Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 by Three Doors to Death Page A

hell.”
    “I was just starting. Excuse me.”
    I began to dodge my way back to the hall door, thinking that I had better find my employer and inform him that I had delivered as usual, but I was only halfway there when he and Demarest appeared, coming in to us. After one swift glance at the assembly, the lawyer sidled off along the wall to a remote chair over by the bookshelves, evidently not being in a welcoming mood. Wolfe headed for his desk, but in the middle of the room found himself blocked. George Dickson was there, facing him.
    “Nero Wolfe?” Dickson put out a hand. “I’m Jean Daumery. This is a real pleasure!”
    Wolfe stood motionless. The room was suddenly quiet, painfully quiet, and all eyes were going in one direction, at the two men.
    “How do you do, Mr. Daumery,” Wolfe said dryly, stepped around him, and walked to his chair. Except for the sound of that movement the quiet held. Jean Daumery let his hand fall, which is about all you can do with a rejected hand unless you want to double it into a fist and use it another way. After solving the hand problem, Jean turned a half-circle to face Wolfe’s desk and spoke in a different tone.
    “I was told that my nephew sent for me. He didn’t. You got me here by a trick. What do you want?”
    “Sit down, sir,” Wolfe said. “This may take all night.”
    “Not all of my night. What do you want?”
    “Sit down and I’ll tell you. I want to present some facts, offer my explanation of them, and get your opinion. There’s a chair there beside your nephew.”
    To a man trying to grab the offensive and hold it,it’s a comedown to accept an invitation to be seated. But the alternative, to go on standing in a room full of sitters, is just as awkward, unless you intend to walk out soon, and Jean couldn’t know what he intended until he learned what he was up against. He took the chair next to Bernard.
    “What facts?” he asked.
    “I said,” Wolfe told him, “that this may take all night, but that doesn’t mean that I want it to. I’ll make it as short as possible.” He reached to his breast pocket and pulled out folded sheets of paper. “Instead of telling you what this says I’ll read it to you.” He glanced around. “I suppose you all know, or most of you, that tomorrow will be Miss Nieder’s twenty-first birthday.”
    “Oh, yes!” Polly Zarella said emphatically.
    Wolfe glared at her. He couldn’t stand emphatic women. “I persuaded Mr. Demarest,” he said, “to anticipate the delivery date of this paper by a few hours. It was intended, as you will see, only for Miss Nieder, but, as Mr. Cramer would tell you if you asked him, evidence in a case of murder has no respect for confidences.”
    He unfolded the paper. “This,” he said, “is a holograph. It is written on two sheets of plain bond paper, and is dated at the top Yellowstone Park, May sixteenth, Nineteen forty-six. It starts, ‘My dearest Cynthia,’ and goes on:
    I’ll send this to Henry, sealed, and tell him not to open it and to give it to you on your twenty-first birthday. That will be June eleventh next year. How I would love to be with you that day! Well, perhaps I will. If I’m not, I think by that time you will know your way around enough to decide for yourself howto look at this. You ought to know about it, but I don’t want you to right now.”
    Wolfe looked up. “This is not paragraphed. Evidently Mr. Nieder didn’t believe in paragraphs.” He returned to the paper:
    “You are going to get the news that I have killed myself and a farewell note from me. I know that will affect you, because we are fond of each other in spite of all our differences, but it won’t break your heart. I’m not going to kill myself. I hope and expect to be with you again and with the work I love. I’m writing this to explain what I’m doing. I think you know that I loved Helen. You didn’t like her, and that’s one thing I have against you, because she gave me the only warm