The Black Mountain

"What did you tell him?" "That I wish to see the American consul. Naturally he refuses to disturb him at this hour." I am thinking of starting a movement to push for a law requiring two consuls in every city, a day consul and a night consul, and you would join it if you had ever spent a night, or part of one, in the hoosegow at Bari. We were questioned -- or Wolfe was -- first by a handsome baritone in a slick uniform and then by a fat animal in a soiled seersucker. Our guns and knives didn't make them any more cordial. Then we were locked in a cell with two cots which were already occupied by fifty thousand others. Twenty thousand of the others were fleas, and another twenty thousand were bedbugs, but I never found out what the other ten thousand were. After a night in a haystack and one in a deep-freeze cave, it would have been reasonable to suppose that anything different would be an improvement, but it wasn't. I got a lot of walking done, back and forth the full length of the cell, a good ten feet, being careful not to step on Wolfe, who was sitting on the concrete floor. All I 273 will say about the breakfast is that we didn't eat it. The chocolate, what was left of it, was in the knapsacks, and they had been taken. Another section of that law will provide that day consuls will get to work at eight o'clock. It was after ten when the door of the cell opened and a man appeared and said something. Wolfe told me to come, and we were conducted down a corridor and some stairs and into a sunny room where two men sat talking. One of them spoke, and then the other, a lanky, tired-looking specimen with ears as big as saucers, said in American, "I'm Thomas Arnold, the American consul. I'm told you want to see me." "I have to see you" -- Wolfe glanced at the other man -- "in private." "This is Signor Angelo Bizzaro, the warden."

"Thank you. All the same, privacy is essential. We are not armed." "I'm told that you were." Arnold turned and spoke to the warden, and after a little exchange Bizzaro got up and left the room. "Now what is it?" Arnold demanded. "Are you American citizens?" "We are. The quickest way to dispose of this, Mr. Arnold, would be for you to tele274 phone the embassy in Rome and ask for Mr. Richard Courtney." "Not until you tell me who you are and why you were out on the road at night, armed, with no papers." "You'll have to know who we are, of course," Wolfe agreed. "And so will the police, but I hope through you to arrange that our presence here will not be published. I thought a talk with Mr. Courtney would help, but it's not essential. My name is Nero Wolfe. I am a licensed private detective with an office in New York. This is my assistant, Archie Goodwin." The consul was smiling. "I don't believe it." "Then telephone Mr. Courtney. Or, perhaps better, do you know a man in Bari, a broker and agent, named Paolo Telesio?" "Yes. I've met him." "If you'll phone him and let me speak to him, he'll bring our passports, properly stamped at Rome when we arrived there on Sunday, four days ago. Also he'll identify us." "I'll be damned. You are Nero Wolfe?" "I am." "Why the hell were you wandering around at night with guns and knives and no papers?"