Before Midnight

Chapter 2

Since I got home late that night and there was nothing urgent on, it was after nine Wednesday morning before I got down to the kitchen for my snack of grapefruit, oatmeal, griddle cakes, bacon, blackberry jam, and coffee. Wolfe had of course breakfasted in his room as usual and gone up to the plant rooms on the roof for his morning session with the orchids.

“It is a good thing, Archie,” Fritz remarked, spooning batter, his own batter, onto the griddle for my fourth cake, “to see you break your fast with proper leisure. Disturbed by no interruptions.”

I finished a paragraph in the Times on the rack before me, swallowed, sipped some coffee, and spoke. “Fritz, I’ll be honest with you. There’s no one else on earth I could stand in the same room while I’m eating breakfast and reading the morning paper. When you speak you leave it entirely up to me whether I reply, or even whether I listen. However, you should know that I understand you. Take what you just said. What you meant was that no interruptions means no clients and no cases, and you’re wondering if the bank account is getting too low for comfort. Right?”

“Yes.” He flipped the thick golden-brown disc onto my plate. “But if you think I am worried, no. It is never a question of worry here. With Mr. Wolfe and you—”

The phone rang. I took it there on the kitchen extension, and a deep baritone voice told me it was Rudolph Hansen and wanted to speak to Nero Wolfe. I said Mr. Wolfe wouldn’t be available until eleven o’clock but I would take a message. He said he had to see him immediately and would be there in fifteen minutes. I said nothing doing before eleven unless he told me why it was so urgent. He said he would arrive in fifteen minutes and hung up.

Meanwhile Fritz had ditched the cake because it had been off the griddle too long, and started another one.

Ordinarily when a stranger has made an appointment I do a little research on him in advance, but I wouldn’t have got very far in a quarter of an hour, and anyway I had another cake and cup of coffee coming. I had just finished and gone to the office with the Times to put it on my desk when the doorbell rang. When I went to the hall I saw out on the stoop, through the one-way glass panel in the door, not one stranger but four — three middle-aged men and one who had been, all well dressed and two with homburgs.

I opened the door the two inches that the chain bolt allowed and spoke through the crack. “Your names, please?”

“I’m Rudolph Hansen. I telephoned.”

“And the others?”

“This is ridiculous! Open the door!”

“It only seems ridiculous, Mr. Hansen. There are at least a hundred people within a hundred miles, which takes in Sing Sing, who would like to tell Mr. Wolfe what they think of him and maybe prove it. I admit you’re not hoods, but with four of you — names, please?”

“I’m an attorney-at-law. These are clients of mine. Mr. Oliver Buff. Mr. Patrick O’Garro. Mr. Vernon Assa.”

The names were certainly no help, but I had had time to size them up, and if I knew anything at all about faces they had come not to make trouble but to get out from under some. So I opened the door, helped them put their hats and coats on the big old walnut rack, ushered them into the office and onto chairs, sat at my desk, and told them:

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but that’s the way it is. Mr. Wolfe never comes to the office until eleven. The rule has been broken, but it takes a lot of breaking. The only way would be for you to tell me all about it and persuade me to tackle him, and then for me to go and tell him all about it and try to persuade him. Even if I succeeded, all that would take twenty-five minutes, and it’s now twenty-five to eleven, so you might as well relax.”

“Your name’s Goodwin,” Hansen stated. His baritone didn’t sound as deep as it had on the phone. I had awarded him the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk, but, with his long thin neck and gray skin and big ears, he clashed with it. A straight-backed painted job with no upholstery would have suited him better.

“Mr. Goodwin,” he said, “this is a confidential matter of imperative urgency. I insist that you tell Mr. Wolfe we must see him at once.”

“We all do,” one of the clients said in an executive tone. Another had popped up from his chair as soon as he sat down and was pacing the floor. The third was trying to keep a match steady enough to light a cigarette. Seeing that I was in for a pointless wrangle, I said politely, “Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” and got up and left the room.

In the kitchen, Fritz, who was cleaning up after breakfast and who would never have presumed to ask in words if it looked like business, asked it with a glance as I entered and went to the table where the phones were. I lifted my brows at him, took the house phone, and buzzed the plant rooms.

In a minute Wolfe growled in my ear. “Well?”

“I’m calling from the kitchen. In the office are four men with Sulka shirts and Firman shoes in a panic. They say they must see you at once.”

