Before Midnight

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 doorl"

"It only seems ridiculous, Mr. Hansen. Tlere 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 attomey-at-law. These are clients of mine. Mr. Oliver Buff. Mr. Patrick O'Garro. Mr. Vernon Assa."