Read Archie Meets Nero Wolfe for Free Online

ordinary-looking brownstone that was part of a solid row of similar residences between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues on what seemed like a typical New York City block, if there is such a thing.
    The door was opened by a short, white-haired man with a neatly trimmed mustache and wearing a waiter’s white apron. “Ah, Mr. Bascom, Mr. Wolfe is expecting you,” he said in what I took to be a French accent. “And you are Mr. Goodwin, I believe?” he added, turning toward me with the hint of a bow.
    “In the flesh. But you can call me Archie, everybody does.”
    He smiled, took our coats, and hung them on a rack in the foyer, then led us along a carpeted hall to the second door on the left. We stepped into a big room that seemed inviting. In order, I noticed a cherrywood desk with no one behind it, a wall of bookcases, an Oriental rug that was mostly yellow, and the largest globe I had ever laid eyes on, at least four times the size of the one in Mr. Mason’s history classroom back home in my high school.
    Only then did I realize three people were parked in the room, one of whom I recognized. “Hi, Arch,” Fred Durkin said from his spot on a sofa, giving me a salute and a grin. “Didn’t take all that long for us to meet again, huh?”
    The man next to Fred looked to be about four years older than me and was not bad-looking, if you could get past the smirk on his phiz. He looked like somebody who thought damned highly of himself and dared you to suggest otherwise. The third joe sat on a red leather chair at one end of the unoccupied desk. He had stooped shoulders, and his face seemed to be about two-thirds nose, but his dark eyes moved quickly, missing nothing.
    “Hi, Del,” he said to Bascom, then turned to me. “I’m Saul Panzer, and I see you already know Fred. That self-appointed God’s-gift-to-women next to him is Orrie Cather. And you are ...?”
    “Archie Goodwin.”
    “Welcome aboard, Goodwin,” Panzer said. “Mr. Wolfe should be down in about ... one minute,” he said after consulting his wristwatch.
    Bascom took one of the yellow chairs facing the big desk, and I dropped into a similar one next to him. My back was to the hall doorway, so I did not see our host arrive until he came into my line of sight. And quite a sight he was.
    Large does not do Nero Wolfe justice. I was not prepared for someone of his ... volume , which at a glance I put at 250 pounds, minimum. He moved in behind his desk with surprising grace and placed a small bouquet of delicate, magenta-colored flowers in a vase on his blotter. They looked nothing like any of the blooms in my Aunt Verna’s prizewinning garden back home in Chillicothe.
    Our host got seated, adjusted himself in an oversized chair, and surveyed the room without expression. “Saul, Fred, Orrie, Mr. Bascom.” He spoke crisply, dipping his head an inch to each. And to me, a look of mild curiosity. “You are the Archie Goodwin Mr. Bascom told me about on the telephone.” It was a statement, not a question.
    I nodded.
    “Just so. He speaks highly of your capabilities, and he is not a man to dispense praise rashly.”
    I had encountered more than a few fat people back home, but they all seemed somewhat unkempt—not necessarily slovenly, just careless in their dress and overall appearance. Nero Wolfe was neither. He wore a pin-striped brown suit with vest, a starched yellow shirt, and a brown-and-yellow-striped silk tie. His large, square face was crowned with well-barbered dark brown hair, and his eyes had an intensity that made you feel he could see right through you.
    “Gentlemen, we have a great deal to cover this morning,” he said. “First, however, I would be a poor host indeed if I did not proffer refreshments. I am having beer. Will anyone join me? Or, given the hour, perhaps coffee? Fritz just brewed a pot.” Fred Durkin chose beer, the rest of us, coffee.
    I don’t know how Wolfe did it, but within forty-five seconds, our greeter at the front door,