Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02 Read Online Free Page B

takes afillip on the flank for my mare to dance, and the fillip was not forthcoming. You were away at the time, and since your return the incident has not been discussed. It is odd that you should have innocently been the cause, by mere chance, of its revival.”
    “I don’t get you.”
    Fritz came with beer. Wolfe took the opener from the drawer, poured a glass, gulped, and leaned back again. He resumed, “By annoying me about the man on the witness-stand. I resigned myself to your tantrum because it was nearly four o’clock. As you know, the book came. I read it last night.”
    “Why did you read it?”
    “Don’t badger me. I read it because it was a book. I had finished
The Native’s Return
, by Louis Adamic, and
Outline of Human Nature
, by Alfred Rossiter, and I read books.”
    “Yeah. And?”
    “This will amuse you. Paul Chapin, the man on the witness-stand, the author of
Devil Take the Hindmost
, is the villain of Andrew Hibbard’s tale. He is the psychopathic avenger of an old and tragic injury.”
    “The hell he is.” I gave Wolfe a look; I had known him to invent for practice. “Why is he?”
    Wolfe’s eyelids went up a shade. “Do you expect me to explain the universe?”
    “No, sir. Retake. How do you know he is?”
    “By no flight. Pedestrian mental processes. Must you have them?”
    “I’d greatly appreciate it.”
    “I suppose so. A few details will do. Mr. Hibbard employed the unusual phrase,
embark on a ship of vengeance
, and that phrase occurs twice in
Devil Take the Hindmost.
Mr. Hibbard did not say, as the stenographer has it,
that was difficult, for pawn
, which is ofcourse meaningless; he said,
that was difficult, for Paul
, and caught himself up pronouncing the name, which he did not intend to disclose. Mr. Hibbard said things indicating that the man was a writer, for instance speaking of his disguising his style in the warnings. Mr. Hibbard said that five years ago the man began to be involved in compensatory achievement. I telephoned two or three people this morning. In 1929 Paul Chapin’s first successful book was published, and in 1930 his second. Also, Chapin is a cripple through an injury which he suffered twenty-five years ago in a hazing accident at Harvard. If more is needed … “
    “No. Thank you very much. I see. All right. Now that you know who the guy is, everything is cozy. Why is it? Who are you going to send a bill to?”
    Two of the folds in Wolfe’s cheeks opened out a little, so I knew he thought he was smiling. I said, “But you may just be pleased because you know it’s corn fritters with anchovy sauce for lunch and it’s only ten minutes to the bell.”
    “No, Archie.” The folds were gently closing. “I mentioned that I entertained a notion. It may or may not be fertile. As usual, you have furnished the fillip. Luckily our stake will be negligible. There are several possible channels of approach, but I believe … yes. Get Mr. Andrew Hibbard on the phone. At Columbia, or at his home.”
    “Yes, sir. Will you speak?”
    “Yes. Keep your wire and take it down as usual.”
    I got the number from the book and called it. First the university. I didn’t get Hibbard. I monkeyed around with two or three extensions and four or five people, and it finally leaked out that he wasn’t anywherearound, but no one seemed to know where he was. I tried his home, an Academy number, up in the same neighborhood. There a dumb female nearly riled me. She insisted on knowing who I was and she sounded doubtful about everything. She finally seemed to decide Mr. Hibbard probably wasn’t home. Through the last of it Wolfe was listening in on his wire.
    I turned to him. “I can try again and maybe with luck get a human being.”
    He shook his head. “After lunch. It is two minutes to one.”
    I got up and stretched, thinking I would be able to do a lot of destructive criticism on a corn fritter myself, especially with Fritz’s sauce. It was at that moment that Wolfe’s