Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 Read Online Free PDF Page A

bank to make a deposit. When I got back he was on his second bottle of beer and deep in his book. Apparently his idea was to go on reading until Thursday’s show for buyers.
    For one o’clock lunch in the dining room, which was across the hall from the office, Fritz served us with chicken livers and tomato halves fried in oil and trimmed with chopped peppers and parsley, followed by rice cakes and honey. I took it easy on the livers because of my attitude toward Fritz’s rice cakes. I was on my fifth cake, or maybe sixth, when the doorbell rang. During meals Fritz always answers the door, on account of Wolfe’s feeling that the main objection to atom bombs is that they may interrupt people eating. Through the open door from the dining room to the hall I saw Fritz pass on his way to the front, and a moment later his voice came, trying to persuade someone to wait in the office until Wolfe had finished lunch. There was no other voice, but there were steps, and then our visitor was marching in on us—a man about Wolfe’s age, heavy-set, muscular, red-faced, and obviously aggressive.
    It was our chum Inspector Cramer, head of Homicide. He advanced to the table before he stopped and spoke to Wolfe.
    “Hello. Sorry to break in on your meal.”
    “Good morning,” Wolfe said courteously. For him it was always morning until he had finished his lunch coffee. “If you haven’t had lunch we can offer you—”
    “No, thanks, I’m busy and in a hurry. A woman named Cynthia Nieder came to see you yesterday.”
    Wolfe put a piece of rice cake in his mouth. I had a flash of a thought: Good God, the client’s dead.
    “Well?” Cramer demanded.
    “Well what?” Wolfe snapped. “You stated a fact. I’m eating lunch.”
    “Fine. It’s a fact. What did she want?”
    “You know my habits and customs, Mr. Cramer.”Wolfe was controlling himself. “I never talk business at a meal. I invited you to join us and you declined. If you will wait in the office—”
    Cramer slapped a palm on the table, rattling things. My guess was that Wolfe would throw the coffee pot, since it was the heaviest thing handy, but I couldn’t stay for it because along with the sound of Cramer’s slap the doorbell rang again, and I thought I’d better not leave this one to Fritz. I got up and went, and through the one-way glass panel in the front door I saw an object that relieved me. The client was still alive and apparently unhurt. She was standing there on the stoop.
    I pulled the door open, put my finger on my lips, muttered at her, “Keep your mouth shut,” and with one eye took in the police car parked at the curb, seven steps down from the stoop. The man seated behind the wheel, a squad dick with whom I was acquainted, was looking at us with an expression of interest. I waved at him, signaled Cynthia to enter, shut the door, and elbowed her into the front room, which faces the street and adjoins the office.
    She looked scared, untended, haggard, and determined.
    “The point is,” I told her, “that a police inspector named Cramer is in the dining room asking about you. Do you want to see him?”
    “Oh.” She gazed at me as if she were trying to remember who I was. “I’ve already seen him.” She looked around, saw a chair, got to it, and sat. “They’ve been—asking me—questions for hours—”
    “Why, what happened?”
    “My uncle—” Her head went forward and she covered her face with her hands. In a moment she lookedup at me and said, “I want to see Nero Wolfe,” and then covered her face with her hands again.
    It might, I figured, take minutes to nurse her to the point of forming sentences. So I told her, “Stay here and sit tight. The walls are soundproofed, but keep quiet anyhow.”
    When I rejoined them in the dining room the coffee pot was still on the table unthrown, but the battle was on. Wolfe was out of his chair, erect, rigid with rage.
    “No, sir,” he was saying in his iciest tone, “I have not finished my