Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02 by The League of Frightened Men Page A

and the front door opening. Then the knob of the office door turned, and Fritz ushered in the first victim. He almost needed a shave, his pants were baggy, and his hair wasn’t combed. His pale blue eyes darted around and landed on me.
    “Hell,” he said, “you ain’t Nero Wolfe.”
    I admitted it. I exposed my identity. He didn’t offer to shake hands. He said:
    “I know I’m early for the party. I’m Mike Ayers, I’m in the city room at the
Tribune.
I told Oggie Reid I had to have the evening off to get my life saved. I stopped off somewhere to get a pair of drinks, and after a while it occurred to me I was a damn fool, there was no reason why there shouldn’t be a drink here. I am not referring to beer.”
    I said, “Gin or gin?”
    He grinned. “Good for you. Scotch. Don’t bother to dilute it.”
    I went over to the table Fritz and I had fixed up in the alcove, and poured it. I was thinking, hurrah for Harvard and bright college days and so on. I was also thinking, if he gets too loud he’ll be a nuisance but if I refuse to pander to his vile habit he’ll beat it. And having learned the bank reports practically by heart,I knew he had been on the
Post
four years and the
Tribune
three, and was pulling down ninety bucks a week. Newspapermen are one of my weak spots anyhow; I’ve never been able to get rid of a feeling that they know things I don’t know.
    I poured him another drink and he sat down and held onto it and crossed his legs. “Tell me,” he said, “is it true that Nero Wolfe was a eunuch in a Cairo harem and got his start in life by collecting testimonials from the girls for Pyramid Dental Cream?”
    Like an ass, for half a second I was sore. “Listen,” I said, “Nero Wolfe is exactly—” Then I stopped and laughed. “Sure,” I said. “Except that he wasn’t a eunuch, he was a camel.”
    Mike Ayers nodded. “That explains it. I mean it explains why it’s hard for a camel to go through a needle’s eye. I’ve never seen Nero Wolfe, but I’ve heard about him, and I’ve seen a needle. You got any other facts?”
    I had to pour him another drink before the next customer arrived. This time it was a pair, Ferdinand Bowen, the stockbroker, and Dr. Loring A. Burton. I went to the hall for them to get away from Mike Ayers. Burton was a big fine-looking guy, straight but not stiff, well-dressed and not needing any favors, with dark hair and black eyes and a tired mouth. Bowen was medium-sized, and he was tired all over. He was trim in black and white, and if I’d wanted to see him any evening, which I felt I wouldn’t, I’d have gone to the theater where there was a first night and waited in the lobby. He had little feet in neat pumps, and neat little lady-hands in neat little gray gloves. When he was taking his coat off I had to stand back so as not to get socked in the eye with his arms swinging around, and I don’t cotton to a guy with that sort of an attitude towards his fellowmen in confined spaces.Particularly I think they ought to be kept out of elevators, but I’m not fond of them anywhere.
    I took Burton and Bowen to the office and explained that Wolfe would be down soon and showed them Mike Ayers. He called Bowen Ferdie and offered him a drink, and he called Burton Lorelei. Fritz brought in another one, Alexander Drummond the florist, a neat little duck with a thin mustache. He was the only one on the list who had ever been to Wolfe’s house before, he having come a couple of years back with a bunch from an association meeting to look at the plants. I remembered him. After that they came more or less all together: Pratt the Tammany assemblyman, Adler and Cabot, lawyers, Kommers, sales manager from Philadelphia, Edwin Robert Byron, all of that, magazine editor, Augustus Farrell, architect, and a bird named Lee Mitchell, from Boston, who said he represented both Collard and Gaines the banker. He had a letter from Gaines.
    That made twelve accounted for, figuring both Collard