“Confound it—”

“Yes, sir. I’m merely notifying you that we have company. I told them I’d see what I can do, and that’s what I can do.” I hung up before he could, took the other phone, and dialed a number.

Nathaniel Parker, the lawyer Wolfe always calls on when he is driven to that extremity, wasn’t in, but his clerk, Sol Ehrlich, was, and he had heard of Rudolph Hansen. All he knew was that Hansen was a senior partner in one of the big midtown firms with a fat practice, and that he had quite a reputation as a smooth operator. When I hung up I told Fritz that there was a pretty good prospect of snaring a fee that would pay our wages for several months, provided he would finish waking me up by supplying another cup of coffee.

When the sound came, at eleven o’clock on the dot, of Wolfe’s elevator starting down, I went to the hall, met him as he emerged, reported on Hansen, and followed him into the office. As usual, I waited to pronounce names until he had reached his chair behind his desk, because he doesn’t like to shake hands with strangers, and then Hansen beat me to it. He arose to put a card on Wolfe’s desk and sat down again.

“My card,” he said. “I’m Rudolph Hansen, attorney-at-law. These gentlemen are clients of mine — that is, their firm is. Mr. Oliver Buff. Mr. Patrick O’Garro. Mr. Vernon Assa. We’ve lost some valuable time waiting for you. We must see you privately.”

Wolfe was frowning. The first few minutes with prospective clients are always tough for him. Possibly there will be no decent excuse for turning them down, and if not he’ll have to go to work. He shook his head. “This is private. You glance at Mr. Goodwin. He may not be indispensable, but he is irremovable.”

“We prefer to see you alone.”

“Then I’m sorry, sir. You have indeed lost time.”

He looked at his clients, and so did I. Oliver Buff, the one who had finished with middle age, had a round red face that made his hair look whiter, and his hair made his face look redder. He and Hansen wore the homburgs. Patrick O’Garro was brown all over — eyes, hair, suit, tie, shoes, and socks. Of course his shirt was white. The eyes were bright, quick, and clever. Vernon Assa was short and a little plump, with fat shoulders, and either he had just got back from a month in Florida or he hadn’t needed to go. The brown getup would have gone fine with his skin, but he was in gray with black shoes.

“What the hell,” he muttered.

“Go ahead,” Buff told Hansen.

The lawyer returned to Wolfe. “Mr. Goodwin is your employee, of course?”

“He is.”

“He is present at this conversation in his capacity as your agent?”

“Agent? Very well. Yes.”

“Then that’s understood. First I would like to suggest that you engage me as your counsel and hand me one dollar as a retaining fee.”

I opened my eyes at him. The guy must be cuckoo. For fee shipments that office was strictly a one-way street.

“Not an appealing suggestion,” Wolfe said drily. “You have a brief for it?”

“Certainly. As you know, a conversation between a lawyer and his client is a privileged communication and its disclosure may not be compelled. I wish to establish that confidential relationship with you, lawyer and client, and then tell you of certain circumstances which have led these gentlemen to seek your help. Obviously that will be no protection against voluntary disclosure by you, since you may end the relationship at any moment, but you will be able to refuse a disclosure at the demand of any authority without incurring any penalty. They and I will be at your mercy, but your record and reputation give us complete confidence in your integrity and discretion. I suggest that you retain me for a specific function: to advise you on the desirability of taking a case about to be offered to you by the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa.”

“What is that firm?”

“You must have heard of it. The advertising agency.”

Wolfe’s lips were going left to right and back again. It was his kind of smile. “Very ingenious. I congratulate you. But as you say, you will be at my mercy. I may end the relationship at any moment, with no commitment whatever.”

“Just a minute,” O’Garro put in, his clever bright brown eyes darting from Wolfe to Hansen. “Must it be like that?”

“It’s the only way, Pat,” the lawyer told him. “If you hire him, you either trust him or you don’t.”

“I don’t like it... but if it’s the only way...”

“It is. Oliver?”

Buff said yes.

“Vern?”

Assa nodded.

“Then you retain me, Mr. Wolfe? As specified?”

“Yes. — Archie, give Mr. Hansen a dollar.”

I got one from my wallet, suppressing a pointed comment which the transaction certainly deserved, crossed to the attorney-at-law, and handed it over.

“I give you this,” I told him formally, “as the agent for Mr. Nero Wolfe.”