Masquerade

By

Parhelion

I

 

“Archie Goodwin, you are such a man.”  That comment came courtesy of Lily Rowan, a lithe blonde who could still be called a friend of mine even after we’d spent most of October in 1950 together.  Said friendship never kept us from trading words.  The two of us met right after I’d leapt a fence to avoid a charging bull, and we’ve continued in the same style ever since.  This discussion was only one more hurdle along a lengthy track.

After taking a deep breath, I said, “Look, I’m not trying to be dim.  Why do you think I’d know what Nero Wolfe wants for a gift from Norway?”

“Oh, perhaps because you’ve worked for him?  Lived in his house?  Run his errands?  Gone so far as to store his spare handkerchiefs in your trouser pockets for well over a decade now?”

“That’s long enough to know that he’s a good knock-off of the Sphinx, only fatter.”  I shrugged.  “Why don’t you try getting him whatever you’d buy any genius detective who’s nuts for plants and food?  I’ll warn you, though.  Whatever you can give him probably isn’t what he wants.”

She gave me the quizzical gaze from her dark blue eyes that meant she’d been about to have a flash of wit before reconsidering.  Just as well.  Relations had been tense between us this past day.  She’d wanted to extend our vacation long enough to explore the glories of Denmark alongside some new friends with old titles.  I’d wanted to return on schedule.  We’d compromised, which meant I was flying back to Manhattan three days early and alone.  But the diplomatic effort had left us both edgy.

“You manage to find gifts for him every year.”  Her words were pitched in the sweet tone that meant trouble for someone.

“Sure, and he’ll get a book token again this Christmas.”  Four to one my expression was cool.  I know my voice was.  Okay, I admit that picking out Wolfe’s presents was one of my tougher annual social chores, demanding a lot more sweat and shoe-leather than most of my paid errands did.  And I didn’t end up with book tokens, either.  But my difficulties in that direction were nothing I needed to discuss.

Lily took a deep breath. Her eyes narrowed.  “Hah.  I confine myself to ‘hah’.”

For the sake of courtesy towards Lily and compassion towards imaginary readers, I’ll boil down the rest of our chat.  We veered away from Wolfe, through Norway, and back again.  Enough to write that Lily was annoyed by my sense of priorities, including how I’d delayed this trip while I helped Wolfe take care of his little problem with the late Arnold Zeck, criminal mastermind.  Not requiring a paycheck herself, she sometimes discounts my need for mine and has to be corrected.  However she did come up with one point that should be noted.

Lily was standing with her hands on her hips by then.  She looked magnificent, but I wasn’t dumb enough to say so and was almost too mad to care.  She said, “The more you claim the elephant parked in your parlor doesn’t matter, the more everyone will think he does.   Soon they’ll start wondering why you’re trying so hard to pretend that he’s not taking up all the room.”

About that, she was right.  I should have reconsidered what I was glossing over so publicly and in print.  The effort might have saved me a lot of trouble.  But I’ve never been one for brooding over the mysteries of my own behavior even when what I overlook leads to trouble, which is exactly what happened in this case.  Lily’s warning was wasted on me.  Instead I had to settle for a salty afternoon followed by a sweet evening.  Wolfe would have to settle for two pounds of smoked salmon and a gift-wrapped jug of cloudberry preserves.

***

The trip back from London was no treat.  We passengers had refueling stops at Shannon in Ireland and Gander in Newfoundland to stretch our legs, but that still left us cooped up together for thirteen hours in a metal tube shaken by four roaring propeller engines.  As usual, there were two characters in front who pickled themselves and a woman who needed to discuss her trip with her seatmate and, along with him, the entire plane.  Then, after that entertainment, the boys at customs decided my passport picture had the mysterious air of an international smuggler about it.  So it was around six on Sunday evening before I and my bags got into a taxi together and headed from Idlewild to Nero Wolfe’s brownstone on 35^th street.

Adding to the joy of my trip, I knew Wolfe would be in a mood. Sundays are the days Fritz Brenner, his chef, has off.  While Fritz doesn’t leave until after breakfast, Wolfe still has to forage up lunch and dinner, and he’s not fond of my turning up without notice when he’s doing his own cooking.  But even Nero Wolfe, world’s most difficult detective in a snit, still had to be better company than my taxi driver was.  I’d figured out how I was going to vote and what I thought of Joe DiMaggio long before I got into his cab, but you couldn’t have told that by him.

At the brownstone, I let myself in with my key, dropped my bags next to the coat rack, and went into the office to check for Wolfe.  No dice, and he wasn’t in the kitchen, either.  Next I got on the house phone in the kitchen and rang the plant rooms on the roof.  No answer:  not too much of a surprise.  On a Sunday, Theodore the orchid nurse would be over at his sister’s in Jersey, so if Wolfe wasn’t up there, verifying his suspicions that the Miltonias bloom when he’s not looking, no one would answer the phone.  I dialed Wolfe’s room.  Again, no answer.

Around then I got uneasy.  Wolfe was probably just taking a bath, I told myself.  He tips the scales at a seventh of a ton, so his bathing is quite the project, one that he’s not going to interrupt for a mere phone call.  Scooping up my bags from where I had left them, I climbed the stairs to my own room, set them down, and went to splash some cold water on my face.  Then I tried the house phone again.  Still nothing.

To understand how strange this was, you have to know that your average hermit has nothing on Nero Wolfe.  His domestic life is arranged and scheduled exactly the way he likes it.  Except for a few friends and the occasional chore like voting, only a tidal wave could ever wash him out of the house.  Besides, he hates all forms of motorized transportation and would rather trust a chorus girl on the make than a strange driver.  His recent seven-month escapade, when he’d disappeared from the brownstone before reappearing in disguise in order to ambush Arnold Zeck, was an exception, or so I’d thought.  I went through the rest of the house with a real and growing sense of alarm.

Then I made some phone calls.  The first was to Saul Panzer’s number.  Saul’s the next-best detective in New York after Wolfe, a little guy who looks like a cheap bookie and acts like a panther with a graduate degree.   Just as he takes care of any pavement errand Wolfe doesn’t want me to handle, he drives Wolfe when I’m not around to do the job.  But no one was home at Saul’s number.

After that I called Wolfe’s old friend Marko Vukcic, who I should have thought of first.  If Marko, the genius behind Rustermann’s restaurant, was cooking that afternoon, Wolfe wouldn’t have to fend for himself.  A chance to be lazy might be enough to lure the Mountain out of the brownstone to Mohammad’s – Marko’s –  place overlooking the Hudson River.  But no luck at Marko’s, and neither of them was at Rustermann’s.  I was considering who to try next when I heard the front door open.

I don’t know what was on my face, but Fritz turned around from hanging up his hat, saw me, and started.  “Archie, you are back from your trip early.  Is something amiss?”

“Just a change in our agenda.  Miss Rowan’s spending another three weeks in Europe.”  Fritz frowned and nodded.  “Imagine my surprise, though, to get back here and find nobody home.”

“Ah!”  He began taking off his overcoat.  Beneath it, he smelled faintly of someone else’s Chanel.  “True, you must have been surprised.  There are no signs because you were not to be back before Wednesday.  He is at Mr. Hewitt’s house, visiting.”

Nuts.  I hadn’t thought of Hewitt.  Wolfe had sucker-punched Lewis Hewitt, millionaire, man about town, bon vivant, and fellow orchid fancier, to the tune of two rare black orchid plants when they first met.  Since then, in a way that I’d never seen before in the many years I’d worked for Wolfe, the two of them had become cozier conspirators than a pair of log-rolling congressmen.  Wolfe and I had even gone out to Long Island a few times to have dinner at Hewitt’s place, which wasn’t too bad a trip in terms of grub although I still didn’t know if I liked Hewitt himself or not.  But Wolfe at a house party?

I raised both eyebrows.  “See what happens when I leave?  Everyone runs rampant.  What is he going to do if I ever quit to open my own agency again, take up sulky racing?”

“He will be back tomorrow, Archie,” Fritz said.  He sounded sympathetic, although I wasn’t sure why.  “As for tonight, would you like some dinner?”

