“Well?” I asked. The folds in his cheeks deepened, which means he’s smiling. He moved the sheet across his desk toward me. I could read his precise handwriting — that was easy — but I had no idea what I was supposed to be getting from it. He had copied the seven verses Meade had listed:
I Tim. 6:10
For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
Job 5:16
So the poor have hope, and injustice shuts its mouth.
Acts 17:28
For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your poets have said, “We are his offspring.”
Matt. 2:12
And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Psalms 86:13
For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths of the grave.
Eccles. 5:17
All his days he eats in darkness, with great frustration, affliction and anger.
Romans 13:14
Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
I read through the verses twice and then looked at Wolfe, who was leaning back with his eyes closed and his hands interlaced over his center mound. “Okay, you’re gloating, and the reason — or at least part of it — is that I don’t have the faintest damn idea what to make of all this.”
He opened his eyes and nodded thanks to Fritz, who had just brought in beer and a glass. “Gloating? Hardly,” he intoned, pouring beer and watching the foam settle. “Given my utter lack of inspiration, I am in no position to gloat to you, or to anyone else.” He then laid it all out for me, chapter and verse, so to speak. The way he explained it made perfect sense, although I never would have doped the thing out myself.
“Now what?” I asked.
He drained his glass and dabbed his lips with a handkerchief. “Type those verses into your computer just as I have written them — they will easily fit on a single sheet. Then print out a dozen copies. We will need them tonight.”
“Which means I’ve got to call the Spire bunch and try to cajole them all into coming here.”
Wolfe came forward in his chair. “Is this not the night the Circle of Faith meets in the church?”
“That’s right — Mondays, at seven-thirty.”
“Very well. We will become a nondocketed item on their agenda.”
It took several seconds for what he said to sink in. The mountain was going to Mohammed.
Seventeen
After recovering from the shock of Wolfe’s decision, I went to the kitchen with the news that we would be leaving the brownstone about a half-hour before we normally sit down to dinner. Fritz looked at me as if I’d just salted his cassoulet Castelnaudary without first tasting it.
“But — to go without eating, Archie,” he pleaded. “That is bad for him... it is terrible!”
“Oh, come on. As good as your shrimp bordelaise is, it’ll do him good to bypass a few calories now and again. It’s not as if he’s been wasting away. Besides, you’re the one who likes to see him working.” I avoided mentioning that there would be no fee on this escapade; if I had, Fritz’s jaw, already sagging, would have dropped all the way to the parquet floor. As I left the kitchen, he was staring at the stove, shaking his head, and muttering something in French — probably a curse on me and all that I hold dear. And I was cursing myself for missing the shrimp, to say nothing of dessert — Fritz’s incomparable pistachio soufflé.
The rest of the day seemed like a week. After lunch, which was curried beef roll, I balanced the checkbook and entered the Bible verses into the PC, per Wolfe’s instructions. I then printed out twelve copies and slipped them into a manila envelope. All the while, he sat at his desk reading and drinking beer — until it was time to go up and dally with the orchids, that is.
Instead of coming down to the office at six from the plant rooms, as is his usual routine, Wolfe went to his bedroom, presumably to change for the trek to Staten Island. At six-fifty, he still hadn’t descended, so I told Fritz I was leaving and walked to the garage on Tenth Avenue. I got the Mercedes and pulled it around in front of the brownstone. Wolfe was standing on the stoop, clad in his dark cashmere overcoat and homburg despite the warm weather and armed with his red thorn walking stick.
He glowered at the car before walking down the steps. I stepped out and played footman, opening the rear door, and he got in, the glower still holding. The only thing I know of that Nero Wolfe dislikes more than riding in a car is riding in an airplane. He mistrusts all vehicles and endures them only when he feels he has absolutely no recourse.
Once settled — or as settled as Wolfe gets in a car — I eased from the curb, steering a course south and then east, eventually passing into Brooklyn through the tunnel at the Battery. The evening traffic was light, and I’m the best driver I know, but Wolfe sat rigid on the front half of the seat and clung to the strap as if it were a rip cord.
“We’re about to cross the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge,” I said a few minutes later to be chatty, knowing he’d never laid eyes on this engineering wonder. “It is the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world, completed in 1964.” He grunted his lack of enthusiasm at my knowledge of local trivia, so I clammed up for the rest of the drive.
It was early twilight when we pulled onto the black-topped parking lot of the Silver Spire Tabernacle. About fifteen cars dozed under mercury-white lighting on the Vermont-sized expanse of tarmac, all of them near the entrance. I swung the Mercedes into the nearest available slot to the door. “This is the place,” I said, shutting off the engine and turning to face Wolfe. “Chez Bay.”
He scowled and I got out, opening the rear door on his side. As large as Wolfe is, he’s never clumsy, and he climbed from the car as if he did it every day of his life, rather than on visits to the barber plus his annual trip to the Metropolitan Orchid Show. He stretched his legs and gave the building the once-over.
“Like I told you, it’s a whopper,” I said.
“That deceit should dwell in such a place.”
“Shakespeare?”
“Paraphrased. I omitted the adjective ‘gorgeous,’ which this edifice clearly does not merit.”
We went in through the glass double doors. A bony, dusty-haired guard in the seat occupied during the day by the redhead put down the dog-eared paperback western he was reading and squinted at us through half-glasses. “Sorry, church’s closed now,” the geezer droned after freeing a toothpick from his mouth. “First tour tomorrow’s at nine.”
“There’s a meeting going on in the executive conference room,” I told him evenly. “Reverend Bay is expecting us.”
The guard peered doubtfully at a page in the loose-leaf notebook that lay open on his desk. “Don’t have any record of visitors; what’s the name?”
“Wolfe and Goodwin. Call Reverend Bay and tell him we’re here,” I snapped.
He shook his head. “Nope. Can’t interrupt a meet-in’.”
I leaned so close to his leathery face that I could tell you what kind of spaghetti sauce he favored. “Look, I know damn well there’s a phone in the conference room,” I said, stressing each word. “Call Bay or I’ll do it myself. And if I have to, you aren’t going to like it.”
The guard’s watery eyes met mine, and he must have swallowed hard, because his Adam’s apple bobbed. He picked up the instrument, punching a number.