Free Prisoner's Base by Rex Stout Page B

plans? I shrugged that off, thinking I would get some kind of lead from Lon, and decided to call him then instead of waiting until seven. There was no phone in the room where I was, so I got up and went out to the corridor, glanced right and left, and started left. There were doors on both sides, all closed. I preferred one standing open, with a phone in sight, andkept going. No luck. But nearly at the end of the corridor the last door on the left was ajar, a three-inch crack, and as I approached it I heard a voice. That was the event I have referred to as occurring at fourteen minutes to six—my hearing that voice, coming from that room. At twelve paces it was audible, at five paces it was recognizable, and when I got my ear within six inches of the crack the words were quite plain.
    “This whole performance,” Nero Wolfe was saying, “is based on an idiotic assumption, which was natural and indeed inevitable, since Mr. Rowcliff is your champion ass—the assumption that Mr. Goodwin and I are both cretins. I do not deny that at times in the past I have been less than candid with you—I will acknowledge, to humor you, that I have humbugged and hoodwinked to serve my purpose—but I still have my license, and you know what that means. It means that on balance I have helped you more than I have hurt you—not the community, which is another matter, but you, Mr. Cramer, and you, Mr. Bowen, and of course you others too.”
    So the DA himself was in the audience.
    “It means also that I have known where to stop, and Mr. Goodwin has too. That is our unbroken record, and you know it. But what happens today? Following my customary routine, at four o’clock this afternoon I go up to my plant rooms for two hours of relaxation. I have been there but a short time when I hear a commotion and go to investigate. It is Mr. Rowcliff. He has taken advantage of the absence of Mr. Goodwin, whom he fears and petulantly envies, and has entered my house by force and—”
    “That’s a lie!” Rowcliff’s voice came. “I rang and—”
    “Shut up!” Wolfe roared, and it seemed to me that the door moved to narrow the crack a little. In a momenthe went on, not roaring but not whispering either, “As you all know, a policeman has no more right to enter a man’s home that anyone else, except under certain adequately defined circumstances. But such a right is often usurped, as today when my cook and housekeeper unlatched the door and Mr. Rowcliff pushed it open against resistance, entered, brushed my employee aside, and ignored all protests while he was illegally mounting three flights of stairs, erupting into my plant rooms, and invading my privacy.”
    I leaned against the jamb and got comfortable.
    “He was ass enough to suppose I would speak with him. Naturally I ordered him out. He insisted that I must answer questions. When I persisted in my refusal and turned to leave him, he intercepted me, displayed a warrant for my arrest as a material witness in a murder case, and put a hand on me.” The voice suddenly went lower and much colder. “I will not have a hand put on me, gentlemen. I like no man’s hand on me, and one such as Mr. Rowcliff’s, unmerited, I will not have. I told him to give me his instructions under the authority of the warrant, in as few words as possible, without touching me. I am not bragging of my extreme sensitiveness to hostile touch, since it is shared by all the animals; I mention it only as one of the reasons why I refused to speak to Mr. Rowcliff. He took me into custody under the warrant, conducted me out of my house, and, in a rickety old police car with a headstrong and paroxysmal driver, brought me to this building.”
    I bit my lip. While the fact that he too had been arrested and bandied was not without its charm, the additional fact that I was responsible made it nothing to titter about. Therefore I did not titter. I listened.
    “I had assumed, charitably, that some major misapprehension, possibly