Trio for Blunt Instruments (Nero Wolfe),New

About the AuthorRex Stout (18861975) wrote dozens of short stories, novellas, and fulllength mystery novels, most featuring his two indelible characters, the peerless detective Nero Wolfe and his handy sidekick, Archie Goodwin.Product DescriptionIf Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, would ever admit to an Achilles' heelwhich they wouldn'tit would be a weakness for damsels in distress. In these three charming chillers the duo answer the call of helpless heroines with nothing to loseexcept their lives. First a beautiful young Aphrodite comes to Nero looking for a heroand the answer to the mystery of her father's death....Then an old flame of Archie's reignites with a plan that may corner him into a lifetime commitmentbehind bars....And finally a detective's work is never done, as a hot tip leads the team into the sizzling center of a sexy scandal that could leave them colddead cold.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.1That Monday morning Pete didnt give me his usual polite grin, contrasting the white gleam of his teeth with the maplesyrup shade of the skin of his square leathery face. He did give me his usual greeting, Hiho, Mr. Goodwin, but with no grin in his voice either, and he ignored the established fact that I expected to take his cap and jacket and put them on the rack. By the time I turned from shutting the door he had dropped his jacket on the hall bench and was picking up his box, which he had put on the floor to free his hands for the jacket.Youre an hour early, I said. They going barefoot?Naw, theyre busy, he said, and headed down the hall to the office. I followed, snubbed; after all, we had been friends for more than three years.Pete came three days a weekMonday, Wednesday, and Fridayaround noon, after he had finished his rounds in an office building on Eighth Avenue. Wolfe always gave him a dollar, since it was a fiveminute walk for him to the old brownstone on West 35th Street, and I only gave him a quarter, but he gave my shoes as good a shine as he did Wolfes. None better. I never pretended to keep busy while he was working on Wolfe because I liked to listen. It was instructive. Wolfes line was that a man who had been born in Greece, even though he had left at the age of six, should be familiar with the ancient glories of his native land, and he had been hammering away at Pete for forty months. That morning, as Wolfe swiveled his oversized chair, in which he was seated behind his desk, and Pete knelt and got his box in place, and I crossed to my desk, Wolfe demanded, Who was Eratosthenes and who accused him of murder in a great and famous speech in fourohthree B.C.?Pete, poising his brush, shook his head.Who? Wolfe demanded.Maybe Pericles.Nonsense. Pericles had been dead twentysix years. Confound it, I read parts of that speech to you last year. His name begins with L.Lycurgus.No! The Athenian Lycurgus hadnt been born!Pete looked up. Today you must excuse me. He tapped his head with the edge of the brush. Empty today. Why I came early, something happened. I go in a mans room, Mr. Ashby, a good customer, two bits every day. Room empty, nobody there. Window wide open, cold wind coming in. Tenth floor. I go and look out window, big crowd down below and cops. I go out to hall and take elevator down, I push through crowd, and there is my good customer, Mr. Ashby, there on the sidewalk, all smashed up terrible. I push back out of crowd, I look up, I see heads sticking out of windows, I think its no good going up to customers now, they will be looking out of windows, so I come here, thats why I come early, so today you must excuse me, Mr. Wolfe. He lowered his head and started the brush going.Wolfe grunted. I advise you to return to that building without delay. Does anyone know you were in his room?Sure. Miss Cox.She saw you enter?Sure.How long were you in his room?Maybe one minute.Did Mi