The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

Fritz could have had a room upstairs, but he prefers the basement. His den is as big as the office and front room combined, but over the years it has got pretty cluttered-tables with stacks of magazines, busts of Escoffier and Brillat-Savarin on stands, framed menus on the walls, a king-size bed, five chairs, shelves of books (he has 289 cookbooks), a head of a wild boar he shot in the Vosges, a TV and stereo cabinet, two large cases of ancient cooking vessels, one of which he thinks was used by Julius Caesar's chef, and so on.

Wolfe was in the biggest chair by a table, with a bottle of beer and a glass. Fritz, seated across from him, got up as I entered, but I moved another chair up.

"It's too bad," I said, "that the elevator doesn't come down. Maybe we can have it done."

Wolfe drank beer, put the glass down, and licked his lips. "I want to know," he said, "about those electronic abominations. Could we be heard here?"

"I don't know. I've read about a thing that is supposed to pick up voices half a mile off, but I don't know about how much area it covers or about obstructions like walls and floors. There could be items I haven't read about that can take a whole house. If there aren't there soon will be. People will have to talk with their hands."

He glared at me. Since I had done nothing to deserve it, I glared back. "You realize," he said, "that absolute privacy has never been so imperative."

"I do. God knows I do."

"Could whispers be heard?"

"No. A billion to one. To nothing."

"Then we'll whisper."

"That would cramp your style. If Fritz turns the television on, fairly loud, and we sit close and don't yell, that will do it."

"We could do that in the office."

"Yes, sir.

"Why the devil didn't you suggest it?"

I nodded. "You're in a stew. So am I. I'm surprised I thought of it now. Let's try it here. In the office I'd have to lean across your desk."

He turned. "If you please, Fritz. It doesn't matter what."

Fritz went to the cabinet and turned a knob, and soon a woman was telling a man she was sorry she had ever met him. He asked (not the man, Fritz) if it was loud enough, and I said a little louder and moved my chair nearer Wolfe. He leaned forward and growled, eighteen inches from my ear, "We'll prepare for a contingency. Do you know if the Ten for Aristology is still in existence?"

My shoulders went up and down. It takes a moron or a genius to ask a question that has no bearing whatever. "No," I said. "That was seven years ago. It probably is. I can ring Lewis Hewitt."