Other spaces had been filled in, about how well he had done his job, and his relations with other employees and his immediate superiors, and so forth, and then at the bottom came what was of course the key question: Reason for ending of employment (give details). There was three inches of space after it, plenty of room for details, but for Waldo Wilmot Moore only one word had been thought necessary and there it was: Murdered.
CHAPTER Three
So apparently it wasn’t a lead pencil leak.
I looked at Jasper Pine. “An excellent idea,” I said enthusiastically. “These reports will show you where the weak spots are, and you can take steps. Though Moore’s case was probably an exception. I don’t suppose many of the twenty-eight per cent got murdered. Incidentally, I keep track of murders for business reasons, and I don’t remember this one. Was it local?” Pine was shaking his head. “Moore was run over by a car, a hit-and-run driver-here in New York somewhere uptown. I believe that is called manslaughter, not murder, which requires malice aforethought. I’m not a lawyer, but I looked it up when this report-when I saw this.” He made a gesture of impatience. “The hit-and-run driver was not found. I want Nero Wolfe to find out if there is any basis for the supposition that it was murder.” “Just curiosity?” “No. I took it up with the head of the stock department, who made that report, because I didn’t think it desirable to have it in our files, stating that one of our employees had been murdered, unless that was actually the case. Also I wanted to know what reason he had, if any, to make that statement. He refused to give any reason. He agreed with my definition of murder and manslaughter, but he refused to change the report or to make another report using a different word or phrase. He insisted that the report is correct as it stands. He refused to elaborate. He refused to discuss it.” “Goodness.” I was impressed. “That ought to be a record. Four refuses to a corporation president from a mere head of a department! Who is he? Mr. Naylor?
Or Mr. Kerr?” “His name is Kerr Naylor.” I thought for a second he was injecting comic relief, but the look on his face showed me quite the contrary. He was talking time out to light a cigarette, and it was easy to see that the purpose of the maneuver was to hide embarrassment.
The president was unquestionably embarrassed.
After a good puff he coughed explosively and explained, “Kerr Naylor is the son of one of the founders of this business. He was named Kerr after the other founder. He has had a-uh, varied career. Also he is my wife’s brother. He actually controls a large block of the corporation’s stock, but he no longer owns it because he gave it away. He refuses to be an officer of the company, and he refuses to serve on the Board of Directors.” “I see. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool refuser.” Pine made the gesture of impatience again. He did it with a little fling of a hand, and it was abrupt but not domineering. “As you see,” he said, “the situation is not simple. After Mr.
Naylor’s refusal either to justify the report or to change it, I was inclined just to let the matter drop and merely destroy the report, but I mentioned it to two of my brother executives and to a member of the Board, and they were all of the opinion that it should be followed up. Besides that, news of the report, with that word on it, has got around among the employees of the department, presumably through the stenographer who typed it, and there is a lot of unhealthy gossip. This man Moore was the type-I’ll put it this way-he was the type that stirs up gossip in the circle he lives in, and now, nearly four months after his death, here he is stirring it up again. We don’t like it and we want it stopped.” “Oh. You said you wanted Mr. Wolfe to find out if there was any basis for using the word murdered. Now you want the gossip stopped. You’d better pick which.” “It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?” “Not necessarily. If we find out he was murdered and the finding percolates, the gossip gauge will go right through the ceiling, not to mention other possible results.” Pine glanced at his wristwatch, reached to an ash tray to ditch his cigarette, and stood up. “Damn it,” he said, with more breath but not more noise, “do I have to explain that the situation is made more complicated by the fact that it was Mr. Kerr Naylor who signed that report? This is a damn nuisance and it’s taking my time that ought to be spent working! His father, old George Naylor, is still living and is Chairman of the Board, though he turned over his stock to his children long ago. This is the oldest and largest company in its field, the largest in the world, and it has built up a reputation and a tradition. It has also built up-oh, complexities. The directors and executives now managing its affairs-of whom I am one- want this thing looked into, and I want to hire Nero Wolfe to do the looking.” “You mean the corporation? Wants to hire him?” “Certainly!” “To do what? Wait a minute, can I put it this way? We’re either to make that word on that report good, or we’re to make this Mr. Kerr Naylor eat it. Is that the job?” “Roughly, yes.” “Do we get credentials for around here?” “You get all reasonable co-operation. The details will have to be arranged with me. More time gone. It will have to be handled with discretion-and delicately. I had an idea that a way to do it would be for Nero Wolfe to get a job in the stock department, under another name of course, and he could – what’s the matter?” “Nothing. Excuse me.” I stood up. The notion of Wolfe fighting his way down to William Street every morning, or even with me driving him, and punching a time clock, and working all day in the stock department, had been too much for my facial control.
“Okay,” I said, “I guess I know enough to put it up to Mr. Wolfe. Except about money. I ought to warn you that his charges have not joined in the postwar inflation because they were already so high that a boost would have been vulgar.” “This company never expects good work for low pay.” I told him that was fine and got my hat and coat.
CHAPTER Four
A coolness had sprung up between Wolfe and me. These coolnesses averaged about four a week, say, a couple of hundred a year. This particular one had two separate aspects: first, my natural desire for him to buy a new car opposed to his pigheaded determination to wait another year; and second, his notion of buying a noiseless typewriter opposed to my liking for the one we had.
It happened that at that moment there were other coolnesses swirling around in the old brownstone house, on West Thirty-fifth Street not far from the Hudson River, which he owned and used both for a residence and an office. Four of us lived there, counting him, and we were all temporarily cool. Wolfe had somewhere picked up the idea of putting leaves of sweet basil in clam chowder, and Fritz Brenner, the cook and house manager, strongly disapproved. A guy in New Hampshire who was grateful to Wolfe for something had sent him an extra offering, three plants of a new begonia named Thimbleberry, and Wolfe had given them good bench space up in the cool
