Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe (19 page)

“Nothing to start a stampede,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you how I go about taking some hide off a toad in this town.” To give it as it actually sounded I would have to make it, “Ah jist wanted to ask yuh how Ah go about takin' some hide off a toad,” but that's too complicated, and from here on I'll leave the sound effects to you if you want to bother.

I was sliding my fingertips up and down on the polished stirrup strap so that observers, if any, would assume that we were discussing the saddle. “I suppose,” I said, “it's a two-legged toad.” Then, as a brown-haired cowgirl named Nan Karlin, in a pink silk shirt opened at the throat and regulation Levis, came through the
arch and headed for the door to the terrace, lifting the heels of her fancy boots to navigate the Kashan rug that had set Lily Rowan back fourteen thousand bucks, I raised my voice a little so she wouldn't have to strain her ears if she was curious. “Sure,” I said, rubbing the leather, “you could work it limber, but why don't they make it limber?”

But I may be confusing you, since a Kashan carpet with a garden pattern in seven colors is no place for a horse to stand, so I had better explain. The horse was a sawhorse. The saddle was to go to the winner in a roping contest that was to start in an hour. The Kashan, 19 × 34, was on the floor of the living room of Lily Rowan's penthouse, which was on the roof of a ten-story building on 63rd Street between Madison and Park Avenues, Manhattan. The time was three o'clock Monday afternoon. The group out on the terrace had just gone there for coffee after leaving the dining room, where the high point of the meal had been two dozen young blue grouse which had come from Montana on man-made wings, their own having stopped working. As we had moseyed through the living room on our way to the terrace Cal Barrow had got me aside to say he wanted to ask me something private, and we had detoured to inspect the saddle.

When Nan Karlin had passed and was outside, Cal Barrow didn't have to lower his voice again because he hadn't raised it. “Yeah, two legs,” he said. (Make it “laigs.”) “I got to ask somebody that knows this town and I was thinking this bozo Goodwin is the one to ask, he's in the detective business here and he ought to know. And my friend Harvey Greve tells me you're okay. I'm calling you Archie, am I?”

“So it was agreed at the table. First names all around.”

“Suits me.” He let go of the rope and gripped the edge of the cantle. “So I'll ask you. I'm a little worked up. Out where I live I wouldn't have to ask nobody, but here I'm no better'n a dogie. I been to Calgary and Pendleton, but I never come East before for this blowout. Huh. World Series Rodeo. From what I see so far you can have it.”

He made it “roe-day-oh” with the accent on the “day.” I nodded. “Madison Square Garden has no sky. But about this toad. We're supposed to go out with them for coffee. How much of his hide do you need?”

“I'll take a fair-sized patch.” There was a glint in his eye. “Enough so he'll have to lick it till it gets a scab. The trouble is this blamed blowout, I don't want to stink it up my first time here, if it wasn't for that I'd just handle it. I'd get him to provoke me.”

“Hasn't he already provoked you?”

“Yeah, but I'm leaving that out. I was thinking you might even like to show him and me something. Have you got a car?”

I said I had.

“Then when we get through here you might like to take him and me to show us some nice little spot like on the river bank. There must be a spot somewhere. It would be better if you was there anyhow because if I kinda lost control and got too rough you could stop me. When I'm worked up I might get my teeth on the bit.”

“Or I could stop him if necessary.”

The glint showed again. “I guess you don't mean that. I wouldn't like to think you mean that.”

I grinned at him, Archie to Cal. “What the hell, how do I know? You haven't named him. What if it's Mel Fox? He's bigger than you are, and Saturday night at the Garden I saw him bulldog a steer in twenty-three seconds. It took you thirty-one.”

“My steer was meaner. Mel said so himself. Anyway it's not him. It's Wade Eisler.”

My brows went up. Wade Eisler couldn't bulldog a milk cow in twenty-three hours, but he had rounded up ten million dollars, more or less, and he was the chief backer of the World Series Rodeo. If it got out that one of the cowboy contestants had taken a piece of his hide it would indeed stink it up, and it was no wonder that Cal Barrow wanted a nice little spot on a river bank. I not only raised my brows; I puckered my lips.

