“Very well. Another point. I charge high fees.”
The young man flushed. “I know you do.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Look,
Mr. Wolfe. I've thrown away a lot of my father's money since I put on long pants. A good gob of it in the past two years, producing shows, and they were all flops. But now I've got a hit. It opened two weeks ago, and it's a ten weeks buy. Bullets for Breakfast. I'll have plenty of cash to pay your fee. If only you'll find out where the hell that poison came from-and help me find a way…”
He stopped. Wolfe prompted him, “Yes, sir? A way-” Frost frowned. “A way to get my cousin out of that murderous hole. My ortho-cousin, the daughter of my father's brother.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe surveyed him. “Are you an anthropologist?” “No.” Frost flushed again. “I told you, I'm in show business. I can pay your fee-within reason, or even without reason. But we ought to have an understanding about that. Of course the amount of the fee is up to you, but my idea would be to split it, half to find out where that candy came from, and the other half for getting my cousin
Helen away from that place. She's as stubborn as you are, and you'll probably have to earn the first half of the fee in order to earn the second, but I don't care if you don't. If you get her out of there without clearing up Molly Lauck's death, half the fee is yours anyhow. But Helen won't scare, that won't work, and she has some kind of a damn fool idea about loyalty to this McNair, Boyden
McNair. Uncle Boyd, she calls him. She's known him all her life. He's an old friend of Aunt Callie's, Helen's mother. Then there's this dope, Gebert-but I'd better start at the beginning and sketch it-hey! You going now?”
Wolfe had pushed his chair back and elevated himself to his feet. He moved around the end of his desk with his customary steady and not ungraceful deliberation.
“Keep your seat, Mr. Frost. It is four o'clock, and I now spend two hours with my plants upstairs. Mr. Goodwin will take the details of the poisoning of Miss
Molly Lauck-and of your family complications if they seem pertinent. For the fourth time, I believe it is, good day, sir.” He headed for the door.
Frost jumped up, sputtering. “But you're coming uptown-”
Wolfe halted and ponderously turned. “Confound you, you know perfectly well I ami But I'll tell you this, if Alec Martin's signature had been on that outlandish paper I would have thrown it in the wastebasket. He splits bulbs.
Splits them!-Archie. We shall meet Mr. Frost at the McNair place tomorrow morning at ten minutes past eleven.”
He turned and went, disregarding the client's protest at the delay. Through the open office door I heard, from the hall, the grunt of the elevator as he stepped in it, and the bang of its door.
Llewellyn Frost turned to me, and the color in his face may have been from gratification at his success, or from indignation at its postponement. I looked him over as a client-his wavy light brown hair brushed back, his wide-open brown eyes that left the matter of intelligence to a guess, his big nose and broad jaw which made his face too heavy even for his six feet.
“Anyhow, I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Goodwin.” He sat down. “You were clever about it, too, keeping that Martin out of it. It was a big favor you did me, and
I assure you I won't forget-”
“Wrong number.” I waved him off. “I told you at the time, I keep all my favors for myself. I suggested that round robin only to try to drum up some business, and for a scientific experiment to find out how many ergs it would take to jostle him loose. We haven't had a case that was worth anything for nearly three months.” I got hold of a notebook and pencil, and swiveled around and pulled my desk-leaf out. “And by the way, Mr. Frost, don't you forget that you thought of that round robin yourself. I'm not supposed to think.”
“Certainly,” he nodded. “Strictly confidential. I'll never mention it.”
“Okay.” I flipped the notebook open to the next blank page. “Now for this murder you want to buy a piece of. Spill it.”
Chapter Two
So the next morning I had Nero Wolf e braving the elements-the chief element for that day being bright warm March sunshine. I say I had him, because I had conceived the persuasion which was making him bust all precedents. What pulled him out of his front door, enraged and grim, with overcoat, scarf, gloves, stick, something he called gaiters, and a black felt pirate's hat size 8 pulled down to his ears, was the name of Winold Glueckner heading the signatures on that letter- Glueckner, who had recently received from an agent in Sarawak four bulbs of a pink Coelogyne pandurata, never seen before, and had scorned Wolfe's offer of three thousand bucks for two of them. Knowing what a tough old heinie
Glueckner was, I had my doubts whether he would turn loose of the bulbs no matter how many murders Wolfe solved at his request, but anyhow I had lit the fuse.
Driving from the house on 35th Street near the Hudson River-where Wolfe had lived for over twenty years and I had lived with him for nearly half of them-to the address on 52nd Street, I handled the sedan so as to keep it as smooth as a dip's fingers. Except for one I couldn't resist; on Fifth Avenue near
Forty-third there was an ideal little hole about two feet across where I suppose someone had been prospecting for the twenty-six dollars they paid the Indians, and I maneuvered to hit it square at a good clip. I glanced in the mirror for a glimpse of Wolfe in the back seat and saw he was looking bitter and infuriated.
I said, “Sorry, sir, they're tearing up the streets.”
