“What is this?” Wolfe frowned down at the dust jacket of the book in his hand.  It had a winged female thinly veiled in gauze on it, not a sight normally seen in the brownstone on Thirty Fifth Street.

I opened my mouth to reply and he waggled a finger at me.  “No, Archie, do not tell me that it is a book.  I can see that for myself.  Instead, make yourself useful and fetch the packing list.”

That particular icy Thursday afternoon in March of 1935, Nero Wolfe, fat genius, world- famous detective, and my employer, was doing some of the rare work that he genuinely enjoyed.  Since he loved to read but hated to leave the brownstone, he liked to gratify both preferences at the same time by studying the publishers’ catalogs every few months and then having his books delivered from Murger’s over on Fifth Avenue.  We had been unpacking his latest crate of fresh reading material and checking it against his order when he had come across the trespasser.

I picked up the list from my desk.  “What’s the title?”

“Greentree.”  His eyes narrowed slightly.  “The author is a Mr. Peter Niemann, an obvious pseudonym.”

“Okay, I have it on the packing list.  It’s brand new, sent on approval by Mr. Ballard.”

Wolfe grunted.  He respected George Ballard, the junior partner at Murger’s, like he respected few other booksellers, but he also hated getting caught taking anyone else’s opinion about one of his hobbies.  He put the book down to one side of the growing pile on his desk without opening it and reached into the crate for his next purchase.

One morning, about a week later, I noticed him working through Greentree.  It was pretty obvious which book it was because he had left the dust jacket on it.  Wolfe considers blurbs and cover illustrations puerile and usually removes them.  I’ve even seen him burn some especially ripe examples in the front room fireplace.  So, when I saw the jacket on Greentree again, I grinned and raised an eyebrow at him before I went back to typing up the germination records.  He ignored me, intent upon his reading. 

When he got up to go to lunch he started to dog-ear his page, hesitated, reached for an empty envelope, hesitated again, and then reached instead for the thin strip of gold he uses to mark his place in the books he likes the best.  However, there was something odd about his expression as he shut its covers that kept the scene fresh in my memory.  His lips parted a little at one corner.  If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn he was embarrassed.

I soon forgot all about Wolfe’s latest literary discovery.  We had taken on a job, thinking that it was a minor case of fraud, but it turned out to be something much bigger.  By the time Wolfe nailed Stan Tesauro, the man had added a fifth victim to the four he had already murdered.  It was a frantic, messy affair that didn’t leave me much time for anything, including socializing.  As it turned out, that was kind of a pity.  There’s some news it’s better to hear quickly and quietly from friends.  Instead, I found out about Greentree the hard way, because Lon Cohen, who was then still on the City Desk at the Gazette, made a bad choice of a fellow reporter to bring along when he came to hear Wolfe’s lecture on the Tesauro case. 

Lon had also brought a photographer, which distracted Wolfe.  Wolfe hates having his picture taken.  Ignoring the photographer’s “Over here, Mr. Wolfe,” he scowled at the flash camera and then turned and scowled at me.  I shrugged at him.  Lon had been more than helpful with this last job, and we owed him big.  It was either the pictures or a bottle of irreplaceable vintage brandy, and I was willing to bet on which one Wolfe would choose to provide.  I was right.  He sat patiently at his desk for three flashbulbs worth of portraits before he turned to ask Lon, “Do you need any more details about the arrest, Mr. Cohen?”

“Yeah, just a minute.  Harry, here, is going to do a side column about the tragedy of it all.  Harry?”

Harry was a sob-sister in a pin-check suit, who used too much hair pomade and had one of those pencil mustaches that are supposed to look sophisticated but end up looking weak.  He smirked genially at Wolfe and said, “I believe I have all I need, sir, except for a few details for background.  Is it true that Peter Niemann based the character of the Hermit Prince on you?”

