took a new name.

I guess I can understand that.  We crested the ridge and were in Montana, above the tree line, in an area I remembered from one of my fishing trips.  I made a comprehensive enough survey to make sure I recognized our surroundings, and then pointed out the trail to Wolfe.  I had learned a while ago, the hard way, to let him lead when we were trapped into walking through the countryside together.  We trudged on.

I expected him to be annoyed, but I had to know.  Are you sure it wasn't just shellshock making you think---

So, I was wrong again.  He wasn't annoyed when he turned around.  He was gone.

I surveyed the sheer, grey mountains around me, seeing nothing but shattered granite, patches of snow, and some intimidated greenery far below.  Then, warned by some flicker of shadow, I looked up.  I have packed several times into the Montana backcountry, so I know an eagle when I see one.  This, though, was larger than any eagle I'd ever seen.  My brain was so busy telling me no bird could be that big that I lost vital seconds before I realized it was stooping towards me.  As a result, my luck ran dry.  I dove out of the way, only to land, sliding, in a cascade of scree and talus.  Flailing, I went over the edge of the cliff and fell.

The eagle caught me.  Its claws bit deep into my shoulders and its beak grabbed the front of my shirt.  I was pummeled by the wind of its pinions beating violently at the air.  To my amazement, it was managing to mount, taking me along.  My mind jittered back to a picture I had seen once, while flipping through a book from Saul's bookshelves, of a guy being carried off by an eagle.  Dante.  A maddening little yammerer at the front of my skull insisted on reciting the verse: the curse of a photographic memory. 

---He swooped as if he were a thunderbolt,
And snatched me upward to the realm of fire.
There, I dreamed, both he and I were burning---

Speaking of which, I could feel blood flowing down my shoulders and back, but it didn't hurt:  it burned.  That clued me in to who I was dealing with.  If this is your idea of company, I can walk. 

Archie, don't jabber.  His voice had the testy note that means he's undertaking heavy exercise like bending over or climbing the seven steps of the front stoop.  We had risen higher than the peaks and were still circling upwards.

Yes, sir, but are we headed towards the exit?

We are.  Your internal geography, at least, is correct.  Towards the sun is out.

I looked into the blue.  We seemed to be getting awfully close to the su---

There, I dreamed, both he and I were burning---

As flame licked out to enfold us both, my jaw clenched, my hands closed convulsively on the claws sinking deeper into my shoulders, I bowed back and---

---set the empty wineglass down, with great care, on my desk blotter.

---

XII---The Hovel of Delusions

---

Exploring the secret of the true wine?  Fritz should have said exploring the secret truth wine.  It had dug up half the memories I made a practice of not thinking about, not to mention sending me on another sideshow ride through my own head.  Only someone as sweet natured as Fritz could call that fermentation a treat. 

As for me, I was sticking to milk from now on.  I decided to tell Wolfe that my new habit of drifting off when anything strange happened was going to take some adjusting to, which meant turning down the alcohol intake.  Not that I ever had more than one drink while Wolfe was interviewing since the time I missed an important point by bending my elbow too fast.  Still, over-cautious was better than very dead.

Wolfe wasn't looking in my direction, but somehow I knew he was aware of me.  I picked up my pen, to let him know I was okay, and he turned his full attention to the others.  "I confess that the reason I shared one of my few remaining bottles of the true wine with you this evening was not from considerations of hospitality, but because I hoped that it would broach any seals or bonds that my opponent may have set upon you." 

Fischer cocked his head to one side, his eyes shrewd.  "That's gotta be some opponent." 

"Indeed.  As I am sure you all comprehend, I would not have requested we gather this evening if I had not deemed the matter urgent.  I have been attacked twice, in the last two days, underneath this roof." 

Fischer whistled.  The others stirred uneasily, except for Miss Lee, who smiled faintly at nothing in particular.

Wolfe examined her for a moment before continuing.  It wasn't the examination he'd give her if he thought she was going to launch into hysterics.  It was more the look he would give the Statue of Liberty if he thought he had to climb to the top.  "The nature and method of the attacks lead me to believe that my opponent knows something of my other profession.  You five, along with four---no, five---others, whom I have good reason to trust, are the only individuals who have some knowledge of my intrinsic identity.  Thus, I am compelled to ask:  have any of you, for any reason, spoken to some other person of what you know or speculate about my abilities?" 

Miss Amdahl let out a crack of laughter.  "Yeah, like I'm gonna go around blabbing about Nero Wolfe.  I'm only an inner-city medium." 

