Over My Dead Body

Rex Stout

Over My Dead Body

Chapter One

The bell rang and I went to the front and opened the door and there she was. I said good-morning.

"Pliz," she said, "I would like to see Misturr Nero Wolfe."

Or you might have spelled it plihz or plizz or plihsz. However you spelled it, it wasn't Middle West or New England or Park Avenue or even East Side. It wasn't American, and naturally it irritated me a little. But I politely invited her in and conducted her to the office and got her a chair, and then extracted her name, which I had to ask her to spell.

"Mr Wolfe will be engaged until eleven o'clock," I told her, with a glance at the wall clock above my desk, which said ten-thirty. "I'm Archie Goodwin, his confidential secretary. If you'd like to save time by starting on me…"

She shook her head and said she had plenty of time. I asked her if she would like a book or magazine, and she shook her head again, and I passed her up and resumed at my desk, where I was heading up a bunch of hybridizing cards for use upstairs. Five minutes later I had finished and was checking them over when I heard her voice behind me:

"I believe I would like a book. May I?"

I waved at the shelves and told her to help herself and went on with the checking. Presently I looked up when she approached and stood beside me with a volume in her hand.

"Misturr Wolfe reads this?" she asked. She had a nice soft low voice which would have sounded all right if she had taken the trouble to learn how to pronounce words. I glanced at the title and told her Wolfe had read it some time ago.

"But he stoodies it?"

"Why should he? He's a genius, he don't have to study anything."

"He reads once and then he is through?"

"That's the idea."

She started for her chair and then turned again. "Do you read it perhaps?"

"I do not," I said emphatically.

She half smiled. "It's too complicated for you, the Balkan history?"

"I don't know, I haven't tried it. But I understand all the kings and queens got murdered. I like newspaper murders better."