Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 41 by The Doorbell Rang

met him. He asked (not the man, Fritz) if it was loud enough, and I said a little louder and moved my chair nearer Wolfe. He leaned forward and growled, eighteen inches from my ear, “We’ll prepare for a contingency. Do you know if the Ten for Aristology is still in existence?”
    My shoulders went up and down. It takes a moron or a genius to ask a question that has no bearing whatever. “No,” I said. “That was seven years ago. It probably is. I can ring Lewis Hewitt.”
    “Not from here.”
    “I’ll go to a booth. Now?”
    “Yes. If he says that group still—No. Whatever he says about the Ten for Aristology, ask him if I may call on him tomorrow morning to consult him on an urgent private matter. If he invites me to lunch, as he will, accept.”
    “He lives on Long Island the year around.”
    “I know he does.”
    “We’ll probably have to lose a tail.”
    “We won’t need to. If I am seen going to him so much the better.”
    “Then why not call him from here?”
    “Because I’m willing, I even wish, to have my visit to him known, but not that I invited myself.”
    “What if he can’t make it tomorrow?”
    “Then as soon as possible.”
    I went. As I mounted to the hall and got my coat and hat and let myself out and headed for Ninth Avenue, I was thinking, two rules down the drain in one day—the morning schedule and not leaving the house on business—and why? The Ten for Aristology was a bunch of ten well-heeled men who were, to quote, “pursuing the ideal of perfection in food and drink.” Seven years back, at the home of one of them, Benjamin Schriver, the shipping tycoon, they had met to pursue their ideal by eating and drinking, and Lewis Hewitt, a member, had arranged with Wolfe for Fritz to cook the dinner. Naturally Wolfe and I had been invited and had gone, and the guy between us at the table had been fed arsenic with the first course, caviar on blinis topped with sour cream, and had died. Quite a party. It had not affected Wolfe’s relations with Lewis Hewitt, who was still grateful for a special favor Wolfe had done him long ago, who had a hundred-foot-long orchid house at his Long Island estate, and who came to dinner at the old brownstone about twice a year.
    It took a while to get him because the call had to be switched to the greenhouse or the stables or maybe the john, but it was a pleasure for him to hear my voice; he said so. When I told him Wolfe would like to pay him a call he said he would be delighted and that of course we would lunch with him, and added that he would like to ask Wolfe a question regarding the lunch.
    “I’m afraid I’ll have to do,” I told him. “I’m calling from a booth in a drugstore. Excuse my glove, but is there any chance that someone is on an extension?”
    “Why—why no. There would be no reason …”
    “Okay. I’m calling from a booth because our wire is tapped and Mr. Wolfe doesn’t want it known that he suggested calling on you. So don’t ring our number. It’s conceivable that you might get a call tomorrow afternoon from someone who says he’s a reporter and wants to ask questions. I mention it now because I might forget to tomorrow. The idea is, this appointment, our coming to lunch tomorrow, was made last week. All right?”
    “Yes, of course. But good heavens, if you know your phone is tapped—isn’t that illegal?”
    “Sure, that’s why it’s fun. We’ll tell you about it tomorrow—I
guess
we will.”
    He said he would save his curiosity for tomorrow and would expect us by noon.
    There is a TV set and a radio in the office, and when I got back I was expecting to see Wolfe there in his favorite chair, probably with the radio going, but the office was empty, so I proceeded to the rear and down to the basement and found him where I had left him. The television was still on, and Fritz was sitting watching it, yawning. Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut, and his lips were going, pushing out and then in, out and in.