Wolfe wiggled a finger at her.  "False modesty, Miss Amdahl." 

"Nah.  Maybe a little exaggeration, but not much.  Besides, Bruce and I owe ya, and we know it.  The bone-cleaner was too much for us to handle, and you got it off our backs." 

"You have never discussed me with Mr. Hancock-Skinner, perhaps in private, when you thought you were warded?" 

Hancock-Skinner chose to answer that one.  "No, sir.  One never knows what might be listening, in our profession, so of some things we never speak, including you." 

Wolfe nodded his head about a tenth of an inch and shifted his eyes.  "Monsieur De Blieu? I understand from Mr.  Goodwin that you have been working with a one-time client of mine." 

"If you are referring to Miss Tremayne, she did once mention that she had visited you.  Your household impressed her, in its way, but she didn't think to inquire if I also knew you.  Having met her, you know that her priorities are unusual for a woman of her culture and background." 

Wolfe grunted.  If I hadn't briefed him about my visits and how Fay seemed to have changed, he would have done more than just grunt.

"But, I haven't mentioned you at all, in point of fact.  There has been no reason for your name to arise.  I haven't seen any of my kin since the last time we met, Mr. Wolfe." 

"A delightful happenstance that undoubtedly pleases you.  Miss Lee?" 

Her smile widened slightly.  "No, Mr. Wolfe, as I'll tell Mr. Goodwin." 

"Not at all? You are sure of the location of my question in the stream of causality?" 

"Oh, yes.  This moment is very close to a juncture, a critical one, which makes it quite easy to anchor my focus." 

The attention of the others shifted to her, and they didn't seem pleased.  I couldn't blame them, because I didn't like her announcement myself.  Wolfe only switched his gaze to the man in the red leather chair, who now looked a little like Paul Robeson three days away from a razor.

"Mr. Fischer?" 

Fischer snorted derisively.  "What, you think after all my work fitting you in, I'm going to throw the whole city out of balance again?  Not a chance.  Even if Lady Dulac was calling me from London to ask for your autograph, I'd tell her to go take a hike." 

Wolfe made a face.  "It is no more than I expected to hear from you.  I hope none of you will take it amiss if I inquire about some possible indications that my enemies may have left of their passing." 

Fischer, apparently still speaking for all of them, shrugged.

Wolfe settled in to dig.  I had taken about seven pages of notes of the craziest questions and answers that I had ever heard in that office when the assault came without warning.  I heard a soundless pop.  My torso flushed with lettered heat and I turned towards Wolfe, slowing as if forcing my way through molasses.  Then my mind was buffeted by a wind that howled from no neighborhood I ever wanted to visit, and I remembered---

My arms had been handcuffed together, the chain looped through the bars of the rusting bedstead.  The rough fibers of the binding ropes had sanded off the skin on my ankles.  My face had been shoved down into the dirty pillow harder with each thrust.  Between that and the gag, I couldn't breathe.  I had felt like I was being ripped apart and the pain of it had forced tears from the corners of my eyes, and snot from my nose.  The bruising hands on me, and the creaking of my ribs each time the great bulk slammed down on me, had both been horribly familiar.  But that time was the worst.  Something had torn inside.  I could feel the blood, warm and sticky, between us.

No.  It could never have happened.  I would not believe it.

The pain had pushed me towards the edge of consciousness.

Not by force, not ever. 

The web of memory that was choking me into blackness, loosened by the force of my angry faith, my bitter disbelief, shifted.  Free, my hands had clenched convulsively on the iron bars of the bedstead.  I felt every missing chip of paint as I bit the pillow to keep from crying out.

And, sure as sin, not so young.

Another grudging shift.  My shoulders were wide.  My chest was filled out, able to pull in more air.  I hovered for a few seconds on the edge of passing out, then heaved up against the weight and took a deep breath.

Injury, from those hands? The way he maneuvered a fork, caressed a book, touched the column of an orchid? No.

Unimpeded by the firm hands on my waist, I had turned my head to one side on the clean linen of the pillowcase to gasp for breath.

No damage at all, in fact.  His ego was too large for him not to have learned, ahead of time, what he needed to know.

The wetness between us had been oil, not blood.  His thrusts had driven me down into the pillow beneath my hips.  I had panted hard as I rested my head on my folded arms.

Not only needed to know, but needed to know to do it right.

His hand, roughly caressing me, had been fire.  His thrusts deep into me had been fire.  My own voice, harsh with pleasure, had sworn.  His low voice had groaned something in response, something ragged in Serbo-Croatian.

