The Rubber Band by Rex Stout

Author:Rex Stout [Stout, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9780515041194
Publisher: Pyramid
Published: 2009-02-24T05:06:03+00:00

XI

AT TWELVE o'clock noon Wolfe and I sat in the office. Fred Durkin was out in the kitchen eadng pork chops and pumpkin pie. He had made his appearance some twenty minutes before, with the pork chops in his pocket, for Fritz to cook, and a tale of injured innocence. One of Barber's staff had found him in a detention room down at headquarters, put there to weigh his sins after an hour of displaying his ignorance to Inspector Cramer. The lawyer had pried him loose without much trouble and sent him on his way, which of course was West 35th Street. Wolfe hadn't bothered to see him.

Up in the tropical room was the unusual sight of Clara Fox's dress and other items of apparel hanging on a string to dry out, and she was up in the south room sporting the dressing gown Wolfe had given me for Christmas four years before. I hadn't seen her, but Fritz had taken her the gown. It looked as if we'd have to get her out of the house pretty soon or I wouldn't have a thing to put on.

Francis Horrocks had departed, having accepted my hint without any whats. Nothing had been explained to him. Wolfe, of course, wasn't openly handing Clara Fox anything, but it was easy to see that she was one of the few women he would have been able to think up a reason for, from the way he talked about her. He told me that when she and Horrocks had come running into the potting room she had immediately stepped into the osmundine box, which had been all ready for her, and standing there she had fixed her eyes on Horrocks and said to him, "No questions, no remarks, and you do what Mr. Wolfe says. Understand." And Horrocks had stood and stared with his mouth open as she stretched herself out in the box and Horstmann had piled osmundine on her three inches deep while Wolfe got the spray ready. Then he had come to and helped with the boards and the pots.

In the office at noon, Wolfe was drinking beer and making random remarks as they occurred to him. He observed that since Inspector Cramer was sufficiently aroused to be willing to insult Nero Wolfe by having his house invaded with a search warrant, it was quite possible that he had also seen fit to proceed to other indefensible measures, such as tapping telephone wires, and that therefore we should take precautions. He stated that it had been a piece of outrageous stupidity on his part to let Mike Walsh go Monday evening before asking him a certain question, since he had then already formed a surmise which, if proven correct, would solve the problem completely. He said he was sorry that there was no telephone at the Lindquist prairie home in Nebraska, since it meant that the old gentleman would have to endure the rigors of a nine-mile trip to a village in

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