“No, thanks.”  I was in no state to be company, and Fritz is too sweet to have my temper taken out on him.  “I have a date.  When you came in, I was about to take a shower before going out.”

He smiled.  “Good.  You should enjoy yourself, at least as much as one can after such a long voyage.”

By that point I was so mad at myself for fussing about Wolfe that I didn’t linger to ask Fritz all the questions I might have.  Instead I went upstairs, took my shower, shaved, grabbed my hat and coat, and then spent enough nickels at Bert’s Diner telephoning young women of my acquaintance to turn my fib to Fritz into truth.  By the time I got home after two, I was just about sleepwalking, too tired to wonder what Wolfe was up to any more.  Again, maybe I should have reconsidered.  But I had no way of knowing that ignorance was about to stop being bliss.

 

II

 

Monday I woke up late and loggy, but with a strong enough urge to prod Wolfe to get me out of bed.  So after I’d done my exercises, had my bath, and disposed of a three-egg omelet under Fritz’s beaming supervision, I got on the phone and called Saul again.

“I thought you were supposed to be gambling about the fjords,” was his greeting to me.

“And there’s all the thanks I get for dragging myself away from a real whoopee-fest to spare you a difficult errand.”

He paused before he said, “He’s not due to be picked up before noon.  If you’re busy, I can drive him back from Long Island.  There was no sense in your cutting your goodbyes short for that.”

“Uh-huh.  You, on the other hand, have nothing better to do with your days than herd home the wandering bull.”

Again there was a pause, and then he said, “I admit, I have some last-minute business that could use addressing.  Okay, Archie, I’ll leave Wolfe to you.  Are you showing up for poker this week?”

“What, and miss frightening the others?  I’ll be there.  Prepare to lose your shirt.”

He chuckled softly. “We’ll see who’ll lose his shirt.”

We probably would.  Saul can usually skunk me at poker.  In fact, he can usually skunk me at most jobs detecting, but he’s so good that his talent doesn’t sting me, much.

When I pulled up at about five to twelve in front of Lewis Hewitt’s shabby little hut of thirty or so rooms out on Long Island, I expected a long wait in one of the parlors while the hired help pried out Wolfe from whatever bonus-sized chair he’d wedged himself into.  I doubt he’d moved much during the weekend, aside from breaks to eat fancy vittles and examine orchids with Hewitt.  But when I was escorted into the wainscoted front hall by a starched character with an imported accent, there sat Wolfe.  He was perched on a Louis something-or-other chair that had to be too small to support all his rump-roast.  He looked natty in his usual canary-yellow shirt and well-tailored suit.  His kidskin bags were by his feet, his applewood cane was in his hands, and his overcoat and homburg lay on top of the luggage.  To my surprise, he also had a hanger-on.

This young man was in the neighborhood of twenty, blond, and athletic.  He was one of those handsome Joe Colleges of the sort that they drape in suits for the Bergdorf-Goodman ads.  But even though I wouldn’t have bet a nickel on the guy’s brainpower, and Wolfe’s not one to suffer fools gladly, my boss wasn’t ignoring him.  Rather, he was regarding the young man through half-opened eyes while talking with him in a fashion that approximated civil.  In fact, as I was announced, Wolfe was saying something about modern theater.  The big faker:  if Wolfe’s seen a single play since back when Shaw was still raising eyebrows, I’d swallow my teeth.

Wolfe spotted me and emitted a grunt that mixed surprise with some emotion I didn’t get.  But he finished his comments before he said to me, “Good afternoon, Archie.  I hope no mishap was responsible for cutting short your trip.”

I wasn’t going to talk about Lily in front of some society lad I didn’t know, so I shrugged.

Wolfe tilted his head a sixteenth of an inch as he considered me.  Then he started to lever himself onto his feet.  That’s when my day turned from odd to bizarre.

The young man grabbed Wolfe’s arm and helped haul him up.  And Wolfe let him.  Wolfe, who actually works to avoid changing tailors and barbers, Wolfe, who has the world’s biggest set of excuses to keep from having to shake hands, Wolfe, who hates being touched by strangers, let this character take his arm.

I’d stooped to grab the coat and hat before picking up his bags, not wanting to lead a parade of Wolfe, Ivy-League lad, and servants bearing luggage out to the sedan.  But, upon seeing the trespass, I had straightened, probably to peel the guy off of Wolfe.  My intervention turned out not to be needed.

Wolfe caught my pause.  His eyes narrowed, and then he said to the Ivy-Leaguer, “Thank you, Robert.  Mr. Goodwin can assist me from here.  Please convey once again to Lewis my appreciation and farewell.”

Robert gazed at him and then glanced at me.  He had big, baby-blues with long lashes.  I had to suppress an urge to step forward for a closer look at him.  I was glad I’d succeeded when he grabbed Wolfe’s hand in what was more of a warm squeeze than a shake.  His attention all on Wolfe, he said, “Good bye, Mr. Wolfe, and thank you.  You have my number.  Feel free to call.”  His words could have been poured across griddle-cakes.

Instead of punching him, I settled for getting Wolfe into his coat and hat, scooping up the bags, and moving both of us out of Hewitt’s front hall.  The entire time I was settling Wolfe into the back of his sedan, neither of us said a word.

***

I don’t like to talk when I’m driving, but I don’t mind listening.  However, Wolfe is too busy fearing for his life once inside a moving vehicle to lecture me on anything interesting.  Instead he confines himself to pointing out any perils that I might miss, like empty cars parked half a block away down side streets.  For my part, I say enough to keep his panic from boiling over and not one word more.

This trip, no one was talking.  Wolfe didn’t make any noise at all.  He clung to the strap in the back of the Heron sedan with one hand, his eyes narrowed and his lips pulled back against his teeth.  After fifteen miles, and about that many peeks into the rear-view mirror, I finally sorted out his expression.  Nero Wolfe was preoccupied, thinking about something else while he rode in an automobile.

I don’t expect you to understand, so I’ll merely report.  When I realized Wolfe was distracted, I felt my stomach twist.  Until then I’d been trying to ignore what had happened at Hewitt’s in favor of composing merry comments about his unadvertised vacation to share with him when we were back at the brownstone.  But now Wolfe’s reaction brushed all my efforts away.  I’d damn well learned the names for the Roberts of this world, want to or not.  And I knew what Robert’s attitude towards Wolfe hinted about Wolfe’s fun-filled weekend.  I moved my gaze away from the mirror to the road and kept it there.

Given the funereal quality of the ride, the Heron might as well have been a hearse.  We both stood the silence for about ten minutes more.  I remember him breaking the quiet with the grunt that substitutes for his clearing his throat, but he claims that I was already signaling to pull over when he made his noise.  In either case, I’d had enough.

Veering across the lanes of traffic didn’t even earn me an extra grunt.  The roadhouse parking lot that I pulled into was completely empty since blue laws kept their doors locked until late afternoons on Mondays.  After sliding the Heron into a parking space at the far side of the lot smoothly enough to show how little I was affected, I put the car in park, set the hand brake, and turned off the engine.  Then I rested my hands on the wheel and looked through the windshield at the field in front of me.  There may have been a couple of trees between the asphalt and the hay stubble, blocking part of the view.  I don’t remember.  I wasn’t seeing much right then.

The grim silence behind me was broken by him asking, “What part of that encounter upset you?”

“That’s a hell of a question.  Sir.” My knuckles were whitening, so I loosened my grip on the wheel.  I’d bet he’d seen anyhow.

“You haven’t chosen to reproach me.  I assume you’re attempting to respect my privacy.  But you have an opinion.”

“Just like you always do about me, yeah.”  I tried a snort, but the sound wasn’t right.  “No wonder you were annoyed when Lily had to kiss you during that masquerade of yours.”

“I cast no aspersions upon her skill.  Her embraces were more adept, even more pleasing, than most of those I’d received in Southern California, and from a source held to be more wholesome.”

