The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

There were more than a hundred Odells in the phone books of the five boroughs, but no Frank. That established, I sat at my desk at half past nine Friday morning and considered recourses. It wasn't the kind of problem to discuss with Wolfe, and anyway he wasn't available. Saul Panzer had come at nine o'clock on the dot, and instead of going up to the plant rooms Wolfe had come down, put on his heavy overcoat and broad-brimmed beaver hat, and followed Saul out to the curb to climb into the Heron sedan.

Of course he knew that the heater, if turned on full, could make the inside of the Heron like an oven, but he took the heavy coat because he distrusted all machines more complicated than a wheelbarrow. He would have been expecting to be stranded at some wild and lonely spot in the Long Island jungle even if I had been driving.

It took will power to fasten my mind on the Frank Odell caper, which was merely a stab in the dark blindfolded, ordered by Wolfe only because he preferred the second of the three alternatives. Where my mind wanted to be was on Long Island. In all my experience of Wolfe's arrangements of circumstances I had never known him to concoct anything as tricky as the program he was going to rope Lewis Hewitt in for, and I should have been there. Genius is fine for the ignition spark, but to get there someone has to see that the radiator doesn't leak and no tire is flat. I would have insisted on going if it hadn't been for Saul Panzer. Wolfe had said that Saul would sit in, and he is the one man I would turn any problem over to if I broke a leg.

I forced my mind onto Frank Odell. The obvious thing was to ring the New York State Parole Division and ask if they had him listed. But of course not on our phone. If the FBI knew that we were spending time and money on Odell after what Quayle had said about him, they would know it wasn't just prudence, that we thought there was actually a chance that he was involved, and that wouldn't do. I decided to play it absolutely safe. If some G-man reads this and thinks I'm overrating his outfit, he isn't inside far enough to know all the family secrets. I'm not inside at all, but I've been around a lot.