“Ouch,” I said. “You better let it lay, at least for a week, until the rodeo's over and the prizes awarded.”

“No, sir. I sure would like to, but I got to get it done. Today. I don't rightly know how I held off when I got here and saw him here. It would be a real big favor, Mr. Goodwin. Here in your town. Will you do it?”

I was beginning to like him. Especially I liked his not shoving by overworking the “Archie.” He was a little younger than me, but not much, so it wasn't respect for age; he just wasn't a fudger.

“How did he provoke you?” I asked.

“That's private. Didn't I say I'm leaving that out?”

“Yes, but I can't leave it out too. I don't say I'll play if you tell me, but I certainly won't if you don't. Whether I play or not, you can count on me to leave it out—or keep it in. As a private detective I get lots of practice keeping things in.”

The gray-blue eyes were glued on me. “You won't tell anyone?”

“Right.”

“Whether you help me or not?”

“Right.”

“He got a lady to go to his place last night by telling her he was having a party, and when they got there
there wasn't any party, and he tried to handle her. Did you see the scratch on his cheek?”

“Yes, I noticed it.”

“She's not very big, but she's plenty active. All she got was a little skin off her ear when her head hit a corner of a table.”

“I noticed that too.”

“So I figure he's due to lose a bigger—” He stopped short. He slapped the saddle. “Now, damn it, that's me every time. Now you know who she is. I was going to leave that out.”

“I'll keep it in. She told you about it?”

“Yes, sir, she did. This morning.”

“Did she tell anyone else?”

“No, sir, she wouldn't. I got no brand on her, nobody has, but maybe some day when she quiets down a little and I've got my own corral … You've seen her on a bronc.”

I nodded. “I sure have. I was looking forward to seeing her off of one, closer up, but now of course I'll keep my distance. I don't want to lose any hide.”

His hand left the saddle. “I guess you just say things. I got no claim. I'm a friend of hers and she knows it, that's all. A couple of years ago I was wrangling dudes down in Arizona and she was snapping sheets at the hotel, and we kinda made out together and I guess I come in handy now and then. I don't mind coming in handy as long as I can look ahead. Right now I'm a friend of hers and that suits me fine. She might be surprised to know how I—”

His eyes left me and I turned. Nero Wolfe was there, entering from the terrace. Somehow he always looks bigger away from home, I suppose because my eyes are so used to fitting his dimensions into the interiors of the old brownstone on West 35th. There he was,
a mountain coming at us. As he approached he spoke. “If I may interrupt?” He allowed two seconds for objections, got none, and went on. “My apologies, Mr. Barrow.” To me: “I have thanked Miss Rowan for a memorable meal and explained to her. To watch the performance I would have to stretch across that parapet and I am not built for it. If you drive me home now you can be back before four o'clock.”

I glanced at my wrist. Ten after three. “More people are coming, and Lily has told them you'll be here. They'll be disappointed.”

“Pfui. I have nothing to contribute to this frolic.”

I wasn't surprised; in fact, I had been expecting it. He had got what he came for, so why stick around? What had brought him was the grouse. When, two years back, I had returned from a month's visit to Lily Rowan on a ranch she had bought in Montana (where, incidentally, I had met Harvey Greve, Cal Barrow's friend), the only detail of my trip that had really interested Wolfe was one of the meals I described. At that time of year, late August, the young blue grouse are around ten weeks old and their main item of diet has been mountain huckleberries, and I had told Wolfe they were tastier than any bird Fritz had ever cooked, even quail or woodcock. Of course, since they're protected by law, they can cost up to five dollars a bite if you get caught.

Lily Rowan doesn't treat laws as her father did while he was piling up the seventeen million dollars he left her, but she can take them or leave them. So when she learned that Harvey Greve was coming to New York for the rodeo, and she decided to throw a party for some of the cast, and she thought it would be nice to feed them young blue grouse, the law was merely a hurdle to hop over. Since I'm a friend of hers and she
knows it, that will do for that. I will add only a brief report of a scene in the office on the ground floor of the old brownstone. It was Wednesday noon. Wolfe, at his desk, was reading the
Times.
I, at my desk, finished a phone call, hung up, and swiveled.