 My next wisecrack wouldn’t come.  After a pause he kept talking, as calmly as if he was issuing instructions in the office with a murderer in the front room.  “When I hid myself from Arnold Zeck and his minions, the disguise needed to be perfect. My cardinal characteristics are well-known.  Your books have helped see to that.”  His voice stayed even as he ran down the list.  “I am large.  I am careful about my grooming, my table, my company, and my language.  I am bridled by my self-flattering notions of what I call honor.  I suspect mechanical devices, and I dislike travel.”

“So you were a skinny, scruffy criminal from L.A. who spoke to me bluntly while we were riding around in cars.  Also, you talked through your nose.  Go ahead and drop the other shoe.”

“I am known to dislike the touch of strangers.  Your idea of authorial discretion also made it evident that I no longer answered the summons of Pan’s flute.”

“As a discrete author, I note the past tense.  Right.  You went on the prowl when you reached the west coast and were setting up your illicit scheme.  Did it never occur to you that switching from girls to boys might be one too many flip-flops even for your notion of a good cover?”

“I’ve always preferred men while in erotic situations.”  He said it as calmly as if he was talking about the best way to handle shad roe.

“You’re a—”  Even in those circumstances, more than a decade of Wolfe’s snide comments about the slang phrases I’d once used for the minorities of Manhattan changed what I was going to say.  “You’re a homosexual.”

“With reservations that you’ve observed, yes.”

I was clenching the wheel again.  “You didn’t have to parade it.  I got the idea.”

“I did not ‘parade it’.  My attending a house party when you were supposed to be thousands of miles away is not equivalent to my accosting some aspiring catamite in a public toilet.”

I could feel him studying the back of my head, and I didn’t like the sensation.  Twisting around, I said, “That fraternity pledge back there wasn’t what I’d call subtle.”

“Neither was your past acquaintance Miss Gibbs or last year’s young female who worked at Figaro’s.”

He hadn’t used either Lily’s name or one of the other two that would have counted, so he was playing fair.  Fine.  I didn’t want any reason to discuss Hewitt.  Instead I asked, “Given that, why bother with him?”

This time he did grunt.  Almost to himself, he said, “You are too young and too talented to have ever gone wanting for long.  Were you forced to restrain yourself during your training while in the army?”

“No, although one of the Majors’ wives was looking good for a while.  I got off base before trouble started.”  My eyes narrowed.  “I take it you’re telling me that you’re weaning yourself back off the bottle as quick as you can but it’s tough, so you’re still sneaking the occasional nip.  You should know too much champagne’s bad for you.”

He snorted.

“Sure, I still don’t have a right to an opinion.  I note again that it’s never stopped you.”  I turned back around and started the car.  “You might want to brace yourself.  Getting back onto the parkway’s going to be a treat.”

For once the tactic didn’t end the conversation.  “None of this directly involves you.  However I’ve learned that such assurances rarely suffice once the conventional masculine mores have been challenged.  Will you quit?”

“Not unless I have to make conversation with Roberto.”  I shrugged.  “As for the rest, I already suspected.”

“Bah.  What is tolerable when suspected may be insufferable when encountered.”

He was very close to being right, but I wasn’t going to let him know that.  “You’ll have to excuse me if it takes a while to get adjusted.”

Wolfe sighed.  “Archie, if, after all your promiscuous philandering, you don’t understand how compelling even perverse urges can be, you’ve wasted your opportunities.”

“That’s rich, coming from a man who fakes having seen Eugene O’Neill’s stuff.”

“Shut up.”

For once, I was glad to.  Again, we were quiet.  But two miles down the road he growled at a tractor waiting at an intersection, and I told him to calm down or he’d spoil his supper.  If I sounded sharper than usual, he let that go by.  We both knew we were sneaking away from a gallon-sized bottle of nitroglycerine.

 

III

 

Wolfe may be a pain, but he’s no dummy.  That Monday, I was expecting a week with no better distractions than discovering how this year’s substitute clerk had tangled up the germination records while I was on vacation.  Working a case should have been out of the question.  During the last months of a normal year, I don’t even try to goad Wolfe into action, given how the taxman’s opinion of Wolfe’s income bracket makes any late labor into charity-work for the government.  Even though this year he could have made more money, what with him following a profession that doesn’t report income for two quarters, I still wasn’t in a mood to push.  But he knew that we both needed distraction.

By Friday he’d been hired by Foxley and Deerfield to investigate a complex case of fraud involving both assets juggling and sheer fakery.  The job wasn’t the sort of peppy affair that keeps my publisher answering my calls, but it would be finicky and need a lot of care.  Wolfe pulled in Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather to do the footwork although he didn’t bother with Bill Gore or handsome Johnny Keems.  He did bother to lay out a complicated schedule of searches, background checks, and tails intended to sieve out the weasels from the foxes, and told our clients to send over certain monthly financial figures as they arrived.  Then he put me in charge of the whole program.

“I could stand to get out more,” I told him about two weeks later.  I’d been sneaking glances at him all morning, caught myself, and was feeling disgusted.  Also, I had a suspicion he was peeking right back.

Wolfe looked up from his book, something with a title I couldn’t even spell by H. L. Mencken.  “It’s raining.”

“So?  I’m not delicate.”

He breathed through his nose.

“Don’t worry, I don’t mean that thing we’re not talking about when I say ‘delicate’.”  I dumped the last of the ledger pages I’d been reviewing on top of the heap on my desk.   “Rather, it has not escaped my attention over the years that you are of the opinion I am made out of something that melts in water.  There will come a day to decide whether that substance is salt or sugar or what, but this is not that day.”

“Not sugar.”

“I admit that sugar was reaching.”  I stood up.  “It was neat, the way you headed off my quitting two weeks back by asking if I would resign.  However, that parry doesn’t block any other reasons for my quitting, and if I don’t get away from all these figures, I’m going to go gaga.  If I’m salt, I’ll end up in your beer, which is a hell of a way to give notice.  If I’m Epsom salts, I’m walking away before I figure out where I’d end up.”

He glared at me.  “Judging by past history and present conversation, I might fire you first.”

“Not right now you won’t.”  I tapped the top of the pile of papers on my desk.  “Unless you’re really William Randolph Hearst, disguised as Nero Wolfe in order to destroy your arch-enemy Harry Truman, you wouldn’t touch these financial reports with a stick, not even with your blackthorn.”

“You’re blathering.”

“No I’m not.  I’m disgusted.  I have a flea in my ear, a bug in my brain, and ants in my pants.”

“Then I recommend either insecticide or a decent editor of dialogue.  It’s a pity that I suddenly disturb you.”

“Not you, sir.  Right now, for all I care, you could wear a tutu just like in Fantasia.  I’d still need some air.”  I glared at him.  He glared right back.  I got up slowly, giving him plenty of time to swing the axe if he wanted to.  Instead he looked down at his book and pointedly turned to a new page.  So I went out to collect reports from my fellow operatives.

Although I do my best not to carry private business with me into the streets, Wolfe doesn’t employ idiots as stringers.  Saul studied me, shook his head, and then left me alone.  Either Fred never noticed anything was wrong or he gave me the benefit of the doubt.  But Orrie got cute.

Orrie had always thought that he could do my job better than I did.  Any bump on my road, he viewed as an opportunity.  So when I met him at Ost’s Restaurant, he took his chance.

He broke off his report with, “Are you getting this?  You’re looking peaked.”

I hoisted an eyebrow.  “When we move past details of your smooth technique with female witnesses and on to results, I’ll be riveted.”

“I dunno.  That vacation you took doesn’t seem to have done you much good.  The looks are fading, and now the brain’s a little soft.”  He kept going, a speculative look on his handsome features.  “Maybe you need some more time off.”

“Can I guess who’d be at my desk, covering for me?  But go ahead and offer.  I want to be there to see the look on Wolfe’s face.”

“You sure?  Give me enough of a chance, and he might take a fancy to my looks behind your desk.  His reaction to the fancy might surprise you.”

For a second I stared at Orrie and then I laughed right in his face.

