Plot It Yourself

He pointed the spoon at me. “Archie, if I could lie with your aplomb I would be an ambassador. You know women. You know quite well that one with eyes the colour of that Miss Bonner and eyelashes of that length, her own, is a dangerous animal.”

By nine o’clock the morning fog had gone entirely, thanks to the apricot omelet, griddle cakes with bacon and honey, and two cups of coffee, and I went to the office and dialed Philip Harvey’s number. From his reaction you might have thought it was not yet dawn. After smoothing him down and promising never to call him again earlier than noon, short of a real emergency, I told him what I wanted-the names of people at Best and Green and the Owl Press who could be expected to co-operate. He said he knew no one at either place, told me to call the executive secretary of NAAD, and hung up. A hell of a chairman. When I got the executive secretary she wanted to know what kind of co-operation I was going to ask for. I told her, and she wanted to know why Nero Wolfe wanted the books. I said that no good detective ever tells anybody why he wants something, and if I gave her a reason it would be a phony, and I finally wore her down and got a couple of names.

Mr Arnold Green of Best and Green was extremely suspicious. He didn’t come right out with it, but I gathered that he suspected that the Joint Committee on Plagiarism was a conspiracy, abetted by some of his competitors, to twist the nose of Best and Green by getting something on an author whose book they had published five years ago; and anyway,

The Moth That Ate Peanuts

was a flop and had been remaindered, and the only copies they had left, maybe four or five, were in the morgue. And more anyway, what did that book have to do with the investigation Nero Wolfe was making? When he had simmered down a little I said I fully appreciated his point of view, and I would tell Mr Knapp and Mr Dexter and Mr Imhof that for some reason, probably a good one, he refused to send Mr Wolf a copy of the book, and he said I misunderstood, that he wasn’t refusing, that there might possibly be a copy somewhere around the office. If so he would send it down by messenger, and if not he would send someone to the morgue for one.