“That's interesting,” I said. “That was Lily Rowan. As I told you, I'm going to a roping contest at her place Monday afternoon. A cowboy is going to ride a horse along Sixty-third Street, and other cowboys are going to try to rope him from the terrace of her penthouse, a hundred feet up. Never done before. First prize will be a saddle with silver trimmings.”

He grunted. “Interesting?”

“Not that. That's just games. But a few of them are coming earlier for lunch, at one o'clock, and I'm invited, and she just had a phone call from Montana. Twenty young blue grouse, maybe more, will arrive by plane Saturday afternoon, and Felix is going to come and cook them. I'm glad I'm going. It's too bad you and Lily don't get along—ever since she squirted perfume on you.”

He put the paper down to glare. “She didn't squirt perfume on me.”

I flipped a hand. “It was her perfume.”

He picked up the paper, pretended to read a paragraph, and dropped it again. He passed his tongue over his lips. “I have no animus for Miss Rowan. But I will not solicit an invitation.”

“Of course not. You wouldn't stoop. I don't—”

“But you may ask if I would accept one.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. She asked me to invite you, but I was afraid you'd decline and I'd hate to hurt her feelings. I'll tell her.” I reached for the phone.

I report that incident so you'll understand why he got up and left after coffee. I not only wasn't surprised when he came and interrupted Cal Barrow and me, I was pleased, because Lily had bet me a sawbuck he wouldn't stay for coffee. Leaving him there with Cal, I went to the terrace.

In the early fall Lily's front terrace is usually sporting annual flowers along the parapet and by the wall of the penthouse, and a few evergreens in tubs scattered around, but for that day the parapet was bare, and instead of the evergreens, which would have interfered with rope whirling, there were clumps of sagebrush two feet high in pots. The sagebrush had come by rail, not by air, but even so the part of Lily that had ordered it and paid for it is not my part. That will be no news to her when she reads this.

I glanced around. Lily was in a group seated to the right, with Wade Eisler on one side and Mel Fox on the other. In dash she wasn't up to the two cowgirls there, Nan Karlin in her pink silk shirt and Anna Casado, dark-skinned with black hair and black eyes, in her yellow one, but she was the hostess and not in competition. In situations that called for dash she had plenty. The other four were standing by the parapet at the left—Roger Dunning, the rodeo promoter, not in costume; his wife Ellen, former cowgirl, also not in costume; Harvey Greve in his brown shirt and red neck rag and corduroy pants and boots; and Laura Jay. Having Laura Jay in profile, I could see the bandage on her ear through the strands of her hair, which was exactly the color of the thyme honey that Wolfe gets from Greece. At the dinner table she had told me that a horse had jerked his head around and the bit had bruised her, but now I knew different.

Stepping across to tell Lily I was leaving but would
be back in time for the show, I took a side glance at Wade Eisler's plump, round face. The scratch, which began an inch below his left eye and slanted down nearly to the corner of his mouth, hadn't gone very deep and it had had some fifteen hours to calm down by Cal Barrow's account, but it didn't improve his looks any, and there was ample room for improvement. He was one of those New York characters that get talked about and he had quite a reputation as a smooth operator, but he certainly hadn't been smooth last night—according to Laura Jay as relayed by Cal Barrow. The cave-man approach to courtship may have its points if that's the best you can do, but if I ever tried it I would have more sense than to pick a girl who could rope and tie a frisky calf in less than a minute.

After telling Lily I would be back in time for the show and was looking forward to collecting the sawbuck, I returned to the living room. Wolfe and Cal were admiring the saddle. I told Cal I would think it over and let him know, went to the foyer and got Wolfe's hat and stick, followed him down the flight of stairs to the tenth floor, and rang for the elevator. We walked the two blocks to the parking lot where I had left the Heron sedan, which Wolfe had paid for but I had selected. Of course a taxi would have been simpler, but he hates things on wheels. To ride in a strange vehicle with a stranger driving would be foolhardy; with me at the wheel in a car of my choice it is merely imprudent.