I was sorry for the laugh later, if only for what it could have hinted at.  After that day I tried to rein myself back with Orrie, likely a mistake.  I’ve sometimes wondered if my laugh flicked a pebble down a mountain that would turn into a rockslide years in the future.  But I’m detouring into another story.  Right then, he settled for scowling.  The rest of his briefing was glacial.  All the time he was talking I kept having to swallow a derisive grin.  It wouldn’t have been directed at Orrie, but he wouldn’t have known.

When I reported the conversation to Wolfe, his face tried a few options before settling on petulance.  “There are times, Archie, when a complete account isn’t useful.”

“How am I supposed to know that?  Maybe a description of Orrie preening is what you need to crack open this case.”

“Descriptions of Orrie are not something I need for anything,” he murmured.  “Anything at all.”

“I’ll make a note of that.”

“If you feel that it would assist your memory, do.  Now, if your diversion is over, please resume your account with Fred’s report.”

When I was done, he grunted before telling me to schedule some interviews to wrap matters up.  Then, satisfied with his hard work, he rang for beer.

Before Fritz came in with the tray and bottles, he asked, “Is Miss Rowan returning soon?”

“A week or so.  She sends her warmest regards and compliments to Pete, that is to say, you in your L.A. disguise.  I didn’t reply with the absolute proof that she was wasting her time, which showed restraint on my part because I could have won five bucks.”

I expected a growl but got a narrow-eyed look instead.  “As an abstract proposition, even without the obvious complication, yours was a hopeless wager.”

Fritz came in before I could get witty while arguing about the abstract, so the matter rested there.  I still wanted to kick him for the bonus point, but that impulse wasn’t anything new.  By his standards, he wasn’t doing too bad a job of sitting back while I wrestled with myself.  His restraint might even have helped if he’d really known what was going on.  What he didn’t know yet was that the matter sticking in my craw wasn’t what he thought it was.

***

Back home in Ohio, Mr. Evans, our best and most prosperous druggist, used to take his two-week vacations right after Easter and Thanksgiving.  Every year he’d go to Manhattan. 

The ladies of the various church groups used to wonder what evils in corsets or saloons drew a bachelor to the Big City.  But they had to admit they’d been barking up the wrong tree when he came back one December with Frank, the nephew he’d been visiting during all those trips away.  Seems the poor young man had been orphaned right after his uncle had talked him into going back to high school, so Evans had brought him back to Ohio to finish up his education.

Frank did pretty well at Chillicothe High even though he was three years older than the next oldest sophomore.  And that Christmas, for the first time in years, Evans decorated his old Victorian.  He also showed up for the community pageant with his newly-adopted nephew tagging after him.

After a few years living with Evans, Frank went off to college where eventually he became a pharmacist just like his uncle.  He came back each summer to work in the drugstore and was always home for Christmas.  When he was done with his education, he became his uncle’s partner in the store.  He stuck around Chillicothe until Evans died of a heart-attack a few years later.  Then he sold the Victorian and the drugstore before he moved out west somewhere:  California, or so I heard tell.

Funny thing, though.  Frank didn’t look anything like Evans.  And when Frank first arrived in Chillicothe, while he was in some of my older sister’s classes making up the education he’d missed, he’d had an odd accent.  After I’d moved to Manhattan, I realized that Frank had sounded like a Lower East Side Jew, which was a funnier thing still.  Whatever else the Evans ancestors were, they sure weren’t Jewish.

Not that I opened my mouth about any suspicions I might have had, either then or later.  Frank used to give me the friendly eye when I dropped into Central Drugs, but he never tried anything that I’d have recognized as off-center.  Neither did Evans, who I always sensed liked me for some reason aside from the few brains I displayed during high school.  No, all the off-center lessons I learned in Chillicothe I learned from someone else.

The someone else?  He’s still there.  I’m not.  Which is enough about him, and enough about my perverse opportunities, too.  Just take it as a given that I was spending a lot of time during that fortnight in November considering Frank.

 

IV

 

Every morning, when I’m not busy on a case for Wolfe, I do exercises in my bedroom.  Given the way that Wolfe provides and Fritz cooks, only my morning sweating and my daily walking around Manhattan keep me from swelling into a blimp the size of, say, Nero Wolfe.  Saturday the twenty-fifth, all I had to do was run a few errands and slide the check from Foxley and Deerfield into the night deposit at the bank, so athletics were first on the schedule.

Enough push-ups to make my arms burn and risk my dripping sweat onto the carpet, and I switched to sit-ups.  For some reason, sit-ups always give my mind a chance to get away from me.  At least the destination of my thoughts that morning seemed more sensible than usual for these past days.

Wolfe would comment, or even meddle, but it was understood between us that, when push came to shove, my private life was mine and would stay that way.  I’d always known the same should hold true for Wolfe, that if anything ever went on it would be none of my business.  If he felt like it, he could make a friend at a house party.  Hell, he could have any strange birds he wanted calling here at the brownstone, and I had no right to notice.  Like he’d said, none of it had anything to do with what went on between us.  I was no Frank Evans.

The breath huffed out of me, and I realized my stomach ached.  I’d picked up the pace on the sit-ups a little too much, so I slowed back down.

Done with my sit-ups, my push-ups, my toe-touches and pull-ups and squat-thrusts, I stripped off the old flannel trousers and boiler shirt that I keep for sweaty work.  Those, I hung on a peg to air out before I got clean clothes from the chest of drawers in my closet.  All the furniture in this bedroom within Wolfe’s house was mine, chosen, bought, and arranged by me.  I intended to own the furniture inside my head, as well.  Nothing was getting into my skull that I didn’t want there.  With that thought, I headed for the shower.  But in my mirror in the bathroom, I caught sight of my reflection.  The naked guy in the glass didn’t look convinced.

***

The drops had been splatting at my windows all the time I was exercising, so I knew the weather outside was no treat.  But I glanced out the window as I finished up my breakfast and saw nothing worse than a blustery rain.

“Do you go out, Archie?”  Fritz asked me.  His own raincoat was neatly hung over the chair that Wolfe used when he came into the kitchen to kibitz.

“Sure.  You?”

“Yes.  We are depleted from Thanksgiving, and the Peruvian melons must be obtained today or they will not be at their first freshness.”

“I could get those for you.”

He gave me the reproachful glance that was as close as he ever came to a scold.  Last time I’d picked up plantains at Meyer’s, which was over in Weehawken by the United Fruit Company facility, I’d brought back inferior product.  I should have noticed that the plantains had too many spots, it seems.  Then he said, “No, you must deposit the fee.”  Fritz always acted like we were on the verge of starvation, especially since Wolfe’s vacation, so his anxious attention to this latest fee was nothing new.  But I had to admit, the check that’d been forked over in the office last night was an especially juicy item.

“Okay, I won’t tell him about the rain if you don’t tell him.”

“As you say, we shall be discrete.”  Fritz gravely pressed his forefinger to his lips before he added, “I shall lock the front door but go out from the kitchen so that I may leave off the chain-bolt.”

Two hours later, I had reason to be grateful that chain was undone.  I was also glad that I’d stopped at the bank first because the check would have been pulp if it’d been in my breast pocket any longer.  Like an idiot, I’d let my unease about Wolfe and I keep me from taking the latest roadster he’d bought for me out of the garage for today’s short trips.  The storm soon gave me reason to regret that decision.

Instead of spending its power in one big surge and then slowing to a gentle fall, the way most early winter rains do, this storm had picked up speed.  What began as steady, blustery rain was now a gale.  Traffic lights swung and the street signs vibrated.  The water backed up above debris-clogged storm drains was pushed by the wind over the curbs and onto the sidewalks.  My raincoat had turned into a bad joke.  The wind forced water in everywhere, up my sleeves and cuffs, down my neck, and right through the placket.  I was soaked down to my skin and getting wetter by the minute.  My hat was long gone.

