Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 31 Read Online Free PDF

require a special etiquette.”
    “I’m for Paul,” Cecil Grantham declared. “Locking up the booze doesn’t come under etiquette. It comes under tyranny.”
    Kent turned to me. “What about you, Goodwin? I understand you’re a detective, so maybe you can detect the answer.”
    I put my coffee cup down. “I’m a little hazy,” I said, “as to what you’re after. If you just want to decide whether you used the word ‘protocol’ right, the best plan would be to get the dictionary. There’s one upstairs in the library. But if what you want is brandy, and the cabinet is locked, the best plan would be for one of us to go to a liquor store. There’s one at the corner of Eighty-second and Madison. We could toss up.”
    “The practical man,” Laidlaw said. “The man of action.”
    “You notice,” Cecil told them, “that he knows where the dictionary is and where the liquor store is. Detectives know everything.” He turned to me. “By the way, speaking of detectives, are you here professionally?”
    Not caring much for his tone, I raised my brows. “If I were, what would I say?”
    “Why—I suppose you’d say you weren’t.”
    “And if I weren’t what would I say?”
    Robert Robilotti let out a snort.
“Touché
, Cece. Try another one.” He pronounced it “Seese.” Cecil’s mother called him “Sessel,” and his sister called him “Sesse.”
    Cecil ignored his father-in-law. “I was just asking,” he told me. “I shouldn’t ask?”
    “Sure, why not? I was just answering.” I moved my head right and left. “Since the question has been asked, it may be in all your minds. If I were here professionally I would let it stand on my answer to Grantham, but since I’m not, you might as well knowit. Austin Byne phoned this morning and asked me to take his place. If any of you are bothered enough you can check with him.”
    “I think,” Robilotti said, “that it is none of our business. I know it is none of my business.”
    “Nor mine,” Schuster agreed.
    “Oh, forget it,” Cecil snapped. “What the hell, I was just curious. Shall we join the mothers?”
    Robilotti darted a glance at him, not friendly. After all, who was the host? “I was about to ask,” he said, “if anyone wants more coffee. No?” He left his chair. “We will join them in the music room and escort them downstairs and it is understood that each of us will dance first with his dinner partner. If you please, gentlemen?”
    I got up and shook my pants legs down.

Chapter 3
    I ’ll be darned if there wasn’t a live band in the alcove—piano, sax, two violins, clarinet, and traps. A record player and speaker might have been expected, but for the mothers, spare no expense. Of course, in the matter of expense, the fee for the band was about balanced by the saving on liquids—the soda water in the cocktails, the pink stuff passing for wine at the dinner table, and the brandy ban—so it wasn’t too extravagant. The one all-out splurge on liquids came after we had been dancing an hour or so, when Hackett appeared at the bar and began opening champagne, Cordon Rouge, and poured it straight, no dilution or adulteration. With only an hour to go, apparently Mrs. Robilotti had decided to take a calculated risk.
    As a dancing partner Rose Tuttle was not a bargain. She was equipped for it physically and she had some idea of rhythm, that wasn’t it; it was her basic attitude. She danced cheerfully, and of course that was no good. You can’t dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art’s sake, but it can’t be cheerful. For onething, if you’re cheerful you talk too much. Helen Yarmis was better, or would have been if she hadn’t been too
damn
solemn. We would work into the rhythm together and get going fine, when all of a sudden she would stiffen up and was just a dummy making motions. She was a good size for me, too, with the top of her head level with my nose, and the