Fascinated, I swiveled in my chair just in time to catch Wolfe’s reaction.  His eyebrows shot down what must have been a third of an inch.  “I wouldn’t claim to know, sir, never having, to the best of my knowledge, met the gentleman in question.”

Lon Cohen had gone very still, like a cat in front of a mouse hole.  The photographer was trying to smother some kind of reaction, probably a horse laugh.  I wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened, but either Harry had made a major faux pas or Wolfe had.  Harry was going to persist, though:  “Most of the literary community seems agreed that the fantastic personalities in Greentree were based on the more prominent and eccentric members of Manhattan society.  You say---”

“That’s it, Harry,” Lon interrupted.  “You got your answer.  Let’s go.”

It’s a measure of the power that Lon already had at the Gazette that Harry shut both his mouth and his notebook before he followed Lon and the photographer out into the hall, where they all paused to don their overcoats.  Lon fumbled around, to let the others go ahead of him through the front door, before he said to me, his voice low, “Listen, Archie, I’m sorry about that.”

I closed the door part way to keep some heat in.  “Okay by me, but I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”

His eyes narrowed.  “You mean---yeah, that’s right.  You don’t read.”

“Nope.  I get all my news from smoke signals.”  It’s true that I don’t read as many books as some of my friends do, but, given their habits that’s not much of a criticism.  Lon didn’t have to make it sound like the last cover I cracked was on a McGuffey’s Reader.  “Come on, Lon.  Quit editorializing about my spare time and let’s hear it.”

He looked through the half-open door at his fellows stamping their feet on the sidewalk below the stoop and decided to give me the quick version.  “It’s that book, Archie.  Greentree.  Wolfe’s in it and, uh, so are you.”

This didn’t account for why his voice was still so low.  “Drop the other shoe, Lon.”

He shook his head.  “You better read it.”  I gave him the eye and he continued, obviously reluctant, “Sumner was sniffing around, seeing if he could get it yanked from the downtown bookstores.”  John Sumner was the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, a so-called citizen’s group that concentrated on tracking down what they termed salacious material.  Startled, I straightened up, and Lon took his chance.  “See you, Archie,” he said and was out the door with his overcoat still cradled in his arms.  I didn’t wait to see if he got it on or what he said to his colleagues.  I closed the door and went back into the office.

Wolfe was sitting at his desk, reading.  I decided to stir him up.  “Well, that went fine, aside from your not telling me that I had a featured role in a sex pulp.”

He lowered the book and looked at me over its cover.  “What are you blathering about now?”

“Lon told me Sumner’s about to start confiscating copies of that book you were reading, Greentree.  It must be pretty spicy.  I saw you use the gold bookmark in it.”

“Bah.”  I couldn’t tell if that was his response to the idea of censorship or to my riding him.  Probably the latter: he reacts a lot stronger than “bah” to censorship.  “The book is not a ‘sex pulp’.  It is a fantastic allegory set in an imaginary culture somewhat resembling those along the ancient Silk Road, with a concomitant lack of Puritanism in the behavior of the characters.”

When he gets that pompous, he’s either feeling content or I have him on the run.  “One of who is supposed to be you and one of who is supposed to be me, right?”

“Whom, Archie, is the correct---”

I raised one eyebrow at him, which he hates because he can’t do it.  “What’s my name in the book, sir?”

He glowered at me, even though he’s known me long enough to realize when that won’t do any good.  “Jirair.  The name of the character is Jirair.”

“Thanks.” I marched over to the shelves and hunted around.  He’d hidden it between two volumes of Erasmus, but that wasn’t going to stop me.  I got the book down and went to my desk.  Opening the cover, I began to read.

As I turned pages, I was aware that Wolfe was scrutinizing me.  He has a way of not shifting his load, when he wants me to think he’s reading but isn’t, that I’ve learned to recognize over the years.  This went on until it was time for him to go up to the orchids.  It was one of the few occasions on which I’ve seen him reluctant to walk through the office door at four o’clock.  I watched the broad back depart, shook my head, and went back to my reading.