When I saw the policeman go over by Penn Station, I gave up.  He was the classic, burly traffic cop covered head to toe in heavy yellow slickers, and a gust blasting down Eighth Avenue picked him up and dumped him into the gutter like he was a toddler flying loose from a swing.  At least the only car nearby had a flooded engine, so he faced nothing worse than struggling to his feet in twelve inches of water.  I could tell by the way his lips were moving that he was expressing opinions, but you couldn’t hear the details over all the racket.  I’d grabbed a mail box to brace me against the same gust and, craning my neck around afterwards, didn’t see a single taxi.  When the cabs give up on loitering around a railway station, the going’s too rough for me.  I retreated towards the brownstone.

The trip back was worse than the trip out because now the air was full of debris:  sticks and leftover leaves, sodden, flapping sheets of paper, cardboard from signs, bits of plywood from crates, scraps of red canvas from a wrenched-off marquee.  Trashcans were rolling down the street.  If I squinted against the sideways-falling rain, I could see that the few other people still braving the elements were plastered against the buildings by the force of the wind.  One man who was hauling his kid toward the subway entrance almost had him go airborne when the wind got beneath Junior’s coat.  Wolfe himself might have been blown away.

Rarely have I been so relieved to see the seven steps leading up to Wolfe’s front stoop.  Fumbling in my pocket, I found my key.  Even that was dripping water when I pulled it out, and I had to shake it before it slid into the lock.  As I got the door open, the wind gave me one last blast of farewell, and I stumbled inside accompanied by enough water to supply your average duck for a month.  The door pulled free from my hand and slammed into the wall so hard the brownstone probably shook.  Me, the wind slammed into the big mahogany coat rack in the front hall.

Wolfe showed up right as I grabbed the door and forced it shut with my shoulder.  He’d been in the kitchen.  His suit coat was off and his yellow shirt sleeves were rolled up, so he’d been playing at cooking.  I got all the close-up details because when he saw the state I was in, he handed me the towel he’d been using so I could clean off my face.

When I’d sopped up enough water up to talk rather than gargle, I asked, “Where’s Fritz?”

“He’s still out.”

I was turning back to the door when Wolfe intervened.  “No, Archie.  He telephoned from Meyer’s to inform me that he is comfortable, playing dominos while sampling varieties of pineapples and bananas, and will return when he can.  The 42nd street ferry isn’t running.”

“One for the record books, but I believe it.  They probably can’t make headway against the wind.”

“Yes.  I left Theodore to his own company after he put the storm braces up on the panes.” In the greenhouses on the roof, he meant.  “He was becoming intolerable.”  Both his eyebrows drew down.  “You need a hot shower and soup.”

“No argument about either requirement.”  I’d managed to fight off my raincoat and was working on my suit coat, shoes, and socks.  Not that removing layers was doing any good in terms of dryness, but at least there was less fabric left on me to drip up the stairs and down the hall into my room.  As I unbuttoned buttons, my hands showed an annoying tendency to shake.

Wolfe came back with a few more towels from the office bathroom and then paused to glare at the points of interest around the decorative pond that used to be his front hall, starting with the wet heap of clothing on the floor, continuing on to the front door, and ending up at me.  “There’s a dent where the door handle hit the wall.”

“Just be glad Fritz wasn’t behind that door, opening it, at the time.” I couldn’t get my cufflinks to cooperate.  “The one-way glass didn’t crack, either.”  What the hell.  Had I put my links in backwards this morning?

I was so worn down that I didn’t protest when Wolfe grunted, grabbed my left arm, and removed the link for me.  “I’m certain that there will be damage to the glass in the warm room.  And I’ve noticed leakage through the calking above the bench holding the Odontoglossum Miraldae.”  He started work on my second cufflink as he kept belly-aching.  “You’ll have to telephone the glaziers.”

As for me, I was blinking a lot.  “I’d better call first thing so we’re towards the top of what’ll be a long list.”

“Not now.  Go upstairs. You’re sodden.”  His eyes narrowed as the shaking started to sneak up from my hands into other parts of me.  “You’re also exhausted.”  He took the last towel, the one he’d kept back to dry his own hands and thrust it towards me.  “I shall bring soup up to you, and coffee.”  He grimaced slightly at the culinary combination, and added, “You’ll need some brandy in the coffee.”

Grinning, I said, “Room service.  I never thought I’d see the day.”  Taking the towel, I made one last, vain attempt to dry my hair, which was now trying to imitate a haystack.

“Bah.”

“Not Bah, a miracle.  I would like to make one other point as well.”

“Yes?”

I spread my arms wide.  Water leaked in various directions.  “Notice that I’m not melting.  You’ll have to find a different reason in the future for me to shun the rain.”

He ignored me.  “Fritz left stock simmering over a low flame.  The soup will take around a half-hour to prepare.”  But he also stayed in the hall long enough to make sure the wind wasn’t going to sneak in the back door and blow me over on the stairs.

I was in my shower, making a list of all the reasons why this wetness was better than my recent wetness, when my brain caught up with me.  Given the way I’d been behaving, you have thought I’d forgotten everything that had happened since I’d returned from Norway.

This outbreak hadn’t started with Wolfe.  He could – every so often – keep calm when someone other than him was in trouble.  For example, there was that time I’d knocked myself out and—  There was that time Zeck’s men had pumped a few hundred bullets into the greenhouse on the roof.  No, today’s problem was with me.  I’d let him fuss over me in the hall like I was Cattleya Archiae Goodwini.

Pushing the notion away, bailing out of the shower, I grabbed a towel and took one more try at getting dry.  This time I succeeded since I only had skin and hair to work over.  Then I put on my pajamas and the silk robe Wolfe had given me for Christmas a couple of years back.  By the time I was done with all of this, I was shaking hard enough to give up my notions of reclaiming my independence by going downstairs to the kitchen.  I was lucky to make it to the door when I heard his knock.

I opened the door and Wolfe was standing in the hall holding his very own breakfast tray, now loaded with my soup and laced coffee, not to mention a few extras.  Leaning against the doorjamb, I grinned at him until he glared.  Then I said, “Don’t mind me.  I’m only storing this vision against lean times to come.”

He growled, more than asked, “May I come in?”

“Please do.”  I opened the door wide and swept him a bow, which proved to be a mistake. But I got over to the bed and sat down before the shakes could get a good hold again.

He put the tray down on the foot of my bed.  “I’ll leave this here.  You can bring it back downstairs once you’ve rested.”

“Thanks.  If you’re still feeling this ominous surge of vigor in a few minutes, drink a little of the leftover brandy before you sit down and it will pass.”

I made it through all of the onion soup and most of the coffee before I gave up and had to swing my feet around and beneath the covers.  As I started to go under, I also gave up on my earlier worries.  After all, this wasn’t some pulp romance where Wolfe had the right to seize me in his manly arms and cover my shining visage with soft, warm kisses while declaring his love, all because I’d let him serve me soup in my bedroom.  He’d rather choke to death on canned pork and beans than try that kind of crap.  And of course he’d served me soup.  If I got sick, he’d have to call the glaziers all by himself.

So what if I’d enjoyed the fuss?  His fussing had always entertained me.  Obviously, nothing had changed between us, whether he was lavender or not.  Nothing important had changed at all.

 

V

 

It was a good thing that Fritz made it back that evening, or Wolfe might have overstrained himself from the effort of choosing between his own cooking and scavenging the refrigerator too many times in one week.  He didn’t have to call the glazier, either, because I made it downstairs in time to leave a message and then eat enough endive with Martinique dressing, kidney pie, and Peruvian melon to prove to both of them that I wasn’t returning upstairs to my deathbed.

Since we’d all survived the Great Storm of 1950, life at the brownstone calmed down.  Wolfe seemed to sense that I’d come to some sort of truce with myself and relaxed.  I hadn’t realized how tense he’d been until he fired me for four hours that Tuesday afternoon over my observations about his prejudice against fried eggs.  Two days after that, Lily returned home.

“I missed all the fun,” she complained.  We were having dinner at Rustermann’s, my treat, to celebrate her return.

“If that’s what you call it.  I prefer to think of my dunking as a fated punishment for those dog-baths I gave Rover back in Ohio.  Little did I know.”

“Please tell me that you shook yourself dry all over you-know-who.”

