Archie Meets Nero Wolfe

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Book: Read Archie Meets Nero Wolfe for Free Online
Authors: Robert Goldsborough
whom I now knew to be named Fritz, wheeled a serving cart into the office. On it were three bottles of a Canadian beer, two frosted pilsner glasses, a pot of coffee, and three cups with saucers.
    Fritz placed two bottles and a glass in front of Wolfe and opened the third beer, giving it and the other glass to Durkin. He then poured each of us coffee and placed the steaming cups on small tables next to our seats. All was done with swift but unhurried efficiency.
    I watched as Wolfe popped the cap off one of the bottles with an opener he had pulled from his center desk drawer. He looked at me as he poured the beer.
    “Mr. Goodwin,” he said, “by your expression, you wonder how I come to possess what the United States government considers contraband. A man in Toronto feels he is in my debt because of a service I performed for him several years ago, and I have drawn freely and unashamedly upon his debt. He sends me shipments of beer regularly, using a channel I choose not to specify.
    “If my possession and consumption of this beverage constitutes a criminal act, so be it. In my defense, which I concede no court would recognize, I point out that the Volstead Act is an egregious decree passed by misguided legislative bodies that feel the need to legislate morality. The disastrous results of this constitutional amendment are obvious to even the most casual reader of newspapers in New York, Chicago, or any number of major cities in the grip of organized crime syndicates that profit from the government prohibition of alcohol.” With that, he drained half the beer from his glass and set it down.
    “Now,” he said, dabbing his lips with a handkerchief, “we come to the reason for this gathering. Yesterday morning shortly before he was to leave for school, Tommie Williamson, age eight and the son of hotelier Burke Williamson, disappeared from the grounds of the family’s country estate in the environs of Garden City, Long Island. Within hours, the family received a ransom note asking for one hundred thousand dollars in exchange for the boy’s return.”
    “Did Williamson call the police?” Orrie Cather asked.
    “He did not. He feared his local constabulary would somehow endanger Tommie with what he called a ‘ham-handed attempt’ to free his son. He called upon me because I was recommended by a close friend of his, a man whom I once extricated from a difficult situation involving a blackmailer who now resides in one of this state’s penal institutions.”
    Saul Panzer nodded. “You’ll show them the note?”
    “I will pass it around. Fritz has dusted it for fingerprints, and the only ones found on it were those of Burke Williamson. We took his prints when he was here yesterday afternoon.”
    The single sheet made the rounds. It had been torn from a pad of inexpensive paper, the kind available in any drugstore or five-and-dime. “The note came in a plain white envelope that also bore no prints other than those of Mr. Williamson,” Wolfe continued. “It was delivered to the front door of their Long Island residence by a boy of about twelve, according to the butler, who had never seen the youngster before.”
    “And I suppose the kid turned tail and hasn’t been seen since,” Cather put in.
    “You suppose correctly, Orrie. He dashed off after handing the note over,” Wolfe said as I read the message, which was neatly printed in ink, all capitals:
MR. WILLIAMSON
    YOUR SON IS SAFE. AND HE WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU SAFELY, TOO, BUT ONLY AFTER $100,000 IS RECEIVED. HE IS IN NO DANGER OF BEING HARMED. YOU WILL SOON GET INSTRUCTIONS AS TO HOW THE MONEY IS TO BE DELIVERED. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO CONTACT THE POLICE.
    “Isn’t the boy watched when he’s out in the yard?” Del Bascom posed.
    “He is supposed to be,” Wolfe grunted. “He has a nursemaid, named ... he turned to Saul Panzer.
    “Sylvia Moore,” Panzer said. “I drove out to the estate first thing this morning. As you can guess, the place is

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