Nero Wolfe (25): Before Midnight by Stout Rex

Author:Stout, Rex [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime, Detective, Detective Series, Murder, Mystery, Novel
ISBN: 0006123295
Google: jtQJAgAACAAJ
Amazon: B002ML3I68
Barnesnoble: B002ML3I68
Goodreads: 77594
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1955-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Thank the Lord those next four days are behind me instead of ahead. I admit that there are operations and situations where the best you can do is set a trap and then wait patiently for the victim to spring it, and in such a case I can wait as patiently as the next one, but we had set no trap. Waiting for the victim to make the trap himself and then spring it called for more patience than I had in stock.

Wolfe had asked me what I would suggest, and I spent part of the time from Thursday noon to Friday noon, in between phone calls and personal appearances of LBA personnel and Talbott Heery, trying to hit on something. I had to agree with him that there was no point in tagging along after the cops on any of the routines. Altogether, while sitting at my desk or on the stool in the kitchen, or brushing my teeth, or shaving, or looking out the window, I conceived at least a dozen bright ideas, none of them worth a damn when you turned them over. I did submit one of them to Wolfe after dinner Thursday evening: to get the five contestants together in the office, and tell them it had been thought that Dahlmann had put the answers to the last five verses in a safe deposit box, but evidently he hadn’t, since none could be found, and there was no authentic list of answers against which their solutions could be checked, and therefore other verses, not yet devised, would have to replace the ones they had. He asked what good it would do. I said we would get their reactions. He said we already had their reactions, and besides, LBA would properly reject a procedure that made them out a bunch of bungling boobies.

There was nothing in Friday’s papers that struck a spark, but at least they didn’t announce that Cramer had got his man and the case was solved. Just the contrary. No one had been tapped even as a material witness, and it was plain, from the way the Gazette handled it, that the field was still wide open. Lon Cohen phoned again around noon to ask what Wolfe was waiting for, and I told him for a flash. He asked what kind of flash, and I told him to ask Miss Frazee.

The climax of the phone calls from the clients began soon after lunch Friday. Wolfe was up in his room to be away from the turmoil. He had finished Beauty for Ashes and started on Party of One, not in verse, by Clifton Fadiman. The climax was in three scenes, the hero of the first one being Patrick O’Garro. It was the third call from him in the twenty-four hours, and he made it short and to the point. He asked to speak to Wolfe and I gave him the usual dose. He asked if I had anything to report and I said no.

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