The Missing Chapter

I was left to supply the answer to one very angry and frustrated editor-in-chief. “You’ll be hearing from me later today,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I know he sometimes seems rude, but then, he’s a genius, and things are bouncing around in his cranium that you and I can’t begin to fathom.” It was part of my standard “He’s-tough-to-figure-out-but-he-means-well speech.” It did not play well with Vinson.

“He sure as hell does seem rude,” he snapped, standing and squaring his shoulders. Then the lines in his face softened. “But... I’ve worked with a lot of authors who thought they were geniuses — a few actually were — and most of them kept whatever manners they possessed well hidden. I’ve made all sorts of allowances for them, and of course I’m willing to make damn near any allowance if Mr. Wolfe does go to work on this awful business. Is there anything else I should be doing to persuade him — and you, too — that Charles was murdered?”

“You don’t have to persuade me. As for Mr. Wolfe, I can’t think of anything at the moment. He’s going to have to come around to that opinion on his own, but there’s no law that says I can’t give him a push in the right direction,” I said as we headed for the front hall.

“Push away,” Vinson answered, smiling tightly. Giving me a thumbs-up, he stepped into the wind and went down the steps in search of a taxi.

Three

Wolfe considers any discussion whatever of business — or potential business — at the dining room table as bordering on heresy. There have been a handful of times when, for various reasons, I have ignored the house rules and persisted in talking about some revenue-producing venture during a meal. This, however, was not such an occasion. For the moment, I was content to get my choppers into the cassoulet Castelnaudary, which I sometimes refer to as boiled beans, although to call it that hardly does the dish justice. For the record, it’s got white beans, but also pork, carrots, mutton, onions, and a batch of other wonderful stuff that only Fritz knows for sure. Wolfe thinks he can list every ingredient, too, but I happen to have evidence — Fritz’s word — to the contrary.

Anyway, Wolfe and I ate with respectful gusto, and he held forth on the relative merits of limiting the terms of members of Congress. I can’t say that his monologue nudged me toward one camp or the other, because he was equally persuasive in his arguments on each side. When I asked where he stood, he said nothing, but the folds in his cheeks deepened, which for him is a smile.

Back in the office with our coffee, we busied ourselves — Wolfe by signing checks and correspondence I had typed from his dictation, and me by entering orchid germination records into the personal computer. We both knew I was about to raise the subject of Horace Vinson’s request.

“Well?” I said, swinging around in my chair to face Wolfe, who had picked up his latest book, Churchill, by Martin Gilbert.

“Well, what?” he replied with a glower, keeping his eyes stubbornly on the pages.

I grinned. “You just signed checks totaling slightly more than thirty-seven hundred dollars, checks that I will hand-carry to the main post office later this afternoon. Would you care to know what the impact of these checks is on the bottom line?”

“I abhor that term.”

“ ‘Bottom line’? Yes, I know you do, and I promise never to use it again in your presence if you turn loose with some instructions — instructions relating to Mr. Vinson’s visit, that is.”

Wolfe expelled a bushel of air and set his book down deliberately. “Very well. I could ignore your ululations, but you would continue to badger me until the atmosphere in this room became oppressive. Your notebook.”

“Yes, sir.” This time, I kept my grin to myself. Lily Rowan more than once has told me that smugness does not become me.

“Telephone Mr. Cohen,” Wolfe said curtly. “Better yet, visit him. Learn everything you can about Mr. Childress, Mr. Ott, Mr. Billings, Mr. Hobbs, and Mr. Vinson. And Mr. Childress’s fiancée.”

“Do I also call Vinson and ask him to open his checkbook and start writing?”

“Not yet. Let him wait. He has no viable alternative.” Wolfe picked up his book and hid behind it, signifying that his order-giving had ended.

A word or three about Lon Cohen: He has been on the payroll of the New York Gazette for so long that I tell him he can remember when they set type by hand — and by the light of kerosene lamps. If he has a title, I don’t know what it is, but he’s got an office on the twentieth floor, two doors from the publisher’s carpeted acre, and there’s a rumor around the Gazette building that the old man doesn’t sneeze before first checking with Lon.