When he looked up, Eve and Dr. Ben cried in one voice: “Well?”
“I’m going to ask some questions. Kindly refrain from hilarity and answer as if your future depended on it — which it does.” Ellery consulted the page. “Is there a potted palm anywhere in or about the premises?”
“Potted palm?” said Dr. Ben feebly.
“No,” said Eve, bewildered.
“No potted palm. How about a room with a skylight?”
“Skylight...”
“No.”
“In that art stuff downstairs — ceramics, statuettes, vases — do you recall any object in the shape of, or illustrated with the picture of, a dog? A yellow dog?”
“Now there’s a blue horse,” began Dr. Ben, “with a chipped—”
“No, Mr. Queen!”
“Bows and arrows? Archery target? Picture or statue of an archer? Or a statue of Cupid? Or a door painted green?”
“Not one of those things, Mr. Queen!”
“Clocks,” murmured Ellery, glancing again at the book.
“Say,” said Dr. Ben. “Dozens of ’em!”
“And I’ve examined them all,” said Ellery, “and none of them conceals the hoard. That being the case,” and Ellery got to his feet, smiling, “and Uncle Malachi having been fond of his little joke, only one possibility remains. So that’s where he stashed his treasure!”
“Swiping a leaf from Malachi’s rule-of-the-obvious,” continued Ellery, “in which of these thousands of books could his clue be hidden? Well, what was the nature of his treasure? Four million dollars. Four million — book. And among these standard sets is the complete works of O. Henry. And one of O. Henry’s most famous books is entitled... The Four Million.” Ellery waved the volume. “I found nothing foreign in the book. Then the clue was in its contents. Obvious development: see Contents Page. And the titles of the various stories? Tobin’s Palm — so I asked about a potted palm. The Skylight Room — but no skylight. Memoirs of a Yellow Dog — no yellow dog. Mammon and the Archer — The Green Door — The Caliph — Cupid and the Clock: all fizzled. Only one other possibility among the stories, so that must be Malachi’s clue to the hiding place of the cash. Between Rounds.”
“Between Rounds,” said Dr. Ben, biting his nails. “How the deuce does that tell you anything? Malachi wasn’t a prizefighter, or a—”
“But he was,” smiled Ellery, “a punster and high priest of the obscurely obvious. Rounds... A round is anything that’s circular or spherical in shape. What in a pawnshop — in any and every pawnshop! — is spherical and large enough to conceal 400 banknotes?” Eve gasped and ran to the front window. From its rusty arm, which pointed accusingly at the Third Avenue “El,” hung the ancient emblem of Uncle Malachi’s profession.
“If you’ll please find me some tools, Doctor, we’ll open those three gilt balls!”
Rex Stout
Immune to Murder
Nero Wolfe agreed to cook trout for the foreign ambassador; but when murder struck at the oil tycoon’s fishing camp, Wolfe had to find the killer — simply had to — because the most likely suspect was Nero Wolfe himself!
One of Rex Stout’s finest short novels about Nero Wolfe, the gargantuan manhunter, a beer-guzzling, orchid-growing crafty curmudgeon, and Archie Goodwin, the lean and hungry womanhunter, a salty and saucy legman...
I stood with my arms folded, glaring down at Nero Wolfe, who had his 278 pounds planted in a massive armchair which was made of heavy pine slats, with thick striped rugs draped over the back and on the seat for a cushion. It went with the rest of the furniture, including the bed, in that room of River Bend, the sixteen-room mountain lodge belonging to O. V. Bragan, the oil tycoon.
“A fine way to serve your country,” I told him. “Not. I get you here in time to be shown to your room and unpack and wash up for dinner, and now you tell me to go tell your host you want dinner in your room. Nothing doing. I decline.”
He was glaring back. “Confound it, I have lumbago I” he roared.
“You have not got lumbago. Naturally, your back’s tired, since all the way from 35th Street, Manhattan, to the Adirondacks, 328 miles, you kept stiff on the back seat, ready to jump, even with me at the wheel. What you need is exercise, like a good, long walk to the dining room.”
“I say it’s lumbago.”
“No. It’s acute mooditis, which is a medical term for an inflamed whim.” I unfolded my arms to gesture. “Here’s the situation: We were getting nowhere on that insurance case for Lamb and McCullough, which I admit was annoying for the greatest detective alive, and you were plenty annoyed, when a phone call came from the State Department. A new ambassador from a foreign country with which our country wanted to make a deal had been asked if he had any special personal desires, and he had said yes, he wanted to catch an American brook trout, and, what was more, he wanted it cooked fresh from the brook by Nero Wolfe. Pierre Mondor of Paris had told him once that you’re the ninth best cook in the world, and that the best trout he ever ate was cooked by you. Would you be willing to oblige? Arrangements had been made for the ambassador and a small party to spend a week at a lodge in the Adirondacks, with three miles of private trout water on the Crooked River. If a week was too much for you, two days would do, or even one, or even, in a pinch, just long enough to cook some trout.”
I gestured again. “Okay. You asked me what I thought. I said we had to stay on the Lamb and McCullough job. You said our country wanted that ambassador softened up and you must answer our country’s call to duty. I said nuts. I said if you wanted to cook for our country you could enlist in the Army and work your way up to mess sergeant, but I would admit that the Lamb and McCullough thing was probably too tough for you. Days passed. It got tougher. The outcome was that we left the house at 11:14 this morning, and here we are. The setup is marvelous and very democratic. You’re just here as a cook, and look at this room you’ve got.”
I swept a hand around. “Not a hardship in sight. Mine is somewhat smaller, but I’m only cook’s assistant. We were told dinner at 6:30 because they have to get up early to go fishing, and it is now 6:34, and I am instructed to go tell Bragan you’ll eat in your room. If you’ve got lumbago, it’s not in your back; it’s in your psyche. It is called psychic lumbago. The best treatment—”
“Archie. Stop gibbering!” He put his hands on the chair arms.
“Yes, sir.”
“There are degrees of discomfort, and some of them stop short of torment, thank heaven. Very well.” He levered himself upright, making some faces, assorted, on the way. “It is lumbago. And with it I am to sit at a strange table with a jumble of strangers. Are you coming?”
He headed for the door...
There was a hardship after alclass="underline" The lodge had no dining room. Or maybe there was one; but the assorted heads of deer and bear 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 scattered tables made it a living room; and the over-all size made it a barn.
There was nothing wrong with the food, which was served by two male experts in uniform, but I darn’ near roasted. There were nine of us at the big, square table, with three seated at each of three sides, and no one at the side nearest the fireplace. The fireplace was twelve feet wide, and from a distance it was cheerful and sporty, with flame curling around the eight-foot logs, but my seat at a forward corner of the table was not at a distance. I had to twist my legs around to the left to keep my pants from blazing up, and my right cheek was about ready for basting. As the soup was being served I twisted the legs still further, and my foot nicked the ankle of my neighbor to the left.