The book was interesting.  It was, in fact, pretty spicy.  As to the plot, a young nomad wandered away from his herds and home to search for the secret of immortality and had a series of strange encounters with otherworldly characters along the way.  Women in silks and furs, pagan gods, magicians, and shamans:  I admit it, I paged ahead, looking for either Jirair or this Hermit Prince to show up.  Then I got to chapter five.

The Hermit Prince, blah, blah, blah:  it was a good description, using some of Wolfe’s mannerisms, of a character something like him, holed up in a ruined temple on the side of a mountain outside of a caravansary town.  Whoever the author really was, he must have met Wolfe and paid attention.  No wonder Wolfe had waffled about whether or not he knew the guy.

I turned a few more pages.  Yup, here I was, written up as the Warrior Jirair.  Description not bad, dialogue between the two of us pitched about right, now the Prince---I goggled.

I turned back a few pages and read carefully.  Then I flipped forward in the book, inspecting the scenes in which both characters showed up.  Finally I closed the book, set it down, and whistled.  No wonder Lon hadn't wanted to be the one to tell me about Greentree. If I was reading it right, Wolfe’s character was supposed to be one of them.  Jirair wasn’t complaining about it, either.

For the next half hour, the book sat on my desk looking as innocent and jolly as a hand grenade wrapped up for Christmas.  The mostly naked lady with wings on the dust jacket smoldered at me.  From time to time, I scowled back at her.  However, Wolfe had seen me take the thing off the shelves, so I finally picked it up and started to read again.  By the time he came down from the plant rooms, I was on chapter seven.

I’m not quite sure what exactly I was trying to prove, or who I was trying to prove it to, but over the next few days I read the entire book and during working hours.  Not that it was much of a chore since it was well-written and the portrayals of everyone but Wolfe and I were witty as hell.  To tell the truth, our depictions were also witty, but I wasn’t in a mood to appreciate that.  A glaze of formality seemed to have settled over everything Wolfe and I were doing together, and it was getting on my nerves.  If I was a praying man, I would have been praying for a new case to show up and break the deadlock.

I really should have known better.  The next Wednesday, at half past twelve, the doorbell rang.

I already knew from her phone call that the client on the other side of the front door would be a female, so I had taken the precaution of warning Wolfe when he came down from the plant rooms that she was paying for his time.  It is a sign of where matters stood between us that he heard me out politely and then only grunted and reached for his latest book, I, Claudius, by Robert Graves.  But, when I escorted Miss Fay Tremayne into the office, I expected a reaction and I got it.  Although he may claim otherwise, Wolfe pays attention to my social life, and he knew that Fay and I had spent several evenings together at the Crystal Ballroom a year or two back.  He scowled at me, trapped into an interview he’d otherwise duck out on by his own failure to ask for details.

He was still scowling slightly as he watched me seat her in the red leather chair in front of his desk, but his tone was polite when he said, “Miss Tremayne.”   He didn’t bother to excuse himself for not rising.

“Mr Wolfe.” Fay smiled at him demurely and neatly crossed her silk-clad legs before she smoothed her navy blue-skirt over her knees, directing attention to a memorable set of calves.  She was that kind of girl, not so much provocative as mischievous.  “Thank you for agreeing to see me this morning.”

“I understand that you will pay for the privilege, so no thanks are owed to me.  You are in trouble.  It must be a matter of some import or you would have recruited Mr. Goodwin to assist you.”

Her green eyes turned towards me, amused, and then back to Wolfe.  “Archie might or might not feel like helping me.  I’m afraid we didn’t part on the best of terms.”

Wolfe grunted.  “He has gone to the trouble of securing this interview, so he must retain some measure of regard for you.”

“What a pretty compliment!”  Now her smile was real.  She swung one leg slightly, a habit that had, at one time, interested me almost as much as her calves.

“I intended no compliment.  I do not indulge in gratuitous flirtation.  What is the nature of your difficulty?”

