Trio for Blunt Instruments

congratulate you. Of course, her too.”

I cleared my throat. “Many thanks,” I said, “for the compliment. It’s nice to know that she thinks I’m quite a guy, but it’s nothing more than that. There’s not only no understanding, there’s no misunderstanding. It’s possible that she actually likes you. It’s possible that she would enjoy skiing with you, though in my opinion anyone who enjoys skiing is hard up for something to enjoy, but a woman in the process of getting a divorce is apt to be skittish. She either thinks she has been swindled or she feels like a used car. Do you want my advice?”

“Yes.”

“Go to Reno unannounced. Tell her you want her to go skiing with you because if you tumble and break a leg, as you probably will, she is the only one you can rely on to bring help. If after a week or so you want to tell her there are other reasons, and there are other reasons, she may possibly be willing to listen. She might even enjoy it. You have nothing to lose but a week or so unless you break your neck.”

His jaw was working exactly the way it had that day six months back, but otherwise his appearance was very different. “All right,” he said. “I’m glad I came. I’ll go tomorrow.”

“That’s the spirit. I don’t suppose you’d consider playing pinochle with her, or dancing or going for a walk, instead of skiing?”

“No. I’m not a good dancer.”

“Okay. We’ll drink to it.” I got up. “Scotch and water, I believe?”

“Yes please. No ice. I think you’re quite a guy too, Goodwin.”

“So do I.” I went to the kitchen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

REX STOUT, the creator of Nero Wolfe, was born in Noblesville, Indiana, in 1886, the sixth of nine children of John and Lucetta Todhunter Stout, both Quakers. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Wakarusa, Kansas. He was educated in a country school, but, by the age of nine, was recognized throughout the state as a prodigy in arithmetic. Mr. Stout briefly attended the University of Kansas, but left to enlist in the Navy, and spent the next two years as a warrant officer on board President Theodore Roosevelt’s yacht. When he left the Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began to write freelance articles, worked as a sightseeing guide and as an itinerant bookkeeper. Later he devised and implemented a school banking system which was installed in four hundred cities and towns throughout the country. In 1927 Mr. Stout retired from the world of finance and, with the proceeds of his banking scheme, left for Paris to write serious fiction. He wrote three novels that received favorable reviews before turning to detective fiction. His first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, appeared in 1934. It was followed by many others, among them, Too Many Cooks, The Silent Speaker, If Death Ever Slept, The Doorbell Rang and Please Pass the Guilt, which established Nero Wolfe as a leading character on a par with Erle Stanley Gardner’s famous protagonist, Perry Mason. During World War II, Rex Stout waged a personal campaign against Nazism as chairman of the War Writers’ Board, master of ceremonies of the radio program “Speaking of Liberty” and as a member of several national committees. After the war, he turned his attention to mobilizing public opinion against the wartime use of thermonuclear devices, was an active leader in the Authors’ Guild and resumed writing his Nero Wolfe novels. All together, his Nero Wolfe novels have been translated into twenty-two languages and have sold more than forty-five million copies. Rex Stout died in 1975 at the age of eighty-eight. A month before his death, he published his forty-sixth Nero Wolfe novel, A Family Affair.

This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein and any person, living or dead, any such resemblance is purely coincidental.

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3/09/2007

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