Free Corpus Corpus by Harry Paul Jeffers Page A

guy in a cape and fore-and-aft hat would not mean Sherlock Holmes isn't living there."
    She let go of his hand and came to an abrupt halt. "Well of course he's not! He's old, retired, and keeping bees in Sussex."
    "What about Nero Wolfe? He must be pretty long in the tooth by now, too. What has he retired to keep?"

    "Same as he kept when he was working cases," she answered as she walked on. "Orchids!"
    Catching up with her, Bogdanovic slowly shook his head. "Do any of the detectives in all those books you and Goldstein never cease reading ever die?"
    "Hercule Poirot passed away in 1975. His obituary ran on the front page of the New York Times. Since no obit has appeared for Holmes or Wolfe, they are obviously alive and well."
    Entering the room, its atmosphere already suffused with the pungent aroma of cigars, Bogdanovic found Janus standing at the bar in the center. Holding a box of them open for all takers as Bogdanovic approached, he said, "I know Cuban cigars are banned in America, Detective, but have one anyway."
    "Thanks, but no thanks."
    "What a stalwart defender of the law you are! Well, if I am to be arrested for possession of contraband, so be it. If a genuine Cohiba isn't worth going to jail for, what is?" Offering the box to Dane, he said with a smile, "How about you? More and more women are smoking them nowadays, especially in Hollywood. They call it 'cigar chic' "
    "You know me, Theo. I've never been interested in keeping up with the latest vogue."
    "And you never objected to my smoking cigars, either. Thank God you weren't like the Maggie in Rudyard Kipling's poem. As I recall, it's called 'The Betrothed' and is about a man who's having second thoughts about marrying a gal named Maggie who's given him an ultimatum to choose between herself and his cigars. Part of it goes:
        Open the old cigar box,—let me consider anew,—   Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?
        A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
        And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke."

    Bogdanovic grunted and said, "Maggie, if you'd care to kill him right now, I'd be delighted to testify on your behalf that it was justifiable homicide."
    "Don't worry, John," she said, lightly kissing Janus on the cheek. "If I wanted Theo dead, he'd have been pushing up daisies long ago."
    "Since you won't take my cigars," said Janus, "I hope you'll enjoy the line cognac I'm providing. It's not everyday that I'm given the Nero Wolfe Award, made all the sweeter because it came from the hands of the second-best lawyer in the country."
    A moment later as she sipped brandy, Bogdanovic stared at Janus as he distributed more cigars. "Look at him," he said. "How can you put up with that condescending snob? Second-best. Meaning he's the top."
    "If he isn't, please tell me who is."
    "Maybe I should arrest him for possession of contraband."
    "If you do so," she said, surprising him by giggling like a schoolgirl, "you'll be made to look the fool."
    "Really? How so? Cuban cigars have been banned in the United States since the 1960s."
    "They're not Cuban. It's an old scam of Theo's. Only the box and the bands are Cuban. The real Havanas are kept in a special humidor in a locked room at his ranch upstate and when he travels in a box in the glove compartment of his Rolls-Royce, from which he takes what he needs and transfers them to a leather pocket case."
    "What a shyster! No wonder he gets along so well with the top mugs in the mob. Birds of a feather."
    "Mark Twain didn't hang around with gangsters, but he did the same thing once. He had friends who constantly accused him of smoking the worst cigars in the world. One of them was notorious for smoking only costly and elegant cigars. So one day Twain went to his house when no one was looking and took some of the man's choicest. He removed the labels and put the cigars into a box of his own stogies, then passed them out to those friends at dinner. After they'd