Fay reached into the handbag she was carrying and pulled out the large item that I had spotted weighing it down when I took her coat.  I tensed slightly.  She wasn’t the type for violence, but I’m not paid to coast.  I needn’t have bothered, though.  She tore the brown paper off her parcel and produced a book.  Even from where I sat, I recognized the familiar dust jacket.  “Have you read Greentree, Mr. Wolfe?”

“Yes.” Wolfe’s tone was curt.

“Your opinion?”

His eyes narrowed.  “For a first effort, an excellent performance.”

Her chin went up slightly.  “Well, I wrote it.”

I decided to defer my own reaction and looked over at Wolfe.  To my surprise, his lips were pressed tight together, but he was taking her at her word.  “I had already assumed that to be the case.  Only a writer is so immediately concerned with another’s reactions to his work, and it was evident that the author of Greentree was an intimate of a member of this household.  Mr. Goodwin is the only one of us likely to have an acquaintance that combined a degree of literary talent with a copious knowledge of the habitués of Manhattan society.  Archie?”

My tone was flat.  “When we met at a party thrown by my publisher, she was writing pretty regularly for Smart Set and Vogue.”

“Indeed.  I thought I detected the influence of Mr. James Branch Cabell on Greentree.”  Wolfe’s tone, on the other hand, was grim.  “I assume this has bearings on your difficulties, Miss Tremayne?”

You would have to know Wolfe to understand just how annoying a situation this was for him.  One of his fondest daydreams was of Jane Austen being reborn so that he could snub her, paying her back for making him admit that a female could be a great writer.  Now a woman who had written a book he had declared excellent was sitting in the red leather chair across from him, and his hands were tied.  He knew what conclusion she would draw if he walked out on her and her problem, and his ego wouldn’t allow it.

He was probably hoping that someone was threatening to kill her over the book so that he could send her on her way since his theory is that no one can be protected from a determined assassin.  Just then, I have to admit, I might have been happy to hear that news myself.  The discussion of where Fay got her facts from was going to be grim.  He was not going to believe that it hadn't been from me, and I couldn’t blame him.

“I’m being blackmailed.”

“A threat of blackmail implies that you have something to fear.  Is it the public revelation of your pseudonym?”

Fay flushed slightly.  “It would mean the end of my career in journalism, yes.  I’m not ready for that yet.  I still need to have a second book published, to show that Greentree wasn’t a fluke.”  She frowned, although it wanted to be a scowl.  “It’s so silly.”

Wolfe didn’t say anything.  He didn’t have to.

“Yes, I know that, if it was all that silly, I wouldn’t be here.  But, it’s still absurd.  The woman who is attempting to blackmail me calls herself by an obviously phony title, the Principessa Sophia Della Fine.  She is furious about Greentree.”  She raised one hand, even though neither of us had said anything.  “Not because I used her as an inspiration for one of my characters, you understand.  She’s mad because I left her out of the book.”

That earned her a sour look.  “Is the woman so interested in publicity as all that?”

Fay tossed her head.  “No.  She actually believes I stole the mish-mash of occultism I used to dress my plot from her.  She wants me to revise the book, so it’s all credited under her name.  I can’t talk sense to her.  My publisher and his lawyers can’t talk sense to her.  She’s really insane.”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up and down in a minimal imitation of a shrug.  “An infuriating situation for you, I agree.  However, I do not see how I or Mr. Goodwin can be of any assistance to you.”

Fay hesitated.

“Come, come, Miss Tremayne.  If you want me to do your piece work, you must provide me with the materials I need.”

“The Principessa has agreed she will discuss the matter with you.  She was,” Fay hesitated and then plunged ahead, “my source for much of the information about this household.  In fact, she was the source for much of the information about several of the people I---sketch---in Greentree.  But, I did not get all my esoterica from her.”

I looked up from my notebook.  For a few seconds, Wolfe merely glared.  Then he said, his tone deceptively mild, “Do you have a photograph of this female, this Principessa?”