He would have been good, not that his pride would ever have let him ask, knowing my tastes.  Nothing had pushed him to that, not even when I had been shot and almost died.

I had struggled to draw breath against the bandages wrapped tightly around my chest.  He had sat on a hard chair next to my hospital bed, lecturing me on my carelessness, trying to talk over what had flashed into his eyes when he saw me alive and conscious.

And he'd never told me how he felt, anyhow.  His control was strong enough that he'd never even given himself away when he knew I was watching.

The hospital room had been dim and my eyes were closed.  The chair had been pulled close to the bed and a hand had stroked, silently, across my cheek.

In fact, he'd paid too much attention to give himself away at all, when I could see.

Blackness.  Insensibility.  Sleep.

I had just known.

A large hand clasping mine.  A card case of embossed leather.  A deep voice, saying my name.

Archie.

The net was unraveled.  I blinked to clear my vision as my head finished turning towards Wolfe.  He made a noise like he had been gut-punched, but he seemed to be all right, so I checked the others.  Fischer's face was scrunched in around his current, pug nose and he was flushed beet red, like he was about to blow a vein.  De Blieu had gone white and was shaking like an aspen.  Amdahl and Hancock-Skinner were holding hands, squeezing so hard that their knuckles had paled, not something that the brownstone had seen a lot of.  Only Miss Lee was collected, but that told me nothing.  To her, it might have all happened months ago, or still be years in the future.

Wolfe's eyes went right and left.  "My opponent has meddled again." 

"Somebody's got a hell of a nerve," Fischer growled, "a hell of an opinion of themselves, too, taking on this crowd.  They'll be lucky if we stop at toast." 

"I apologize for the fact that you were caught in the fringes of an attack intended for myself and Mr.  Goodwin." 

Hancock-Skinner spoke for them all.  His islands accent had thickened.  "We don't like people who let their conjurings spill over: it's very bad design.  Find these and remove them, Mr.  Wolfe." 

"We'll pay you," De Blieu said, unexpectedly.  "We can afford it, and you'll be taking the lion's share of the risk." 

"Yeah.  And if you fail, we'll take over," Fischer said, "although I don't want to think about going up against anything that could beat Nero Wolfe." 

Wolfe grunted, and rang for beer.  It would put him over his daily limit, but, I had to admit, he'd earned it.

It took another hour, and two rough drafts, before we came up with an agreement that satisfied everyone.  Somehow I expected the signing to be in blood but instead they passed around a fountain pen.  When I took the final version to Wolfe, he read it over, signed it himself, and then had me add my signature beneath his.  I thought it would be De Blieu who would write the check for the retainer, but it was Miss Amdahl.  Ten thousand dollars is a nice, plump sum.

After I had seen the last of them out of the front door, and told Fritz I would take care of the mess, I locked up.  I turned off the stoop light, and put on the chain bolt.  It had never seemed so useless.  When I went back into the office, Wolfe was gazing at the bookmarked copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter the way a hungry man gazes at his empty plate during the speeches at a tribute banquet.

I sat down, taking it slow.  Part of me was expecting pain when I hit the leather, either from my shoulders or further downstream, but all I felt was the washed out sensation that comes from too much effort made in too short a period of time.  "At least you have a client, now.  Clients.  And, given what I saw at their places, you should be able to soak them for a bundle." 

He didn't say anything.  I spun my seat around to face him, leaned back in my chair, and put on a grin.  "I'm glad you knew I wouldn't actually betray you.  Now it's your turn.  Guess what I'm the most afraid of." 

His cheeks creased slightly.  "Archie, you're showing off."  There was something in his eyes that might have been relief.

"Yes, sir, but I feel that I've earned it.  What a day, what a day.  The most-damaging-fake-memory-possible trick was especially sweet.  Can your enemy keep up this pace?" 

"I doubt it.  You will notice that the potency of the assaults is decreasing, even as the subtlety is increasing.  It seems he is, at last, having difficulty getting through my defenses." 

Feeling lenient, I let that go by.  Even by my standards, he had packed a solid day's work into the last couple of hours.  It was a pity I couldn't just leave him to his fun, but I had a few more questions I needed answered.

"I don't want to shove, but it would help if I could get instructions and maybe have a couple of points cleared up." 

His eyes narrowed to slits.  "Your first request is simple to grant.  I have to speak with Miss Tremayne.  Get her here tomorrow." 

"Do you want me to get Saul in for instructions, as well?" 

"No.  I have already sent him to check with Lewis Hewitt and he should be reporting back in the morning.  If you are here when he calls, speak to him and find out if he succeeded in his inquiries before you put him through to me." 