“No, he brought me soup.  Upstairs.”

“Listen to the man boast.”  She turned to Marko Vukcic, who was standing by our table, taking our orders personally as a sign of respect to Wolfe.  “He’s hopeless.  I place myself entirely in your hands.”

He beamed at her.  Marko was about as large as a lion walking around on his hind legs, and had the mane to match.  He’d kept Rustermann’s on top of the Manhattan restaurant pile for above two decades now, a feat slightly more difficult than engraving the Larousse Gastronomique on the head of a pin.  He also loved a good-looking woman, so Lily was a favorite of his. “Squabs a la Moscovite for you,” he said.  Then he turned to me.  “Archie?”

“The tournedos.”

“Good.  You will wish to start with some soup,” he said before he threw back his head and roared.

From him, I took it.  “Sure,” I said tolerantly, “laugh.  But it’s been a long time since he brewed you any soup.”

“It has been decades since I let Nero prepare me soup, or anything else.  But yes, my young friend, his culinary talents are now at your service, such as they are.”  Suddenly he turned serious and patted my shoulder.  “I am glad you awaited his return.”

Lily raised her eyes to heaven.  Marko turned back to her with a smile half-coaxing and half-smoldering.  Her own lips stretched in a response I’d bet she hadn’t intended, and I made a mental note to try on Marko’s smile in the mirror some time.  “Ah, Miss Rowan, forgive us.  You are too beautiful to be jealous and too confident to be afraid.  As for annoyed?  I fear annoyance is the lot in life of those who deal with great talent.”

“I know.”  Her smile turned wistful.  “That’s why I’m waiting so patiently for my squabs.”

He roared again.  I hiked an eyebrow as this time he slapped my shoulder.  “Archie is always lucky in his friends.”  Then he raised his hands.  “No, no, don’t bother to hone the keen edge of your wits on me.  I retreat and leave to you the battlefield.”

Having honored us with the Captain’s presence, Marko went in back to resume terrifying his crew, abandoning us to his waiters.  Lily and I settled in to enjoy ourselves and finish catching up.  I’d already sensed she was preoccupied, but it wasn’t until we were working on our entrees that she spilled what was on her mind.  “I have a favor to ask.”

Lily’s careful with her requests, so I put my fork down and listened.  “Go on.”

“I brought back the Mathens with me when I came home.”  They were the new friends who’d played native guides on her trip through Denmark.  “Ulrik – the Count – isn’t taking the hint that it’s time for him to go bye-bye.”

I raised my eyebrows.  “You have enough experience scraping them off that he must be something special.”

“Mm-hmm.”  She sighed and tapped the ring finger on her left hand.  “He has a castle and he’s willing to share.  Some men think the jeweler’s box in their pockets opens all locks.”

“He didn’t strike me as that stupid.”

“He’s not.  He’s really gone.”  She fluttered a hand above her heart and I nodded.  “Usually I’d bounce him hard enough to wake him up, but not now.  His sister’s with him and she’s a darling.”

“If you wouldn’t try making friends—”

“Stinker.”

“Where do I come in?  I warn you, I’m not much good at the badger game.”

“Double stinker with green cheese.  No, I nearly have him talked down.”  She held her elegant thumb and forefinger close together to show her progress.  “But I still need you for stage dressing at a house party I’m giving next weekend out in Westchester.”

I looked at her.  Looming, or even playing hail-fellow-well-met, at a house party was not a favor worth this much of a build-up.  “What’s the catch?”

“There’ll be a masquerade on Sunday.”

I looked at her some more.  She met my gaze with a look that was rueful and exasperated at the same time.  “Social manipulations.  Don’t even try to understand.”

“You don’t ask small favors.”

“Neither do you.  Be brave, little soldier.”  Her dimples were elegant, too.  “There could be rewards for your sacrifice.  I found some for mine.  Necking with Pete was fun.  I think you’d look nifty in chaps.”

“I think I’m choosing my own costume.”

She’s smart, too.  Without another word on the subject, she picked up her knife and fork and went back to dissecting her squabs with neat skill.  Ulrik didn’t stand a chance.

***

If I had to make a list of favorite weekends out at Lily’s place in Westchester, that one would be down below the time the plumbing needed work.  Not that the company was bad:  knowing what she was in for, Lily had labored hard to pick houseguests who wouldn’t make the situation worse.  But all anyone wanted to talk about was the war or the storm, and there are only so many advancing hoards of Red Chinese and summer porches crushed under tree trunks that a party can take before getting gloomy.  Ulrik didn’t help.  He was perfectly polite, even to me, but had the air about him of the one turkey in the know five days before Thanksgiving.

By the time I dressed on Sunday I was fed up.  Lily had already warned me that the guests for the party about to begin were a chancy lot since she’d secured them on short notice.  Also, I was putting on a costume, something I hadn’t stood still for since I was old enough that they couldn’t catch me.  My only consolation was that there wouldn’t be any cameras at this affair, but I didn’t have the same guarantee about society columnists.  Since this do was supposed to be for the benefit of the U.S.O., interfering with the press was right out.

Maybe an hour later, I was already lurking behind a cluster of potted palms close to the wet bar, trying to avoid a society Miss who wanted me to find her lost Siamese as a gateway to greater things.  Although I’d ditched the stuffed parrot that was supposed to go with my costume, I’d saved the eye patch.  I knew from the streets that keeping the patch towards the room would reduce the number of guests who approached me while I downed a much-needed bourbon and branch.

The patch wasn’t over either of my ears, though.  I heard it when Abraham Lincoln and Mark Anthony, both at the bar, mentioned a topic of interest.

“The blond, is that him?  The King of Sweden?”

Lincoln’s reply was amused.  “Unlike Minnie the Moocher, Miss Rowan doesn’t need the King of Sweden to give her everything that she was needin’.  Besides, he’s Danish.”

“You never were one for a joke.  Perhaps I’ve reversed matters and the Count’s another fellow like her detective, one of the sort who appreciates gifts.”

My eyes narrowed but I didn’t speak.  Honest Abe had been at Lily’s house party, and, courtesy of the financial records of Foxley and Deerfield, I knew more than I should have about both him and Mark Anthony.  They were well-born, not-so-well-off fraternity brothers who’d married daughters of the same deceased sugar magnate.  Mark Anthony probably thought he could strut because he was now an investment banker.  We’d spent some time on him during the case.

I wasn’t too surprised that Lincoln said, “Gifts or no, Goodwin’s tops at what he does, or so I hear.”  He and his wife had been tolerable the last two days.

“He’s still on someone else’s tab.  How’s Sarah feeling about your latest venture, by the way?”

“She’s not upset.”  Lincoln stayed mild.  “She comprehends that free clinics rarely make money and seems to have found other aspects of my decision that she very much likes.”  He was some kind of doctor.  Suddenly, his voice went strong and stern.  “Wait.  Are those your heart pills you’re about to wash down with that Scotch?  Don’t be a fool.”

His words and tone were now reminding me of someone else.  Got it:  Frank Evans again, likely because I’d been spending so much time lately thinking about him.  He’d said something with the same gist to the town’s biggest banker one day while I’d been lurking by the prescription counter, sneaking peeks at the copies of National Geographic meant  for waiting patrons.  I’d been impressed by him facing down a local lion.

Frank had become a good druggist who’d feared nothing but a bad prescription.  Chillicothe could have done much worse, had done much worse when he’d left.  Evans Senior had been lucky in his junior partner and heir.  Or maybe he’d chosen well.

Preoccupied, I ignored the rest of the conversation and wandered off at an angle that would keep me out of the line of sight of the happy in-laws.  I wanted to finish my train of thought but it was neatly derailed by a fellow in a Bela Lugosi cape and fangs who wanted to feed me his theory on Lizzie Borden.  I should have broken down and worn a mask even if it would have looked stupid beneath the kerchief around my head.  The sash and earring were bad enough.

I didn’t mind at all when Lily came into the room and gave me the high sign.  Only an hour in and this party was already proving to be a treat.  Making my excuses, I worked my way across the floor to where she stood by the double doors to the veranda.  She nodded towards the outside.

