Plot It Yourself

Making room on the shelves of one of the cabinets, I lugged the stuff from the table to it, seven trips, locked the cabinet, returned the table to the front room, and went up to bed.

Chapter 4

I never made that suggestion because I slept it off. I had a better one. At eight-fifteen Thursday morning I descended two flights, entered the kitchen, exchanged good mornings with Fritz, picked up my ten- ounce glass of orange juice, took that first sour-sweet sip, which is always the first hint that the fog is going to lift, and inquired, “No omelet?”

Fritz shut the refrigerator door. “You well know, Archie, what it means when the eggs are not broken.”

“Sure, but I’m hungry.”

It meant that when Fritz had taken Wolfe’s breakfast tray up to his room he had been told that I was wanted, and he would not break eggs until he heard me coming down again. I will not gulp orange juice, so after a second sip I took it along-up a flight, left to the door standing open at the end of the hall, and in. Wolfe, barefooted, a yellow mountain in his pajamas, was in his next-to-favourite chair at the table by a window, spooning raspberry jam onto a griddle cake. I returned his greeting and went on, “Copies of The Moth That Ate Peanuts and Barrage at Dawn are probably available at the publishers’, but it might take days to dig up the magazines with Jane Ogilvy’s poems. Also will the books be enough for Alice Porter and Simon Jacobs, or will you want some stories too?”

He grunted. “No special sagacity was required.”

“No, sir. I’m not swaggering. It’s just that I’m hungry and wanted to save time.”

“You have. First the books. No stories may be needed. Jane Ogilvy’s poems would almost certainly be worthless; I have read three of them. A writer of gimcrack verse chooses words only to scan and rhyme, and there is no paragraphing.”

I sipped orange juice. “If they want to know why we want the books, do I explain?”

“No. Evade.” He forked a bite of cake and jam.

“What if Harvey calls?”

“We have nothing to report. Possibly later. I want those books.”

“Anything else?”

“No.” He lifted the fork and opened his mouth.

When I got back to the kitchen Fritz had broken the eggs and was stirring. I sat at the table by the wall, propped the morning Times on the rack, and sipped orange juice. Fritz asked, “A good case?”

For him a good case is one which will not interfere with meals, will not last long enough to make Wolfe cranky, and will probably produce a nice fat fee. “So-so,” I told him. “All we have to do is read a couple of books. Maybe.”

He put the skillet on. “That Miss Bonner is helping?”

I grinned at him. He regards every woman who enters the house as a potential threat to his kitchen, not to mention the rest of his precinct, and he was particularly suspicious of Dol Bonner, Dol being short for Theodolinda, the only female owner and operator of a detective agency in New York. “No,” I said, “she came yesterday on a personal matter. Mr Wolfe keeps phoning her to ask her to dinner, and she wants me to get him to stop annoying her.”

He pointed the spoon at me. “Archie, if I could lie with your aplomb I would be an ambassador. You know women. You know quite well that one with eyes the colour of that Miss Bonner and eyelashes of that length, her own, is a dangerous animal.”

By nine o’clock the morning fog had gone entirely, thanks to the apricot omelet, griddle cakes with bacon and honey, and two cups of coffee, and I went to the office and dialed Philip Harvey’s number. From his reaction you might have thought it was not yet dawn. After smoothing him down and promising never to call him again earlier than noon, short of a real emergency, I told him what I wanted-the names of people at Best and Green and the Owl Press who could be expected to co-operate. He said he knew no one at either place, told me to call the executive secretary of NAAD, and hung up. A hell of a chairman. When I got the executive secretary she wanted to know what kind of co-operation I was going to ask for. I told her, and she wanted to know why Nero Wolfe wanted the books. I said that no good detective ever tells anybody why he wants something, and if I gave her a reason it would be a phony, and I finally wore her down and got a couple of names.

Mr Arnold Green of Best and Green was extremely suspicious. He didn’t come right out with it, but I gathered that he suspected that the Joint Committee on Plagiarism was a conspiracy, abetted by some of his competitors, to twist the nose of Best and Green by getting something on an author whose book they had published five years ago; and anyway, The Moth That Ate Peanuts was a flop and had been remaindered, and the only copies they had left, maybe four or five, were in the morgue. And more anyway, what did that book have to do with the investigation Nero Wolfe was making? When he had simmered down a little I said I fully appreciated his point of view, and I would tell Mr Knapp and Mr Dexter and Mr Imhof that for some reason, probably a good one, he refused to send Mr Wolf a copy of the book, and he said I misunderstood, that he wasn’t refusing, that there might possibly be a copy somewhere around the office. If so he would send it down by messenger, and if not he would send someone to the morgue for one.

Mr W. R. Pratt of the Owl Press was strictly business. When I said that Nero Wolfe had been hired to make an investigation by the Joint Committee on Plag-he cut in to say he knew that and what did I want; and when I said that Mr Wolfe wanted a copy of Barrage at Dawn as soon as possible and would be obliged if he would kindly-he cut in again to say that if I would give the address to his secretary she would send it at once by messenger. He asked no questions, but his secretary did. Her first words were, “Whom do we bill?” That outfit was right on its toes.

Barrage at Dawn arrived first, which didn’t surprise