Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 06 - Some Buried Caesar
PRAISE FOR NERO WOLFE
“It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.… Like Sherlock Holmes … he looms larger than life and, in some ways, is much more satisfactory.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Nero Wolfe towers over his rivals … he is an exceptional character creation.” —New Yorker
“The most interesting great detective of them all.”
—Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky Jim
“Nero Wolfe is one of the master creations.”
—James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice
ARCHIE GOODWIN
“Archie is a splendid character.” —Agatha Christie
“Stout’s supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin.” —P. G. Wodehouse
“If he had done nothing more than to create Archie Goodwin, Rex Stout would deserve the gratitude of whatever assessors watch over the prosperity of American literature.… Archie is the lineal descendant of Huck Finn.” —Jacques Barzun
REX STOUT
“Rex Stout is one of the half-dozen major figures in the development of the American detective novel.” —Ross Macdonald
“I’ve found Rex Stout’s books about Nero Wolfe endlessly readable.… I sometimes have to remind myself that Wolfe and Goodwin are the creations of a writer’s mind, that no matter how many doorbells I ring in the West Thirties, I’ll never find the right house.” —Lawrence Block
“Fair warning: It is safe to read one Nero Wolfe novel, because you will surely like it. It is extremely unsafe to read three, because you will forever be hooked on the delightful characters who populate these perfect books.” —Otto Penzler
The Rex Stout Library
Fer-de-Lance
The League of Frightened Men
The Rubber Band
The Red Box
Too Many Cooks
Some Buried Caesar
Over My Dead Body
Where There’s a Will
Black Orchids
Not Quite Dead Enough
The Silent Speaker
Too Many Women
And Be a Villain
The Second Confession
Trouble in Triplicate
In the Best Families
Three Doors to Death
Murder by the Book
Curtains for Three
Prisoner’s Base
Triple Jeopardy
The Golden Spiders
The Black Mountain
Three Men Out
Before Midnight
Might As Well Be Dead
Three Witnesses
If Death Ever Slept
Three for the Chair
Champagne for One
And Four to Go
Plot It Yourself
Too Many Clients
Three at Wolfe’s Door
The Final Deduction
Gambit
Homicide Trinity
The Mother Hunt
A Right to Die
Trio for Blunt Instruments
The Doorbell Rang
Death of a Doxy
The Father Hunt
Death of a Dude
Please Pass the Guilt
A Family Affair
Death Times Three
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Part 1 - Some Buried Caesar
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part 2 - The Golden Spiders
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
Copyright
Some Buried Caesar
Introduction
What some people will do for publicity. In the realm of food, you can make a Guinness record-defying submarine sandwich or pepperoni pizza. Or, in the case of Thomas Pratt, owner of a string of 1930s-vintage fast-food restaurants known as pratterias, you can propose to barbecue a prizewinning bull. To spend $45,000 on a piece of beef that will serve only 100 people, explains the enterprising Pratt to an unamused Nero Wolfe and a goggling Archie Goodwin, is not only an efficient way to spend money that would otherwise go to ineffectual newspaper advertising, it also makes psychological sense:
Look here. Do you realize what a stir it will make that the senior grand champion Guernsey bull of the United States is being barbecued and served in chunks and slices to a gathering of epicures? And by whom? By Tom Pratt of the famous pratterias! Let alone the publicity, do you know what the result will be? For weeks and months every customer that eats a roast beef sandwich in a pratteria will have a sneaking unconscious feeling that he’s chewing a piece of Hickory Caesar Grindon! That’s what I mean when I say psychology.
But psychology has a tendency to run amuck, as do both people and sedans. Stranded at the Pratt house in upstate New York owing to an unforeseen encounter between their car and a tree, the immense, unflappable Nero Wolfe and his smart-mouth assistant, Archie Goodwin, have to remake both housing and transportation plans on their expedition to exhibit Wolfe’s orchids at the fair in nearby Crowfield. In the process, they land in the middle of a not-so-neighborly altercation between Guernsey League officials, longtime stockmen, and Pratt. Infuriated at Pratt’s plan for Hickory Caesar Grindon, the stockmen cajole, threaten, insult, and even propose a dangerous wager in order to save Caesar. So heated is their conflict that a character from the sixties might observe, “Hey! Don’t have a cow, man.”
