The Rubber Band

"No. I had come back to the kitchen, closing the office door for his privacy but leaving this one open as you said, and he came out and went in a hurry. He said nothing at all."

I lifted the shoulders and let them drop. "He'll be back. He wants to see a kind of a man named Nero Wolfe. What's on the menu?"

Fritz told me, and let me take a sniff at the sauce steaming on the simmer plate; then I heard the elevator and went back to the office. Wolfe entered, crossed to his chair and got himself lowered, rang for beer and took the opener out of the drawer, and then vouchsafed me a glance.

"Pleasant afternoon, Archie?"

"No, sir. Putrid. I went around to Perry's office."

"Indeed. A man of action must expect such vexations. Tell me about it."

"Well, Perry left here just after I came down, but about eight minutes after that he phoned and instructed me to come galloping. Having the best interests of my employer in mind I went."

"Notwithstanding the physical law that the contents can be no larger than the container." Fritz arrived with two bottles of beer; Wolfe opened and poured one, and drank. "Go on."

"Yes, sir. I disregard your wit, because I'd like to show you this picture before the company arrives, and they're already ten minutes late. By the way, the company we already had has departed. He claimed to be part of the six-o'clock appointment and said he would wait, but Fritz says he got a phone call and went in a hurry. Maybe the appointment is off. Anyhow, here's the Perry puzzle…"

I laid it out for him, in the way that he always liked to get a crop of facts, no matter how trivial or how crucial. I told him what everybody looked like, and what they did, and what they said fairly verbatim. He finished the first botde of beer meanwhile, and had the second well on its way when I got through. I ratded it off and then leaned back and took a sip from a glass of milk I had brought from the kitchen.

Wolfe pinched his nose. "Ptui! Hyenas. And your conclusions?"

"Maybe hyenas. Yeah." I took another sip. "On principle I don't like Perry, but it's possible he's just using all the decency he has left after a life of evil. You have forbidden me to use the word louse, so I would say that Muir is an insect. Clara Fox is the ideal of my dreams, but it wouldn't stun me to know that she lifted the roll, though I'd be surprised."