Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 46 by A Family Affair Read Free Book Online Page A

Attorney, we’ll stand mute. Released on bail, we’ll still stand mute. I am going to learn who killed that man in my house. I doubt if you can and I hope you don’t, except from me when I’m ready to tell you.”
    Wolfe aimed a straight finger at him, up at his face, another first. “If I sound uncivil, I do not apologize. I am in a rage and out of control. Whether you have warrants or not, arrest us now and take us; let’s get that over with. I have a job to do.” He extended his arms, stretched out, the wrists together for handcuffs. Beautiful. I would have loved to do it too, but that would have been piling it on.
    If Cramer had had cuffs in his pocket he might actually have used them, judging from the look on his big red face. Knowing Wolfe as well as he did, what
could
he do? His mouth opened and closed again. He looked at me and back at Wolfe. “Out of control,” he growled. “Balls.
You
out of control. I know one thing. I know—”
    “Oh! We didn’t know you were here, Inspector.”
    Two men were there at the door, a tall rangy one and a broad bulky one with only one arm. Of course Ishould have heard them; my ears must have been more eager to hear what Cramer would say than I realized. When he turned to face them they saluted, but he didn’t return it.
    “It took you long enough,” he said.
    “Yes, sir. It was a job. We didn’t know you were here. We—”
    “I came to see why it took so damn long. Did you—No. You can tell me in the car.” He was moving. They sidestepped to let him by and followed him out. I stayed put. Experts wouldn’t need help opening a door. When the sound came of the front door opening and closing, I went for a look down the hall, came back, and said, “What a break for him. He
couldn’t
have left without us. He ought to move them up a peg. Of course it was a break for us too, with you out of control.”
    “Grrrh,” he said. “Sit down.”

Chapter 4
    A t ten o’clock that evening I was standing by a reading lamp, flipping through the pages of a book entitled
Les Sauces du Monde
. Going through a room trying to find something doesn’t take long if you’re after a diamond necklace or an elephant tusk or a gun. But if it’s a twenty-dollar bill, anything at all that could be between the pages of a book without bulging it, that takes time if there are books in the room. For the Library of Congress, I would say 2748 years.
    Most of the forty-some books on shelves in Pierre Ducos’s room were about cooking. What I was after didn’t have to be a piece of paper, but that was the most likely, since I wanted something, anything, that could lead to either the man who had left the slip of paper on the tray or the one who had paid a C for it. One item that had seemed possible was a notebook I found in a drawer that had lists of names on several pages, but Lucile Ducos had told me they were the names of men who gave big tips. She said Pierre hadn’t been good at remembering names and he had written them down for twenty years.
    I hadn’t been in her room. When, arriving, I had toldher grandfather, with her as interpreter, that I wanted to take a look in Pierre’s room, and why, I had got the impression that she didn’t like it, but he had got emphatic and it took. I had also got the impression that she was staying with me to see if I took anything and if so what. Getting impressions from her wasn’t difficult, beginning with the impression that it didn’t matter whether I had two legs or four legs, or whether I wore my face in front or behind. But
she
mattered—I mean to her. Her face, which wasn’t bad at all, was well cared for, also her nice brown hair, and the cut and hang of her light-brown dress were just right. It was hard to believe she went to all that trouble just for the mirror.
    She was seated in an easy chair the other side of the reading lamp. When I did the last book and put it back on the shelf, I turned to her and said, “I suppose you’re right, if