But of course that is the point: despite the many remonstrances, the cow will be had. And this being the thirties rather than the sixties, the demonstration ends there. The various characters skulk off concocting complicated designs to fulfill their passions: amorous, financial, and bovine. There is the female golf champion (“one of those,” Archie uncharitably observes), formerly engaged to one of the feuding neighbors, who in his turn is now smitten with a Pratt houseguest, who has in her turn begun to lavish her attentions on an unreluctant Archie. The female golf champion is willing to pay Archie the cost of lunch to keep the houseguest away from her brother, Jimmy Pratt. (And the cost of the lunch for two people in 1938? Two dollars, which will not quite get you a cup of cappuccino in 1994, much less a biscotto to go with it.) There is the big-boned stockman who, after his herd was virtually destroyed by anthrax, sold Caesar to Tom Pratt, but only with great sadness (“I was up all night the day he was dropped—he sucked these fingers when he was only six hours old.”). And there is the love-smitten, bet-proffering neighbor, also an expert stockman. He is accompanied by a suspicious-looking city slicker friend, who persists in presenting himself as the model of sartorial perfection in a Crawnley suit and Mo
nteith tie, despite the fact that this is, after all, the country.
Unfortunately, the country is immune to neither bizarre couture nor evil. When first one and then another murder occurs, Nero Wolfe diverts himself from attending to his precious orchids (prizewinning albinos) and rouses himself (but not much) to apply logic and observation, and some sleight of hand, to the solution. When pursuit of the murderer leads him out to the Crowfield fair, Nero Wolfe fortifies himself with regular trips to the Methodist tent, where the followers of John Wesley are making quite a name (and a pretty penny) for themselves with their excellent chicken fricassee and dumplings. Archie manages to maintain, albeit tenuously, his love interest, while fooling the smarter-than-expected rural police, who suspect he is hiding evidence. Despite his quick hand, quick brain, and even quicker mouth, Archie ends up in the Crowfield County jail, where he amuses himself by forming the Crowfield County Prisoners’ Union, complete with a much-disputed list of demands.
The solution to this delightfully complicated plot comes at last, and just in time for Nero’s and Archie’s safe deliverance from the perils of upstate New York. For those still hungering for a barbecue at book’s end, I offer a recipe for beans to go with your ribs. Serve them with potato salad, rolls, corn, coleslaw, and rich, fudgy, homemade brownies—all essential components of a true all-American barbecue. While Archie would undoubtedly refer to a side dish as “a cute number sitting on the bench,” and refer the cooking of beans to Fritz, I found the best recipe for a bean dish from Tom and Enid Schantz of the Rue Morgue mystery bookstore in Boulder, Colorado. Enjoy, and don’t let anybody give you any bull.
RUE MORGUE BEANS WITH BACON
8 slices bacon
1 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained
1 15-ounce can kidney beans, drained
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained
1 28-ounce can baked beans, including sauce (recommended brand: B & M)
4 cups onions, quartered and thinly sliced (about 2 large onions)
½ cup dark corn syrup
¼ cup cider vinegar
1 tsp. dry mustard
Cook bacon, drain, and cut into 1-inch slices. Combine bacon and rest of ingredients in Dutch oven on top of stove. Simmer uncovered for 2 hours, stirring every 15 minutes, until sauce is slightly reduced and onions are completely cooked. Serves 8.
—Diane Mott Davidson
Chapter 1
That sunny September day was full of surprises. The first one came when, after my swift realization that the sedan was still right side up and the windshield and windows intact, I switched off the ignition and turned to look at the back seat. I didn’t suppose the shock of the collision would have hurled him to the floor, knowing as I did that when the car was in motion he always had his feet braced and kept a firm grip on the strap; what I expected was the ordeal of facing a glare of fury that would top all records; what I saw was him sitting there calmly on the seat with his massive round face wearing a look of relief—if I knew his face, and I certainly knew Nero Wolfe’s face. I stared at him in astonishment.
He murmured, “Thank God,” as if it came from his heart.
I demanded, “What?”
“I said thank God.” He let go of the strap and wiggled a finger at me. “It has happened, and here we are. I presume you know, since I’ve told you, that my distrust and hatred of vehicles in motion is partly based on my plerophory that their apparent submission to control is illusory and that they may at their pleasure, and sooner or later will, act on whim. Very well, this one has, and we are intact. Thank God the whim was not a deadlier one.”
“Whim hell. Do you know what happened?”
“Certainly. I said, whim. Go ahead.”
“What do you mean, go ahead?”
“I mean go on. Start the confounded thing going again.”
I opened the door and got out and walked around to the front to take a look. It was a mess. After a careful examination I went back to the other side of the car and opened the rear door and looked in at him and made my report.
“It was quite a whim. I’d like to get it on record what happened, since I’ve been driving your cars nine years and this is the first time I’ve ever stopped before I was ready to. That was a good tire, so they must have run it over glass at the garage where I left it last night, or maybe I did myself, though I don’t think so. Anyway, I was going 55 when the tire blew out. She left the road, but I didn’t lose the wheel, and I was braking and had her headed up and would have made it if it hadn’t been for that damn tree. Now the fender is smashed into the rubber and a knuckle is busted and the radiator’s ripped open.”
