Sharing the best side with him, on his right, was Theodore Kelefy, the ambassador. Short but broad, a little pudgy, with no neck to speak of, he looked as if he had been taking on a deep tan for ten years, but it could have been for ten generations. He thought he spoke English, and maybe he did know the words, but he could have used some advice from Spiros Papps on how to pronounce them. On Bragan’s other side, his left, was David M. Leeson. If you had looked him over and listened to him — his cool professional smile, his cool cultivated baritone, his cool well-kept and well-handled face — you would have guessed that he was a career diplomat who had worked up to Assistant Secretary of State before he was forty, and you would have hit it right on the nose. It was he who had phoned Wolfe to ask him to cook for his country. One of his footholds on the way up, Spiros Papps told me, had been a couple of years as secretary of the embassy in the capital that Ambassador Kelefy came from.
It helps a career diplomat to have a helpful wife, and, according to Papps, Leeson had one. Papps spoke highly of her, keeping his voice down because she was there on the other side of him, between him and the ambassador. I had no serious objection to her looks, but she had too much forehead for a top rating. Smooth fair skin, light brown hair in a bun, quick brown eyes — that was all very well, but another trouble was the mouth. It had probably started out all right, but something had pulled the corners down. Either she had got bitter about something or she was working too hard on the career. If she had been a little younger I wouldn’t have minded finding out which it was and suggesting steps. If Wolfe could serve his country by cooking trout for an ambassador, why couldn’t I serve it by perking up the helpful wife of an Assistant Secretary of State?
The other woman at the table didn’t need any perking. At the opposite side of the table, kitty-cornered from me, was Adria Kelefy, not the ambassador’s daughter, as might have been thought, but his wife. She didn’t look especially helpful, but she certainly looked. Small and dark and dainty, with sleepy dark eyes and silky black hair. She was unquestionably fit to pick up and carry somewhere, if only to a drugstore to buy her a Coke, though I doubt if that would have been her idea of a treat. Assistant Secretary Leeson was on her right and Nero Wolfe on her left, and she was going great with both of them. Once she put her hand on Wolfe’s arm and kept it there ten seconds, and he didn’t pull away. Considering two of his strongest feelings, one about physical contacts and the other about women, I decided it was my duty to get close enough to study her.
But that had to wait. Next to Wolfe, across from me, was the ninth and last, a tall skinny guy with a perpetual squint and a thin tight mouth that was just a hyphen between his bony jaws. His left cheek was four shades redder than his right one, which I understood and sympathized with. The fireplace, on my right, was on his left. His name, Papps said, was James Arthur Ferris. I said he must be something scrubby like a valet or a varlet, since he had been stuck in the other baking seat.
Papps giggled. “Not a valet, not at all. A very important man, Mr. Ferris. I am responsible for his presence. Mr. Bragan would as soon have invited a cobra, but since he had maneuvered to get the ambassador and Secretary Leeson here I thought it only fair that Mr. Ferris should be invited too, and I insisted. Also I am a man of malice. It entertains me to see big men displaying bad blood. You say you are frying. Why are you frying? Because the table is too close to the fire. Why was it placed too close to the fire? So Mr. Bragan could seat Mr. Ferris where he would be highly uncomfortable. No little man is ever as petty as a big man.”
My plate empty, I arranged my knife and fork on it according to Hoyle. “Which are you, little or big?”
“Neither. I am unbranded. What you Americans call a maverick.”
“What makes Ferris big?”
“He represents big interests — a syndicate of five great oil companies. That is why Mr. Bragan would like to scorch him. Hundreds of millions are at stake. These four days here, we have fished in the morning, squabbled in the afternoon, and fraternized in the evening. Mr. Ferris has gained some ground with the ambassador, but not, I fear, with Secretary Leeson. I find that entertaining. In the end the decision will in effect be mine, and I invite a situation that should mean another ten or twenty million for the government that employs me. If you think I am indiscreet you are wrong. If you repeat what I have said to Mr. Wolfe, and it goes from him to any or all of the others, including Secretary Leeson, I would not reproach you as a chatterbox. I am a man of simple candor. In fact I would go so far as—”
I didn’t get to hear how far a man of guile and malice and simple candor would go, on account of an interruption. James Arthur Ferris suddenly shoved his chair back, not quietly, left it, marched the length of the room to the far wall, a good twenty paces, and took a billiard cue from the rack. All heads turned to him, and probably I wasn’t alone with my notion that he was going to march back and take a swing at our host, but he merely put the cue ball on the head spot, and, not bothering with any sawing, smashed it into the cluster. The heads turned to Bragan, and then to one another, in dead silence. I grabbed the opportunity. Bragan’s scorching Ferris was nothing to me, but scorching me too was uncalled for, and here was my chance. I got up and went to the billiard table and asked Ferris politely, “Shall I rack ’em up and we’ll lag for the break?”
He was so damn mad he couldn’t speak. He just nodded.
A couple of hours later, going on ten o’clock, Nero Wolfe said to me, “Archie. About your leaving the dinner table. You know what I think of any disturbance at a meal.”
“Yes, sir.”
We were in his room, bound for bed. Mine was down the hall, and I had stopped in at his by request.
“I concede,” he said, “that there may be exceptions, and this was one. Mr. Bragan is either a dunce or a ruffian.”
“Yeah. Or both. At least I wasn’t tied to a stake — I must remember to thank him. You going fishing tomorrow?”
“You know I’m not.” Seated, he grunted as he bent over to unlace his shoes. That done, he straightened. “I inspected the kitchen and equipment, and it will serve. They’ll be back at eleven-thirty with the morning’s catch, and lunch will be at twelve-thirty. I’ll take over the kitchen at ten. The cook is civil and fairly competent. I wish to make an avowal. You were right to oppose this expedition. These people are engaged in bitter and savage combat, with Ambassador Kelefy at the center of it, and in his present humor I doubt if he could distinguish between trout Montbarry and carp fried in lard. As for the others, their mouths would water only at the prospect of long pig. Do you know what that is?”
I nodded. “Cannibal stew. Only each one would want to pick the pig.”
“No doubt.” He kicked his shoes off. “If we leave immediately after lunch, say three o’clock, will we be home by bedtime?”
I said sure, and told him good night. As I opened the door he spoke to my back, “By the way, it is not lumbago.”
III
The next morning at nine-thirty Wolfe and I had breakfast together at a little table in the big room, by the only window that the sun was hitting through a gap in the trees outside. The griddle cakes were not up to Fritz’s by a long shot, but they were edible, and the bacon and maple syrup and coffee were admitted by Wolfe to be a pleasant surprise. The five fishermen had gone off before eight o’clock, each to his assigned stretch of the three miles of private water.
I had my own personal program and had cleared it with our host the evening before. Ever since I caught my first little shiner at the age of seven in an Ohio creek, at sight of wild water I have always had twin feelings: that there must be fish in it, and that they needed to be taught a lesson. Admitting that the Crooked River was privately stocked, the fish didn’t know it and were just as cocky as if they had never been near a hatchery. So I had arranged matters with Bragan. The five anglers were due back at the lodge at eleven-thirty, leaving the whole three miles vacant. Wolfe didn’t intend to join them at the lunch table anyhow, and certainly I wouldn’t be missed. I would have two hours for it, and Bragan told me, though not very cordially, to help myself to tackle and waders from the cabinets and drawers.