The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

"Well, I am. I was. I'm not just a congressman, or someone like an editor or a broadcaster or a college professor, with a job I can't afford to lose. Does that megalomaniac think he can hurt me?"

"Pfui. He is hurting you."

"No. He's merely annoying me. Some of my associates and personal friends are being questioned-discreetly, of course, careful excuses, of course. It started about two weeks ago. I think my phones were tapped about ten days ago. My lawyers say there is probably no way to stop it, but they are considering it. They are one of the biggest and best firms in New York, and even they are afraid of the FBI! They disapprove; they say it was 'ill-advised' and 'quixotic,' my sending the books. I don't care what they say. When I read that book I was furious. I called the publishers and they sent a man to see me, and he said they had sold less than twenty thousand copies. In a country with nearly two hundred million people, and twenty-six million of them had voted for Goldwater! I thought of paying for some ads, but decided it would be better to send the books, and I got a forty-per-cent discount on them." She curled her fingers over the chair arms. "Now he's annoying me and I want him stopped. I want you to stop him."

Wolfe shook his head. "Preposterous."

She reached to the stand at her elbow for her brown leather bag, opened it, took out a checkfold and a pen, opened the fold on the stand, no hurry, and wrote, the stub first, with care. Methodical. She tore the check out, got up and put it on Wolfe's desk, and returned to the chair. "That fifty thousand dollars," she said, "is only a retainer. I said there would be no limit."

Wolfe didn't even give the check a glance. "Madam," he said, "I am neither a thaumaturge nor a dunce. If you are being followed, you were followed here, and it will be assumed that you came to hire me. Probably another has already arrived to start surveillance of this house; if not, it will be started the instant there is any indication that I have been ass enough to take the job." His head turned. "Archie. How many agents have they in New York?"

"Oh…" I pursed my lips. "I don't know, maybe two hundred. They come and go."

He went back to her. "I have one. Mr Goodwin. I never leave my house on business. It would-"

"You have Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather."