The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

"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 he no reason…"