Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 45 Read Online Free PDF

for the day and would send the tickets for the ball game by messenger, and I hoped she could find someone who could yell at the umpire as loud as I did. And then, about eight minutes after the messenger had come and taken the tickets, the phone rang, and it was Mrs. Odell in person, not the secretary. She said she wanted to speak with Wolfe and I said no, that he didn’t even know I had written her and seen her.
    “My god,” she said, “you might think he’s the President. I want to see him. Bring him.”
    “I can’t and he wouldn’t. Honestly, Mrs. Odell, I wish he would. It would do him good to get out more, but not a chance. If there was a way of scoring pigheadedness it would be interesting to match him with you. I think he’d win.”
    “Of course I’m pigheaded. I always have been.”
    “I’m perfectly willing to make it ‘strong-minded’ if you prefer.”
    Silence. It lasted so long that I thought she had quit without bothering to hang up. Then she said, “I’ll be there at six o’clock.”
    “Today? Sunday?”
    “Yes.” She hung up.
    I took a deep breath and enjoyed it. So far so good, but the highest hurdle was still ahead. The Sunday household routine was different. Theodore didn’t come on Sunday and Wolfe’s morning with the orchids could be anything from twenty minutes to four hours. Also Fritz might leave for the day right after breakfast, or he might not. That day not, he had said. The question was when to spring it. Going up to the plant rooms with it was of course out of the question; I wasn’t welcome there even for a real emergency. I decided not to decide until he came down and I saw what his mood was like.
    When he showed, a little after eleven, he had the Sunday Times under one arm and a fourteen-inch raceme of Peristeria elata in the other hand, and his “Good morning” was a greeting, not just a growl. So when the flowers were in the vase and his bulk was satisfactorily arranged in the made-to-order chair he wouldn’t swap for its weight in uranium, I spoke.
    “Before you get started on the Review of the Week , I have an item you won’t like. A woman is coming to see you at six o’clock today. Mrs. Peter J. Odell, whose husband opened a desk drawer and died. I had to ignore the rule on consulting you before making an appointment.”
    He was glaring at me. “I was here. I was available.”
    “Sure, but it was an emergency.” I opened a drawer of my desk and took out a paper. “This is a carbon of a letter I sent her Friday afternoon.” I rose, handed it to him, and returned to my chair. “She phoned yesterday morning, or her secretary did, and I went to see her yesterday afternoon, at her house on Sixty-third Street. She asked me to phone you to come, which of course wasn’t discussable. I told her the only place she could see you was your office. She phoned this morning, an hour ago, and said she would be here at six o’clock.
    He had read the letter. He read it again, with his lips pressed tight. He dropped it on his desk and looked at me. Not a glare or a scowl, just a hard, straight look. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “It would be insufferable, as you well know.”
    I nodded. “Of course that’s the reaction I expected. But she’ll be here at six. The emergency I referred to is in the safe. Your checkbook. You have of course noticed that since May first I have been giving you a memo of the condition every week instead of twice a month. Of the hundred and fifty-eight days this year you have worked about ten and I have worked less than twenty, not counting office chores. I happened—”
    “Not ‘less’ than twenty. ‘Fewer.’”
    “Thank you. I happened to learn that Mrs. Odell’s pile goes to eight figures, maybe even nine. The alternatives were (a) quit this job and make her an offer, or (b) get her to make you an offer. I tossed a coin and you won. So I wrote her that letter.”
    “Now,” he said through his teeth with his lips barely