Free Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 46 by A Family Affair

invite you to have a look at the room upstairs directly over my bedroom. A man was killed in it as I lay asleep. I intend to find the man who did it and bring him to account, with the help of Mr. Goodwin, whose self-esteem is as wounded as my own. He took him to that room.”
    His fingers curled into the palm. “No. Not a bluff. I doubt if I am taking a serious risk, but if so, then I am. The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized. You know what I told Mr. Cramer we will do if we are charged and taken, so there is no need to repeat it.” His head turned. “Type it, Archie.”
    I swiveled and swung the machine around and got paper and carbons. Much of the room shows in the six-by-four mirror on the wall back of my desk, so I knew I wasn’t missing anything while I hit the keys, because Coggin’s mouth stayed shut. His eyes were aimed in my direction. The amount of copy was just right, wide-margined, for a nice neat page. I rolled it out, removed the carbon paper, and took it to Wolfe, and he signed all of them, including the one we would keep, and I signed under him without bothering to sit.
    And when I handed the original to Coggin he said, “I’ll take the carbons too. All of them.”
    “Sorry,” I said, “I only work here and I like the job, so I follow instructions.”
    “Give them to him,” Wolfe said. “You have the notebook.”
    I handed them over. He put the original with them, jiggled them on the little stand to even the edges, folded them, and stuck them in his inside breast pocket.He smiled at Wolfe. Of course the typing and signing had given him seven minutes to look at all angles. “Probably,” he said, “you could name him right now and you only have to collect the pieces.” He palmed the chair arms for leverage and got to his feet. “I hope there’ll be other warrants, not for material witnesses, and I hope I have it and you get ten years with no parole.” He turned and stepped, but halfway to the door he stopped and turned to say over his shoulder, “Don’t come, Goodwin. You smell.”
    When the sound came of the front door closing, I crossed over for a look. He was out. I crossed back and said, “So you didn’t give me an errand because you knew one of them would come. Wonderful.”
    He grunted. “I have told you a dozen times, sarcasm is the most futile of weapons. It doesn’t cut, it merely bounces off. Why did he want the carbons?”
    “Souvenirs. Autographs. Signed by both of us. Someday they’ll be auctioned off at Sotheby’s.” I looked at my watch. “It’s twenty minutes to noon. Things will be all set for lunch and the customers won’t start coming until nearly one. Or have you a better place to start than Felix?”
    “You know I haven’t. We want everything he knows about Mr. Bassett and his guests that evening. Unless—you have slept on it, so I ask again, does Philip know what was on that slip of paper?”
    “It’s still no. As I said, he was unloading. He thinks the name on it might have been Archie Goodwin. Pierre told him he wondered about it. All right, I probably won’t be here for lunch.”
    “A moment. One detail. If Felix supplies names, even one, and you get to him, it might serve to tell him that Pierre told you that he saw one of them hand Mr. Bassett a slip of paper. It
might
. Consider it.”
    “Yeah. And Pierre’s dead.”
    I went to the hall and to the rack for my coat. No hat. The thermometer outside said 38, more like December than October, no sun, but I have rules too. No hat before Thanksgiving. Rain or snow is good for hair.

Chapter 6
    W ith Felix it was all negatives, and negatives are no good either to write or to read. Except for preferences and opinions about food and how it should be served, I knew more about Harvey H. Bassett than he did, since I had read the newspapers twice and he may not have read them at all. Television and radio, and his