The League of Frightened Men

I poured him another drink and he sat down and held onto it and crossed his legs. 'Tell me," he said, "is it true that Nero Wolfe was a eunuch in a Cairo harem and got his start in life by collecting testimonials from the girls for Pyramid Dental Cream?" ^ Like an ass, for half a second I was sore. "Listen," I said, "Nero Wolfe is exactly -" Then I stopped and laughed.

"Sure," I said. "Except that he wasn't a eunuch, he was a camel."

Mike Ayers nodded. "That explains it. I mean it explains why it's hard for a camel to go through a needle's eye. I've never seen Nero Wolfe, but I've heard about him, and I've seen a needle. You got any other facts?" |›i I had to pour him another drink before the next customer arrived. This time it was a pair, Ferdinand Bowen, the stockbroker, and Dr. Loring A. Burton. I went to the hall for them to get away from Mike Ayers. Burton was a big fine-looking guy, straight but not stiff, well-dressed and not needing any favors, with dark hair and black eyes and a tired mouth. Bowen was medium-sized, and he was tired all over.

He was trim in black and white, and if I'd wanted to see him any evening, which I felt I wouldn't, I'd have gone to the theater where there was a first night and waited in the lobby. He had little feet in neat pumps, and neat little lady-hands in neat little gray gloves. When he was taking his coat off I had to stand back so as not to get socked in the eye with his arms •swinging around, and I don't cotton to a guy with that sort of an attitude toward his fellowmen in confined spaces.

Particularly I think they ought to be kept out of elevators, but I'm not fond of them anywhere.

I took Burton and Bowen to the office | and explained that Wolfe would be down soon and showed them Mike Ayers. He called Bowen Ferdie and offered him a drink, and he called Burton Lorelei. Fritz brought in another one, Alexander Drummond the florist, a neat little duck with a thin mustache. He was the only one on the list who had ever been to Wolfe's house before, he having come a couple of years back with a bunch from an association meeting to look at the plants. I remembered him. After that they came more or less all together: Pratt the Tammany assemblyman, Adier and Cabot, lawyers, Kommers, sales manager from Philadelphia, Edwin Robert Byron, all of that, magazine editor, Augustus Farrell, architect, and a bird named Lee Mitchell, from Boston, who said he represented both Collard and Gaines the banker. He had a letter from Gaines.