She opened her bag again and got out a studio portrait print.  I got up, took it from her, and handed it to Wolfe.  The red-head in the photograph was well on the shady side of forty, but she wasn’t bothering to hide the fact.  She didn’t need to.  She had an air of knowing confidence, and the bone structure to support it, that would keep her cigarettes lit and her doors opened for another decade, at least.  I was so busy keeping my expression neutral as I handed over the picture that it took me by surprise when Wolfe let out a grunt.  It wasn’t one of his fifty or so standard grunts, but I still recognized it.  He knew the middle-aged woman in the photo, and he was not pleased to see her again.  “I see.” It was almost a growl.  “I’ll need more information.  You’ll have to answer some questions for me.”

Half an hour and four pages of notes later, I took Fay out into the hall to help her on with her coat.  It was floor-length mink, I noted.  “Book selling well?”

She looked up at me, her expression earnest.  “Archie, I didn’t write anything that I hadn't already said to your face.”

“That’s the difference between us.  I would never have said anything to your face that I wouldn’t have been willing to write about.  But then, I’m still a primitive.  Freud and Jung can take a long walk off a short pier, for all of me.”

Fay didn’t say a word after that, but I didn’t fool myself into thinking it was because she agreed with me.  Like she said, we hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

I was careful to shut the front door quietly behind her before I went back into the office.  Wolfe was still seated at his desk, glaring at the photograph like it was a spider in his fresh asparagus, even though it was now a quarter past one, and he was late to the dining room table.  He looked up from the photo when I came in and barked, “Well?”

“She’s not sorry, and she’d do it again in a second.  However, she’s also not kidding about that fake foreign princess.”

“The title is not spurious.  It is real.”

I closed my notebook and stared at him.  “I thought you knew her, but told myself I must be mistaken.  Nero Wolfe and a foreign dame, a woman who’s obviously a man-eater, used to having guys throw themselves at her feet and worship her?”

“Archie.  You obviously calculated the maximum number of annoyances that you could pack into a single sentence and then---”  He interrupted himself.  “No, it is time for lunch.  We can continue this conversation afterwards, if we must.”  Using both hands, he levered his bulk onto his feet and marched out of the office door.  I stayed behind to finish my notes before I followed him.

He didn’t call her that afternoon or the next morning.  By the following afternoon, when he came down from the plant rooms, I had taken matters into my own hands again.

After he had rung for beer, just as his hand was reaching for the stack of opened mail on his desk, I said, “If you want to dictate any replies, you might want to do that first, in case you have to fire me.”

The hand hesitated for a second before picking up the first letter, a report from a professional orchid collector in the Dutch East Indies.  “When will she be arriving?”

“Half past eleven.”

“Indeed.”  He looked up from the letter, right at me.  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stir.  It wasn’t his usual sharp glance.  There was something else in the brown eyes that might have been worry but wasn’t.  When he spoke, though, his voice was testy.  “If we are to be invaded, I had better use such time as I have.  Your notebook.” He’d managed to clear up half the mail before the doorbell rang.

I went to answer it myself.  After Wolfe’s reaction, I wanted to get a good look at this foreign princess.  When I opened the door she stood on the stoop, her head tilted to one side, faintly smiling as if someone had just told her a witty story.  She looked at me, and the smile widened.  I swallowed.

Don’t ask me now what it was.  To all appearances, she was no different from the woman in the photograph, but having her there in front of me made all the difference in the world.  It wasn’t her clothes.  Under the camel hair coat, she was wearing a black linen dress and pearls, well tailored but unremarkable.  It may have been the eyes.  They were clear and grey, and the hint of amusement behind their grave expression made me want to talk to her, to see what she would look like if I captured her attention.  When she spoke, there was no hint of an accent.  “You are Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s man.”

“Princess.” I found myself bowing and straightened abruptly.

