Rex Stout - Where Theres a Will (Nero Wolfe Mysteries)

I put the 1938-39 edition of Who's Who in America, open,on the leaf of my desk, because it was getting too heavy to hold ona hot day.

"They were sprinkled at discreet intervals," I stated aloud. "Ifthey didn't fudge when they supplied the dope, April is thirty-six,May forty-one, and June forty-six. Five years apart. Apparentlytheir parents started at the middle of the calendar and workedbackwards, and also apparently they named June that because she wasborn in June, 1893. But the next one shows an effort of theimagination. I prefer to suppose it was Mamma who thought of it.Although the baby was actually born in February, they named itMay..."

There was no sign that Nero Wolfe was listening as he leanedback in his chair with his eyes closed, but I went on anyhow. Onthat hot July day, in spite of the swell lunch Fritz had served us,I would have sold the world for a dime. My vacation was over. Thenews from Europe was enough to make you want to put signs at everyten yards along the seacoast, "Private Shore, No Sharks orStatesmen Allowed." I had bandages on my arms where the black flieshad bored for blood in Canada. Worst of all, Nero Wolfe had gone infor a series of fantastic expenditures, the bank balance was thelowest it had been for years, and the detective business wasrotten; and just to be contrary, instead of doing his share of theworrying about it he seemed to have adopted the attitude that wouldbe impertinent to attempt to interfere with natural laws. Which hadme boiling. He might be eccentric enough to find pleasure in apersonal and intimate test of the operations; of the New Deal WPA,but if I had my way about it the only meaning WPA would ever havefor yours truly would be Wolfe Pays Archie.

So I went on buzzing. "It all depends," I declared, "on what itis that's biting them. It must be something pretty painful, or theywouldn't have made an appointment to call on you in a body. Thedeath of their brother Noel has probably taken care of theirfinancial potentialities. Noel's in here too." I frowned at theWho's Who. "He was forty-nine, the eldest, three years olderthan June, and was next to Cullen himself in Daniel Cullen andCompany. Did it all himself, started there a runner in 1908 attwelve bucks a week. That was in his obit in the Times, daybefore yesterday. Did you read it?"

Wolfe was motionless. I made a face at him and resumed.

"They're not due for twenty minutes yet, so I might as well giveyou the benefit of my research. There's more in this magazinearticle I dug up than in Who's Who. A lot of rich andcolorful detail. For instance, it says that May has worn cottonstockings ever since the Japs bombed Shanghai. It says that Mammawas an amazing woman because she was the mother of fourextraordinary children. I have never understood why, in cases likethis, it is assumed that Papa's contribution was negligible, butthere's no time to go into that now. It's the extraordinarychildren we're dealing with."

I flipped a page of the magazine. "To sum up about Noel, whodied Tuesday, It seems he had a row of buttons installed on hisdesk in the Wall Street offices of Daniel Cullen and Company; onefor each country in Europe and Asia, not to mention South America.When he pressed a button, that country's government resigned andthey telephoned him to ask who to put in next. You can't say thatwasn't extraordinary. The eldest daughter, June, was, as I say,born in June, 1893. At the age of twenty she wrote a daring andsensational book called Riding Bareback, and a year lateranother one entitled Affairs of a Titmouse. Then she marrieda brilliant young New York lawyer named John Charles Dunn, who isat the present moment the Secretary of State of the United Statesof America. He sent a cogent letter to Japan last week. Themagazine state that Dunn's meteoric rise is in great part due tohis remarkable wife. Mamma again June is in fact a mamma, having ason Andrew, twenty-four, and a daughter, Sara twenty-two."

I shifted to elevate my feet. "The other two extraordinaries arestill named Hawthorne May Hawthorne never has married. They arethinking of prosecuting her under the anti-trust law for hermonopoly on brain cells. At the age of twenty-six sherevolutionized colloid chemistry, something about bubbles anddrops. Since 1933 she has been president of Varney College, and inthose six years has increased its endowment funds by over twelvemillion bucks, showing that she has gone from colloidal tocolossal. It says her intellectual power is extraordinary.

"I was wrong when I said the other two are still namedHawthorne. In April's case I should have said 'again' instead of'still. While she was taking London by storm: in 1927she glanced over the prostrate nobility at her feet and picked outthe Duke of Lozano. Four other dukes, a bunch of earls and barons,and two soap manufacturers committed suicide. But alas. Three yearslater she divorced Lozano, while she was taking Paris by storm, andbecame April Hawthorne again, privately as well as publicly. She isthe only actress, alive or dead, who has played both Juliet andNora. At present she is taking New York by storm for the eighthtime. I can confirm that personally, because a month ago I paid aspeculator five dollars and fifty cents for a ticket toScrambled Eggs. You may remember that I tried to persuadeyou to go. I figured that since April Hawthorne is the acknowledgedqueen of the American stage, you owed it to yourself to seeher."

Not a flicker. He wouldn't rouse.

"Of course," I said sarcastically, "it is deplorable that theseextraordinary Hawthorne gals have no more consideration for yourprivacy than to come charging in here before you finish digestingyour lunch. No matter what is biting them, no matter if theirbrother Noel left them a million dollars apiece and they want topay you half of it for putting a tail on their banker, they oughtto have more regard for common courtesy. When June phoned thismorning I told her -"

"Archie!" His eyes opened. "I am aware that you call Mrs. Dunn,whom you have never met, by her first name, because you think itirritates me. It does. Don't overdo it. Shut up."

"- I told Mrs. Dunn it was an intolerable invasion of yourinalienable right to sit here in peace and watch the bank balancedisappear in the darkening twilight of the slow but inevitabledispersion of your mental powers and the pitiful collapse of yourinstinct of self-preservation -"

"Archie!" He thumped the desk.

It was time to side-step, but I was rescued from that necessityby the door's opening and the appearance of Fritz Brenner. Fritzwas beaming, and I could guess why. The visitors he had come toannounce had probably impressed him as something unusuallypromising in the way of clients. The only secrets in Nero Wolfe'sold house on 35th Street near the Hudson River were professionalsecrets. It was unavoidable that I, his secretary, bodyguard, andchief assistant, should be aware that the exchequer was having itsbottom scraped; but Fritz Brenner, cook and gentleman of thehousehold, and Theodore Horstmann, custodian of the famous andexpensive collection of orchids which Wolfe maintained in the plantrooms on the roof - they knew it too. And Fritz was beaming,obviously, because the trio whose arrival he was announcing lookedmore like a major fee than anything the office had seen for weeks.He did it in style. Wolfe told him, with no enthusiasm, to showthem in. I took my feet off the desk.

Though the extraordinary Hawthorne gals did not stronglyresemble one another, my discreet glances of appraisal as I gotthem arranged into chairs made it credible that they were daughtersof the same amazing mother. April I had seen on the stage; now thatI got a look at her off of it, I was ready to concede that shecould probably take Nero Wolfe's office by storm if she cared tolet loose. She looked hot, peevish, beautiful and overwhelming.When she thanked me for her chair I decided to marry her as soon asI could save up enough to buy a new pair of shoes.