I got stuck in the mud and had to flounder around and I'd get that chair all dirty. I'm a pretty good stander anyhow.' My friend Barry Tolman didn't look any too neat himself, but he wasn't muddy and so he hadn't hesitated about taking a seat. It was 8:10 Thursday morning. I felt like the last ni...
Not because of him. He looked perfectly normal-big and burly, round red face with bushy gray eyebrows, broad heavy shoulders straining the sleeve seams of his coat. It was the carton. It was a used one, the right size, the cord around it was the kind McLeod used, and the NERO WOLFE on it in blue ...
He said he’d try it, he was very particular about coffee, and when Fritz put a cup on the stand by the red leather chair and was going to pour he said the cup was too small and told Fritz to bring a larger one. Ideal company. He must have been fun at dinner parties. He did...
Benjamin Rackell with the least possible movement of her thin tight lips. He thought being a Communist was romantic. Nero Wolfe, behind his desk in his outsized chair that thought nothing of his seventh of a ton, scowled at her. I, at my own desk with a notebook and pen, p...
Orrie Cather said at 10:55 Wednesday morning. I had told them the Keyes case had knocked on our door and we had five suspects for clients, and that was all. Wolfe had not seen fit to tell me what their errands would be, so I was entertaining at cards instead of summarizing...
I am not an impartial observer. Not only am I committed and involved; there is also the basic fact that cops and private detectives are enemies and always will be. Back of the New York cop are the power and authority of eight million people; back of the private detective is nothing but the right ...
I would like to see Mr. Wolfe.' I had never seen him before. He was around fifty, medium-sized, with thin straight lips and the kind of eyes that play poker for blood. The first tenth of a second I thought he was one of Bascom's men, and then saw that his clothes ruled that out. They were quiet a...
It rained off and on all day. I dragged myself out of bed at ten o’clock with a head as big as a barrel stuffed with wet feathers, and five hours later it was still the size of a keg and the inside was still swampy. Gwenn was keeping after me to take interiors with flashbulbs, and I had to delive...
I went to have a look at the scene of the crime. The road from Lame Horse to the turnoffs to the Bar JR Ranch and Lily’s cabin doesn’t stop there. It keeps going for three more miles and stops for good at the Fishtail River, and there, on the right, is Bill Farnham’s dude ...
It wasn't a search; I didn't look under cushions or in drawers. Wolfe's suggestion had been to put the gun at some spot where it would soon be seen, so I just covered the territory and used my eyes. I certainly didn't expect to see it, having offered odds of fifty to one, and so wasn't disappoint...
Since my chair was occupied I wanted to ask him if I was invited, but held it; and as I circled around the cluster of chairs he spoke. 'That's Mr. Goodwin's desk, Mr. Skinner. If you don't mind?' That helped a little, but not much. He had never before arranged to stage a c...
I ate dinner, if two corned-beef sandwiches and lukewarm coffee in a paper cup can be called dinner, in the office of the District Attorney of the County of New York, in the room of an assistant DA named Mandelbaum whom I knew quite well from various contacts on other occasions. When I finally go...
It is my habit to make big discounts anyhow, and that day I reached my all-time peak in skepticism. I didn't think he had any program whatever. I thought his line that he needed Saul, and he knew what for, was unadulterated guff. I was sure that Cramer had laid off because he had all the stuff he...
“Yes, sir.” The dick stood with his shoulders straight. He was the military type. “At or about half past four o’clock this young woman was seen in the corridor opening the door leading to the Rucker and Dill exhibit.” “Who saw her?” “I did,” Pete sp...
That established, I sat at my desk at half past nine Friday morning and considered recourses. It wasn’t the kind of problem to discuss with Wolfe, and anyway he wasn’t available. Saul Panzer had come at nine o’clock on the dot, and instead of going up to the plant rooms Wolfe had come down, put o...
They had been there an hour. Saul, wiry and a little undersized all but his ears and nose, could have occupied about any spot in life that appealed to him, but he had settled for free-lance operative years ago because he could work only when he wanted to, make as much money as he needed, be outdo...
Mud from the April rains was a foot deep in the one street, but there was a raised sidewalk of flat stones on either side. As we proceeded along it, single file, Wolfe in the lead, I got an impression that we were not welcome. I caught glimpses of human forms ahead, one or...
Or maybe it did; but the assorted heads of deer and bear and moose on the walls, with planked fish here and there, made it also a trophy room; the billiard table at one end made it a game room; the cabinets of weapons and rods made it a gun-and-tackle room; the chairs and rugs and scattered table...
That had been my suggestion to Wolfe just before Paul Whipple rang the doorbell, and using it verbatim appealed to one of my flaws, I’m not sure which one. It wasn’t answered. She looked down her long thin nose at me and asked, “Whom do you wish to see?” ...
I put my cup down and said, “No argument.” Actually there could have been one. There had been plenty of nothingness in results, but not in efforts. Somewhere in the nine notebooks here on my table ' I write these reports on my own machine up in my room, not in the office ' are the names of four m...