My good humor was gone as fast as if someone had opened a tap and drained it out the base of my skull.  Wolfe rarely shares Saul's reports with me, probably because he worries it may spoil the effect at the end of a case when he opens the magic cabinet and shows me the bunny rabbit.  Usually he only breaks this rule when he is working on something he finds boring but I doubted that was his reason.  He also shares when he thinks a case is so dangerous that I might get damaged if I don't know what Saul is doing. 

"Yes, sir."  I hesitated, but then got firm with myself.  "Should I ask for more details about what happened in Montenegro during the Great War?" 

"That is your decision.  I may choose not answer some of your questions." 

I lifted a brow at him.  It seemed we were going to play twenty questions again, so I made it blunt.  "All right.  Who are you?" 

He didn't answer me, but his fingers danced a heavy Charleston on the desktop in front of him.  I waited, assuming that he was reinforcing whatever it was that was supposed to keep the enemy from eavesdropping on us.  I must have been right, because he went on to say, "I knew this day was approaching, but that doesn't mean I relish its arrival.  The youth died and I was his usufructuary.  I assumed certain of his debts and obligations as well as, to my surprise, certain of his tastes and affections." 

I was still working through the verbiage when my voice continued without me.  "So Marko Vukcic did know you---him---as a boy?" 

"Yes.  I believe he suspected something had gone awry with me but I also believe he attributed it to the war.  Almost anything can be blamed on a war, which is one of many good reasons to avoid them." 

I nodded, slowly.  "All right.  Who were you before you hitched a ride?"

"If I chose a name or phrase you would recognize, it would shed more heat than light."  Wolfe lifted his shoulders an eighth of an inch and dropped them.  "For me to explain my genesis would gratify your natural inquisitiveness, but it would be of little other use to you." 

That blocked me.  We have an unspoken bargain of long standing:  no digging into the past.  Sure, it's okay to poke around a little, especially for the purpose of annoyance, but anything effective is against the rules.  I gritted my teeth. 

He must have seen because he added, "To be fair, I owe you an explanation of why there was so little evidence, early on in our association, of the more unusual aspects of my life.  Your talent for observation did not fail you.  Most of my power goes to fuel an effort that does not impinge upon the mundane.  Otherwise, with very few exceptions, I do not use my full abilities." 

"Yeah, I've noticed."  It came out too dry, so I sweetened my tone before I asked, "Then why did the kid show up in my vision?" 

"I needed the help.  I am exerting myself more than I have in years.  Using the bond between us established by your new avocation, I was able to redirect your vision in order to resolve a paradox in my own past, so that I could harvest the power thus freed.  Did you study shamanism, as I suggested?" 

I gave him a look and said, "No, sir, which shouldn't surprise you, since I don't even let you do much reading during a case." 

"I enjoy reading and you claim that you do not.  You are trying to avoid admitting you slipped." 

It was making him so happy to have the upper hand that I decided to fold and let him take the pot.  "You know, if you had said any of this a few days ago, I would have called Doc Volmer to come over with the happy juice and the funny jacket." 

He snorted.  "Pfui.  You've known for decades I was singular.  For the last few years, you've even know that I was uncanny." 

"I knew you could do some odd things, but I took your word on it when you said you were merely a genius, not---" Suddenly the last piece slipped into the puzzle.  I was sore as hell:  my subconscious had done everything but send up flares and I had missed it, leaving me looking slow.  I hate looking slow in front of Wolfe.  "Wait a minute.  I'm a shaman.  I work for you; I'm your shaman.  Before you were Nero Wolfe, you were---"

I will give him this:  he doesn't believe in detouring my thinking, even if it's heading towards a place where he doesn't want it to go.  He waited half a minute for me to arrive at my conclusion before he continued, but I couldn't get the rest of it out.  I was too irritated and it would sound too crazy.

"Yes, in some sense, allowing for the ridiculous nature of the entire concept, I was."  He considered the idea and produced a grunt, the one that means he's not sharing his opinion of a tangle.  "Not that you should allow that to constrain you.  You retain all the freedom that you have always demanded." 

"I won't be constrained.  I can't.  There's a place I have to visit in Times Square, soon." 

"I know," he said, heavily.  He knew I was talking about the recruitment station.  "I am at one with myself enough to wish that day would never come, but I do not pretend that my desires shape your necessities." 

Well, there wasn't much I could say in response that wouldn't start a forest fire.  But, when I went off to bed, I took the Encyclopedia Britannica, volume S-Sh, with me.