She smiled and moved.  I hurried to hang up her coat, so I was hard on her heels when she went into the office.  As she entered, Nero Wolfe was standing at his desk.

I didn’t have time to recover.  I was too busy keeping my jaw from dropping as she crossed over to his desk, reached out and took his unresisting hand, and kissed the back of his knuckles. 

Wolfe snorted, and said “Sit down, madam.” It came out as a growl but not a hostile one.  He reestablished himself in his chair, leaned back, adjusted himself in its embrace, and sighed.  Then he glowered at her where she sat, settled neatly into the red leather chair.  Very few people can fill that seat properly, but she managed it with ease.  She gazed back at Wolfe for a few seconds and then surprised me by suddenly grinning at him.  I saw Wolfe’s lips twitch slightly.  “Well?  You have gone to a great deal of trouble to procure this interview.”

“It has been many years,” the princess said, agreeably.

“No matter.  What is this flummery about the book, Greentree?”

She shrugged her shoulders, indifferent.  “Its author has the soul of a bard, but the mind and heart of a gossip columnist.  Do not deceive yourself;  under all her pretences, she has enjoyed the fuss.  Now that she has served her purpose, I will not bother her again.”

If that was true, we had just earned one of the easiest fees we’d ever collected.

“To tell the truth, I am here to ask for a favor, Bas Handots Oxsolesar.”  I warn you;  those last three words may or may not be spelled right.  When I asked Wolfe about it, he said that English did not have the letters to transpose the sounds properly and changed the subject.  “You are comfortable, I know, but time rushes by.  Do you mean to linger here until the end?”

I was starting to understand that Fay had learned about more than café society from the Princess.  She spoke like one of the characters in Fay’s book.  It should have sounded phony, but it didn’t.

Wolfe surveyed her critically.  “You seem to believe I have a choice in the matter.”

“You do not?”  Her lips parted and she laughed softly.  It wasn’t a giggle, it was a genuine laugh.  “Of course you do or you would not be here, in this city, in this nation.”

“I am certainly not returning to Europe.”  Wolfe sounded testy again.  “As to the rest, that is my decision.”

“You should linger.  Men still tell me their secrets, and I speak with the others, as well.  I know there will be trouble.  You should wait for it here.  Even though there are flaws, this is a good place and will remain so, for a while.”

“Is that your opinion,” Wolfe’s eyes narrowed, “or is it your intention?”

She held up a hand.  “My opinion only, my advice.  Do you reject my words?”

“I am not a witling.  Of course I will consider what you say.”  Amazingly, he shifted back up onto his feet.  Standing up for a woman once was usual, but twice was unprecedented.  “Is there anything else?”

The Princess didn’t seem to be put off by Wolfe’s curt tone.  “No.  Thank you for seeing me.” There was no repetition of the hand-kissing gesture.  Instead, she got up out of the chair and headed for the door.  Once again, I had to hurry to catch up with her.

She let me help her back on with her coat, and then turned to face me.  I realized we were almost of a height.  Her grey eyes considered me calmly for a moment before she said, “Watch after him, mathait.”  The sound of it was different from the earlier words, and Wolfe told me later that my spelling would do.  Without saying anything else, she left.  After I closed the door behind her, I shook myself like I had just woken up from a dream.

When I went back into the office, Wolfe was proof-reading my response to one of the morning’s letters.  He looked up long enough to growl, “Send Miss Tremayne a bill,” and then returned to his editing.

I opened my mouth to comment, considered, and closed it.  Every once in a while, even I have to admit that riding him won’t help at all.  Instead, I rolled a sheet of letterhead into my typewriter.

When I thought about it at all, I remembered that day as nothing special, merely one minor case among many.  The only reason I ever called it to mind was because of the Princess and the curiosity she aroused in me about Wolfe’s past, a curiosity he seemed no more eager to satisfy than ever.  I didn’t understand what had begun in the office that morning.  It took me a lot of years to realize that it had been on that very day, at that very hour, that Nero Wolfe had stopped aging.