Fer-De-Lance

Encouraged by his sending for more highballs, I spread the conversation out a little. He didn’t seem to object. I learned that his father was a grain broker and went every day to his office in New York, on Pearl Street, and that he, Manuel, was considering the establishment of an airplane factory. He was, he said, a thoroughly skilled pilot, and he had spent a year at the Fackler works in Buffalo. His father had engaged to furnish the necessary capital, though he doubted the soundness of the venture and was entirely skeptical about airplanes. Manuel thought Larry Barstow showed promise of a real talent in structural design and hoped to be able to persuade him to take a share in the enterprise. He said: "Naturally Larry is not himself just at present, and I’m not trying to rush him. No wonder, first his father’s sudden death, and then the autopsy with its astonishing results. By the way, Mr. Goodwin, of course everybody around here is wondering how Nero Wolfe-that’s it, isn’t it?-how he was able to predict those results in such remarkable detail. Anderson, the District Attorney, hints at his own sources of information-he did so to me the other day, sitting in the chair you’re in now-but the truth of the matter is pretty generally known. At Green Meadow day before yesterday there were only two topics: who killed Barstow, and how Nero Wolfe found out. What are you going to do, disclose the answers to both riddles at the same dramatic moment?"

"Maybe. I hope so, Mr. Kimball. Anyway we won’t answer that last one first… No, thanks, none for me. With another of your elegant highballs I might answer almost anything. They won’t come any better than that even after repeal."

"Then by all means have one. Naturally, like everybody else, I’m curious. Nero Wolfe must be an extraordinary man."