The night was overcast, and the temperature wasn’t too bad.  But the chill was enough to keep the veranda clear this early in the evening, before anyone overheated from dining, dancing, and too-clever costuming.  We had the place to ourselves.  I asked, “Trouble?”

“Not hardly.  I was able to make Ulrik see reason.  At last!”

“So why the interruption?  Are he and I dueling at dawn?”

She huffed a laugh.  “Don’t encourage me.  No, he’s officially off me.”

“How’s the sister taking it?”

With a smile, she said, “When last seen, she was offering sympathy.  I don’t think they know he’s been handled.  I wound up my persuasions with the responsibility-to-your-blood ploy.”

“Gets ‘em every time.”

Her smile faded into something more sympathetic.  “Poor Ulrik.  But this’ll be easier on him in the end.”  Our eyes met.  We both knew she wasn’t kidding, and I borrowed her hand for a grave salute.  She squeezed my own hand in response and said briskly, “Right now he wants to nurse his wounds.  Back in Manhattan, by preference.”

“And Sister stays here.”

“She’ll comfort me tomorrow while I help her pack, leaving him able to seek liquid consolation tonight.  Or maybe company.  Also, you now have an excuse to duck out on the party.  He’s waiting in the foyer.”

I shook my head in admiration.  “Neat.  But I might not make it back.”

She leaned in to give me a kiss and then grimaced, not at me.  “I wouldn’t blame you.”

 

VI

 

By the time I’d had to join the Count in his suite at the Biltmore for his first two drinks, to prove I wasn’t a sore winner, I was so sick of polite and stoic suffering that I decided to skip the drive back to Westchester and go straight on to the brownstone.  I knew Lily’s maid, the ever-efficient Mimi, would bring my bag back to Manhattan with them on Monday, and I’d only have to brave the streets in costume tonight for the block and a half between the garage and the front stoop.  It’d be worth the walk just for my own bed, without even considering the party back at Lily’s, which should be picking up steam right around now.

I was almost to the brownstone when I spotted the guy climbing the seven steps to the stoop.  Yeah, I should have guessed what was going on, but I’d been reviewing that conversation at the party again.  Taken by surprise, I bounced up the steps fast just in case he was someone who shouldn’t be there.  The last few years had involved too many bombs and guns for me to be casual.

Startled, he turned from ringing the bell, and I got a look at his face in the light.  He was young, brown-haired, and good-looking in a scrub-faced way that reminded me of Johnny Keems, the most annoying of Wolfe’s stringers.  His hair was slicked back and his overcoat was dark, daring, and cheap.  As I stepped forward he took a cautious step back.

“Looking for someone?”  I asked him genially.

“Likely I have the wrong address,” he said, with wariness substituted for about half his own geniality.  “I was looking for 918.”

The address was in brass right next to the door.  “You found it.”

“Oh,” he said, “okay.”  He eyed me again.  For some reason he seemed surprised.  “Are you going to let me in?”  Then, as if he’d just remembered, he dove at his overcoat pocket.  “I’m sorry, I forgot.  The card.”

He fished out a piece of pasteboard and handed to me.  I tilted it in the light and read the name printed on it.  Pete Roeder.  I flipped the card over, and ten o’clock was block-printed in ink on the back.

While I’d been checking his passport, he’d been checking me.  Looking up, I was about to inquire as to what was so interesting when I remembered how I was dressed.  He’d come to some conclusions, too.  With a smile on his face that was too friendly for my tastes, he asked, “So, now are you going to let me in?”

As I’d spent weeks drumming into my brain, I had no right to notice.  Wolfe could have any strange birds he wanted to visit him at the brownstone.  I let him in.

While I was hanging up my coat, he looked around the front hall and seemed to relax.  His voice was different than it’d been on the stoop when he said, “That’s a truly striking outfit.”

“I’ve been at a masquerade.”

I don’t know what was in my own voice, but all of a sudden he looked wary again.  Whatever else he was, though, he wasn’t yellow.  Stepping forward, he put one hand on my forearm.  “I certainly don’t mind, Mr. Roeder.”  Switching expressions to a practiced smile, he said, “The costume suits you.  My name is Randolph, by the way.”

What would have happened next, I just don’t know.  I never got to find out.  A voice behind us said, “Gentlemen,” and I whirled as if the single, sharp word had been a gunshot.

There, in one of his usual suits, but wearing a white shirt beneath his vest, stood Nero Wolfe.

***

I stepped away from Randolph like he was, well, Randolph.  “I got back from Westchester early.”  That was obvious.  “There was a masquerade.”  Even better.  “I’ll head upstairs.”  And that was unneeded.  So far I was zero for three in the smoothness rankings.

Wolfe studied me.  His eyes narrowed to slits, and his lips pulled in and pushed out, twice.  Then he opened his eyes wide and turned to Randolph, who was taking this in with a bemused smile on his handsome face.  “It seems I shall not require your services after all.”  Wolfe reached into his inner coat pocket, pulled out a sealed envelope, not fat, not thin, and handed it to the guy.  “This gentleman will see you out.”  He turned back to me and raised both eyebrows, and then headed for the office when I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t try to stop him, either.  Instead I said to Randolph, “Follow me.”

At least the guy had enough class not to open the envelope and count its contents until he was out on the front stoop.  When I’d seen the bills under the porch light, I had to lean my forehead against the pane of one-way glass in the door and close my eyes.  Catching myself, I straightened up and went back to the office to deal with Wolfe.

To my surprise, he wasn’t behind his desk.  He sat in the red leather chair reserved for important visitors, his elbow on the chair arm, his forehead resting on the tips of his first two fingers.  I’d never seen him park that way in all the years I’d worked for him and the novelty disturbed me, which also annoyed me.

After walking over to his desk, I perched on the edge facing him, my arms folded across my chest.  I asked, “Since champagne is bad for you, you’re all of a sudden switching to bootleg gin?  What next, moonshine?”

He lowered his hand and looked at me.  When he spoke the words were quiet, his version of the rattle sounding on a snake’s tail.  “Do you truly believe that I don’t know how to safely manage this sort of affair?”  He tugged at one cuff of his white shirt, forgettable compared to the canary yellow he usually wore.  Right then, I didn’t care.

“Like hell.  I’d bet you couldn’t—” I said and then stopped.  Our gazes had met.

When I’d gotten a clear look at him back during that masquerade of his, I’d recognized his eyes first, and more with my gut than with my head.  Wolfe’s eyes are dark brown, nothing special unless you pay attention.  I’ve seen them about ten or twenty thousand times a year.  But now, just like had happened on that day he marched back into my life from Los Angeles, I got a good look at his eyes and the skin tingled in the small of my back.  The sensation made me stop and think even though I’d rather have tangoed with Randolph than raked over what I was feeling.

After a pause, my own eyes widening, I said, “I’m jealous.”

His eyes narrowed down again to slits.  His snort was almost delicate. “So it seems.”

“Nuts.”  That was all I found to say, but the word didn’t mean I was arguing with him.

Wolfe snapped peevishly, “This is hard enough without you perched there, forcing me to crick my neck.  Please sit.”

So I did.  I moved one of the yellow chairs and sat.  He talked first.  “You’ve always been territorial.  I doubt this is anything more than a spate of possessiveness.”

“You make it sound like all I need is a good dose of castor oil.  While I appreciate the effort, I’ll do my own doctoring, thank you.  To repeat, I’m as green as a house frau whose husband’s off at the Shriner’s convention.”

His lips twitched.

“Go ahead, laugh it up.  I wish I could.”  My words were bitter.  I shook my head.  “At least you’re the one chasing, not the one playing the little woman.  This is damned well undignified.”

“An unneeded and uncomfortable complication to what should be our simple working relationship,” he agreed, his tone as close to glum as I’d ever heard him when his own sweat wasn’t at stake.

My mouth registered his mistake before my brain could nix the idea.  “Gosh.  Our relationship.  I didn’t know you cared.  Was it the Norwegian haircut?”

