Too Many Cooks

yards. Wolfe shouted, “An engine has two thousand three hundred and nine moving parts!”

I put down the magazine and grinned at him, thinking I might as well. He had enginephobia and there was no sense in letting him brood, because it would only make it worse for both of us. His mind had to be switched to something else. But before I could choose a pleasant subject to open up on, an interruption came which showed that while he may have been frantic with fear when I was smoking a cigarette on the platform, he had not been demoralized. There was a rap on the door and it opened to admit a porter with a glass and three bottles of beer on a tray. He pulled out a trick stand for the glass and one bottle, which he opened, put the other two bottles in a rack with an opener, accepted currency from me in payment, and departed. As the train lurched on a curve Wolfe scowled with rage; then, as it took the straightaway again, he hoisted the glass and swallowed once, twice, five times, and set it down empty. He licked his lips for the foam, then wiped them with his handkerchief, and observed with no sign at all of hysterics:

“Excellent. I must remember to tell Fritz my first was precisely at temperature.”

“You could wire him from Philadelphia.”

“Thank you. I am being tortured and you know it. Would you mind earning your salary, Mr. Goodwin, by getting a book from my bag? Inside Europe, by John Gunther.”

I got the bag and fished it out.

By the time the second interruption came, half an hour later, we were rolling smooth and swift through the night in middle Jersey, the three beer bottles were empty, Wolfe was frowning at his book but actually reading, as I could tell by the pages he turned, and I had waded nearly to the end of an article on Collation of Evidence in the Journal of Criminology. I hadn’t got much from it, because I was in no condition to worry about collating evidence, on account of my mind being taken up with the problem of getting Nero Wolfe undressed. At home, of course, he did it himself, and equally of course I wasn’t under contract as a valet-being merely secretary, bodyguard, office manager, assistant detective, and goat-but the fact remained that in two hours it would be midnight, and there he was with his pants on, and someone was going to have to figure out a way of getting them off without upsetting the train. Not that he was clumsy, but he had had practically no practice at balancing himself while on a moving vehicle, and to pull pants from under him as he lay was out of the question, since he weighed something between 250 and a ton. He had never, so far as I knew, been on a scale, so it was anybody’s guess. I was guessing high that night, on account of the problem I was confronted with, and was just ready to settle on 310 as a basis for calculations, when there was a knock on the door and I yelled come in.

It was Marko Vukcic. I had known he would be on our train, through a telephone conversation between him and Wolfe a week before, but the last time I had seen him was when he had dined with us at Wolfe’s house early in March-a monthly occurrence. He was one of the only two men whom Wolfe called by their first names, apart from employees. He closed the door behind him and stood there, not fat but huge, like a lion upright on its hind legs, with no hat covering his dense tangle of hair.

Wolfe shouted at him, “Marko! Haven’t you got a seat or a bed somewhere? Why the devil are you galloping around in the bowels of this monster?”

Vukcic showed magnificent white teeth in a grin. “Nero, you damn old hermit! I am not a turtle in aspic, like you. Anyhow, you are really on the train-what a triumph! I have found you-and also a colleague, in the next car back, whom I had not seen for five years. I have been talking with him, and suggested he should meet you. He would be glad to have you come to his compartment.”

Wolfe compressed his lips. “That, I presume, is funny. I am not an acrobat. I shall not stand up until this thing is stopped and the engine unhooked.”

“Then how-” Vukcic laughed, and glanced at the pile of luggage. “But you seem to be provided with equipment. I did not really expect you to move. So instead, I’ll bring him to you. If I may. That really is what I came to ask.”

“Now?”

“This moment.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I beg off, Marko. Look at me. I am in no condition for courtesy or conversation.”

“Just briefly, then, for a greeting. I have suggested it.”

“No. I think not. Do you realize that if this thing suddenly stopped, for some obstacle or some demoniac whim, we should all of us continue straight ahead at eighty miles an hour? Is that a situation for social niceties?” He compressed his lips again, and then moved them to pronounce firmly, “To-morrow.”

Vukcic, probably almost as accustomed as Wolfe to having his own way, tried to insist, but it didn’t get him anywhere. He tried to kid him out of it, but that didn’t work either. I yawned. Finally Vukcic gave it up with a shrug. “To-morrow, then. If we meet no obstacle and are still alive. I’ll tell Berin you have gone to bed-”

“Berin?” Wolfe sat up, and even relaxed his grip on the arm of his seat. “Not Jerome Berin?”

“Certainly. He is one of the fifteen.”

“Bring him.” Wolfe half closed his eyes. “By all means. I want to see him. Why the devil didn’t you say it was Berin?”

Vukcic waved a hand, and departed. In three minutes he was back, holding the door open for his colleague to enter; only it appeared to be two colleagues. The most important one, from my point of view, entered first. She had removed her wrap but her hat was still on, and the odor, faint and fascinating, was the same as when she had passed me on the station platform. I had a chance now to observe that she was as young as love’s dream, and her eyes looked dark purple in that light, and her lips told you that she was a natural but reserved smiler. Wolfe gave her a swift astonished glance, then transferred his attention to the tall bulky man behind her, whom I recognized even without the brown cape and the floppy cloth hat.

Vukcic had edged around. “Mr. Nero Wolfe. Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Jerome Berin. His daughter, Miss Constanza Berin.”

After a bow I let them amplify the acknowledgments while I steered the seating in the desired direction. It ended with the three big guys on the seats, and love’s dream on the undersized chair with me on a suitcase beside it. Then I realized that was bad staging, and shifted across with my back to the wall so I could see it better. She had favored me with one friendly innocent smile and then let me be. From the corner of my eye I