Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 by Three Doors to Death Page B

to you. Miss Nieder is not dangered. If she was dangered I would fight it off with these hands”—she lifted them as claws—“because she is the best designer in America or Europe or the world. But she is not. No.”
    She got up and started for the door. Cynthia, darting to her feet, intercepted her and caught her by the arm.
    “I think you ought to wait,” I said, “for Mr. Roper’s vote. Mr. Roper?”
    Ward Roper cleared his throat. “It doesn’t seem to me,” he offered, in the sort of greasy voice that makes me want to take up strangling, “that this is exactly the proper step to take, under the circumstances.”
    Seeing that Polly’s exit was halted, I was lookingat Roper. Getting along toward fifty, by no means too old to strangle, he was slender, elegant, and groomed to a queen’s taste if you let him pick the queen. His voice fitted him to a T.
    “What’s wrong with it?” I asked him.
    He cocked his head to one side to contemplate me. “Almost everything, I would say. I understand and sympathize with Mr. Daumery’s desire to think it over. It assumes that we, the five of us, are involved in this matter, which is ridiculous. One may indeed be involved, deeply involved, but not the other four. Not the rest of us.”
    “What the hell are you getting at?” Bernard demanded with heat.
    “Nothing, Bernard. Nothing specific. Just a comment expressing my reaction.”
    Plainly it was no time for diplomacy. I arose and stepped to a spot nearer Cynthia, where I could face them all without neck-twisting.
    “This is a joke,” I declared offensively, “and if you ask me, a rotten one.” I focused on Bernard. “Have you got around to your thinking, Mr. Daumery? Made up your mind?”
    “Certainly not!” He resented it. “Who do you think you are?”
    “Just at present I’m Miss Nieder’s hired man.” My eyes went around. “You’re acting, all but Demarest, like a bunch of halfwits! Who do I think I am? Who do you think Miss Nieder is, some little girl asking you to please be nice and help her out? You damn fools, she owns half of this outfit!” I looked at Bernard. “Who are you? You’re her business partner, fifty-fifty, and what couldn’t she do to you if she felt like it! So you say you’ll think it over! Nuts!” I looked at Polly andRoper. “And what are you? You’re her employees, her hired help. She owns half of this firm that you work for. And through me she makes a sensible and reasonable request, and listen to you! As for you, Roper, I hear that you’re a good imitator and adapter. I understand that you, Miss Zarella, are as good as they come at producing the goods. But you’re not indispensable —neither or both of you. In this affair Mr. Wolfe and I are acting for Miss Nieder. Speaking as her representative, I hereby instruct you to report at the office of Nero Wolfe, Nine-twenty-four West Thirty-fifth Street, at half-past eight this evening.”
    I wheeled and got Cynthia’s eye. “You confirm that, Miss Nieder?”
    Her yes was creaky. There was a tadpole in her throat, and she got rid of it and repeated, “Yes. I confirm it.”
    “Good for you.” I turned. “You’ll be there, Miss Zarella?”
    Polly was staring at me with what seemed to be wide-eyed admiration, but I could be wrong. “But certainly,” she said, fully as emphatically as she had previously said no. “If it is so exciting as you make it I will be there with bells on.”
    “Fine. You, Mr. Roper?”
    Roper was chewing his lip. No doubt it was hard for a man of his eminence to swallow a threat of being fired.
    “The way you put it,” he told me, with a strong suggestion of a tremble in his greasy voice, “I hardly know what to say. It is true, of course, that at some future time Miss Nieder will probably own a half-interest in this business, in the success of which I have had some part for the past fourteen years. That is, she will if she is—available.”
    “What do you mean,