That did it.  He heaved himself up out of the red leather chair in record time, but I caught him before he got out the door.  “Archie—” he growled, just as I said, “Don’t—”

Then we both stopped dead again as we noticed that I had him by the forearm, and his free hand was on mine but not trying to peel it off.  He dropped his hand.  Slowly, I let go. He closed his eyes, gave his head a tiny shake, and opened his eyes again.  “If the problem was purely physical, we wouldn’t be acting like such witlings.”

Even his starting this new topic made my teeth ache.  By his expression, his teeth hurt, too.  I jumped back from the fire into the frying pan. “Or maybe your having sex is what’s boiling your brain.”

That particular grunt of his was downright rude.

“On my side, the wild novelty of the notion may be what blows my gaskets.”

“You’re babbling.”

“No.  The perverse urge isn’t new, only your being mixed up in it.”  I wasn’t sure I could get out the words to explain, but he is a detective, so I found him evidence instead.  Remembering a long-ago day, I got his hand and relocated it to where I’d wanted a hand so desperately then.

“What the devil?” he asked, sounding like he’d been sucker-punched, and then at a better volume added, “Enough!”  His hand didn’t let loose, though.  It curved around me, finding me through the layers of fabric.  His grip was sure and knowing as he cupped what he found.  My entire body came alert.  All of a sudden, what I’d done to illustrate a point turned real.  I felt my eyes widen as I pulled in some air.  He said, trying to sound convinced, “This is a classic of absurdity.”

“Not all that classic,” I said, not to discourage or distract him, but to say something.  “Otherwise we’d be heading down the usual path.  And this isn’t how I remember matters going, at least the last time.”

The twist of his lips in response was wry.  “All my efforts at discretion squandered on a false assumption.  I should have suspected.”  His palm was moving, and so were my hips.  Then he was undoing the buttons of the costume pants and my hands were tight on his shoulders.  By the time he had me out, one of my hands thought it should be laced into his hair.  And when he startled me by getting down onto his knees, my hands seemed to lose track entirely of where I was and who I was with.  He might has well have been Hedy Lamarr for all they cared.

Smashing in your own sandcastle is fun.  Starting a fistfight can feel great.  There’s a rough pleasure in sex with a woman who you won’t stay friends with afterwards.  I recognized that part of what I was feeling, and even while I burned, while my cock throbbed in the wetness of his mouth, I managed to say to Wolfe, “This isn’t me quitting.”

He stopped, warm around me.  I could smell his sweat and the scent of his geranium shaving soap, and I reined back the urge to thrust.  His left hand rubbed my thigh through those pants almost absently, and I wondered if he could feel the muscles trembling.  Then his mouth turned gentle as he slowly, slowly, pulled off of me, tongue stroking around my cock the entire way.  His hand took back over, working me leisurely as he said, considering, “I don’t intend to fire you.”

With his mouth off of me, I could think a little and talk a lot.  “You’d never get the germination records straightened out again, what with all the other interruptions this year.”

“True.”  He leaned forward and lapped at me, leaned back and said, “Then we’ll posit that this isn’t fodder for debate.”

“No.  We just tripped.”  I combed both hands through his hair again, touched his cheek, ran a thumb along his full lips.  “But at least you get a chance to show off.  And if you hadn’t been so hasty, you could’ve saved some money, too.”

He smiled at me, the inch-wide one he keeps for big events we won’t discuss.  Then he ran his lips, still smiling, across the ridge just below the head of my cock before he pulled me in again.  What happened next was as good a recommendation for Nero Wolfe in a plummy mood as you could ever want.  I damn near saw stars.

When I hauled him up onto his feet afterwards, I could tell that he thought play time was over, or at least the part was over where I’d want to join in.  He’s conceited enough to believe that I’d be willing to rest on his laurels.  So I caught him by surprise when I wrapped arms around him to keep him still and then used my left leg to double-check that I’d had the effect I should have.

I had, of course.  At least he was smart enough to keep his commentary down to a glare while I got him out in the open where I could fix the problem.  He did talk after he was in hand, but those words were right for what we were doing, so that was fine.

Neither of us was in a hurry to pull apart afterwards, probably so we wouldn’t have to find out what happened next.  At the back of my mind, I made a note to ask him about the wool he’d picked for his new suit so I could mention the fabric to my own tailor.  The soft weave felt good beneath my arms where I had them wrapped around him, something useful to know when you spend a lot of time dancing.  One of his big paws was working on the back of my neck, nice but not needed.  The tension that I’d been carrying around this past month – hell, since he’d disappeared back in the spring – seemed to have unwound.  I asked him, “When’s Fritz coming back?”

“Early tomorrow morning.  He’s visiting a friend.”

“Likely the one with good taste in perfume.  Theodore’s at his sister’s in New Jersey?”

“She needs a wind-felled tree removed.”

“Good.  I hope he likes the work.  I’ll need some work done later, too.”

“You’re overestimating my vigor.”

“I bet not.  I could use more entertainment, and I bet you haven’t presented even half your routines.  Why, you’ve been to three continents.  I bet you’ve tried things we never dreamt of in Ohio.  I bet—”

“Four.”

“What?”

“Four continents, and is this your puerile way of proposing that you accompany me up to my bedroom?”

I tilted my head and frowned.  “Well, I hadn’t gotten to the bet about your yellow silk sheets yet.”

He kissed me.  Even after what he’d been up to, not bad at all, and an interesting change of pace from shut up.  But, damn it, I should have pinned him down on those wagers.  By the end of the evening, I could have won a bundle.

 

VII

 

Wolfe’s not fond of excessive exercise of any kind, so he wasn’t hard to wedge into my schedule.  Enough to say, I was happy not to add any more Roberts and Randolphs to the special list of annoyances headed by Orrie Cather and Johnnie Keems.  I also discovered Wolfe had paid attention to more than cuisine while criss-crossing between those continents, back when he was a buccaneer instead of a moored battleship.  Sure, he wouldn’t win the swimsuit competition, but he’d place in the talent show.

Best of all, he didn’t want to be wooed with the kind of words that I’m so often coaxed for and don’t have to give.  He was what he wished to be without needing my help.  I told him once he reminded me of Lily that way, expecting a snort, and got a nod instead.  “You chose those who guard your gates with care.”

I’ve learned he was right.  I put the final torpedo into my chance at the vine-covered cottage when I went upstairs with him that first evening.  I torpedoed the notion of my own detective agency, too, but I’d already taken the first shot at that when he returned from exile and I returned to the brownstone.  In fact, I’d already taken aim long before I grabbed his forearm and then his hand on that evening back in December of ‘50.

Just because I don’t jaw it to death, doesn’t mean I don’t know when I’m really gone.

***

“Gardening tools?” Lily frowned, considering.

“He’d decide they were the wrong ones,” I said.

“Yellow cambric handkerchiefs.”

“Not clothing.  Not from a woman.  Besides, he hasn’t forgiven you for those colored shirts you gave me four years ago, especially the one with the thin purple stripe.”

Lily rolled her eyes.  “That’s hardly fair, since you’re the one who chose to wear them around him.”  I gave her a look and she said, “Oh, fine.  Pheasant from the Montana ranch.  I suppose my pantry can stand the sacrifice.”

I considered the idea, stretching my arm along the back of her couch.  I considered some more.  “That might do the trick, especially as a thought that counts.  He ate the salmon, and the cloudberries showed up in a glaze on venison a few days ago.”

“Without a word of thanks to the donor, I’d bet.  Fickle fatty.  His having access to all those orchids just isn’t fair.”

“You won’t be complaining December 26^th,” I told her tolerantly, took the shapely left foot currently parked in my lap, and gave it a shake.

She sighed.  “One of these days I’ll trump him.”  Her toes curled.  “I know you must have come up with something special this year.  You’ve been discretely gloating for weeks.  What did you finally settle on?”

I grinned.  But the joke would have to stay private.  “A book token.”

She pulled her feet out of my lap and sat bolt upright.  “Archie Goodwin, you are such a man!”

 

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