“How long will it take you to fix it?”
“I can’t fix it. If I had a nail I wouldn’t even bother to bite it, I’d swallow it whole.”
“Who can fix it?”
“Men with tools in a garage.”
“It isn’t in a garage.”
“Right.”
He closed his eyes and sat. Pretty soon he opened them again and sighed. “Where are we?”
“Two hundred and thirty-seven miles northeast of Times Square. Eighteen miles southwest of Crowfield, where the North Atlantic Exposition is held every year, beginning on the second Monday in September and lasting—”
“Archie.” His eyes were narrowed at me. “Please save the jocularity. What are we going to do?”
I admit I was touched. Nero Wolfe asking me what to do! “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’m going to kill myself. I was reading in the paper the other day how a Jap always commits suicide when he fails his emperor, and no Jap has anything on me. They call it seppuku. Maybe you think they call it hara-kiri, but they don’t or at least rarely. They call it seppuku.”
He merely repeated, “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to flag a car and get a lift. Preferably to Crowfield, where we have reservations at a hotel.”
“Would you drive it?”
“Drive what?”
“The car we flag.”
“I don’t imagine he would let me after he sees what I’ve done to this one.”
Wolfe compressed his lips. “I won’t ride with a strange driver.”
“I’ll go to Crowfield alone and rent a car and come back for you.”
“That would take two hours. No.”
I shrugged. “We passed a house about a mile back. I’ll bum a ride there or walk, and phone to Crowfield for a car.”
“While I sit here, waiting, helplessly, in this disabled demon.”
“Right.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“You won’t do that?”
“No.”
I stepped back around the rear of the car to survey the surroundings, near and far. It was a nice September day, and the hills and dales of upstate New York looked sleepy and satisfied in the sun. The road we were on was a secondary highway, not a main drag, and nothing had passed by since I had bumped the tree. A hundred yards ahead it curved to the right, dipping down behind some trees. I couldn’t see the house we had passed a mile or so back, on account of another curve. Across the road was a gentle slope of meadow which got steeper further up where the meadow turned into woods. I turned. In that direction was a board fence painted white, a smooth green pasture, and a lot of trees; and beyond the trees were some bigger ones, and the top of a house. There was no drive leading that way, so I figured that there would be one further along the road, around the curve.
Wolfe yelled to ask what the devil I was doing, and I stepped back to the car door.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t see a garage anywhere. There’s a house across there among those big trees. Going around by the road it would probably be a mile or more, but cutting across that pasture would be only maybe 400 yards. If you don’t want to sit here helpless, I will, I’m armed, and you go hunt a phone. That house over there is closest.”
Away off somewhere, a dog barked. Wolfe looked at me. “That was a dog barking.”
&
nbsp; “Yes, sir.”
“Probably attached to that house. I’m in no humor to contend with a loose dog. We’ll go together. But I won’t climb that fence.”
“You won’t need to. There’s a gate back a little way.”
He sighed, and bent over to take a look at the crates, one on the floor and one on the seat beside him, which held the potted orchid plants. In view of the whim we had had, it was a good thing they had been secured so they couldn’t slide around. Then he started to clamber out, and I stepped back to make room for him outdoors, room being a thing he required more than his share of. He took a good stretch, his applewood walking stick pointing like a sword at the sky as he did so, and turned all the way around, scowling at the hills and dales, while I got the doors of the car locked, and then followed me along the edge of the ditch to the place where we could cross to the gate.
It was after we had passed through, just as I got the gate closed behind us, that I heard the guy yelling. I looked across the pasture in the direction of the house, and there he was, sitting on top of the fence on the other side. He must have just climbed up. He was yelling at us to go back where we came from. At that distance I couldn’t tell for sure whether it was a rifle or a shotgun he had with the butt against his shoulder. He wasn’t exactly aiming it at us, but intentions seemed to be along that line. Wolfe had gone on ahead while I was shutting the gate, and I trotted up to him and grabbed his arm.
“Hold on a minute. If that’s a bughouse and that’s one of the inmates, he may take us for woodchucks or wild turkeys—”
Wolfe snorted. “The man’s a fool. It’s only a cow pasture.” Being a good detective, he produced his evidence by pointing to a brown circular heap near our feet. Then he glared toward the menace on the fence, bellowed “Shut up!” and went on. I followed. The guy kept yelling and waving the gun, and we kept to our course, but I admit I wasn’t liking it, because I could see now it was a shotgun and he might easily be the kind of a nut that would pepper us.