The League of Frightened Men

As soon as dinner was over Wolfe went up to his room, as he had explained he would do; he was staging it. I conferred with Fritz in the kitchen a few minutes and then went upstairs and changed my clothes. I put on the gray suit with pin checks, one of the best fits I ever had, and a light blue shirt and a dark blue tie. On my way back down I stopped in at Wolfe's room, on the same floor, to ask him a question. He was in the tapestry chair by the reading lamp with one of Paul Chapin's novels, and I stood waiting while he marked a paragraph in it with a lead pencil.;

I said, "What if one of them brings along some foreign object, like a lawyer for instance? Shall I let it in?";

Without looking up, he nodded. I went down to the office.

The first one was early. I hadn't looked for the line to start forming until around nine, but it lacked twenty minutes of that when I heard Fritz going down the hall and the front door opening. Then the knob of the office door turned, and Fritz ushered in the first victim. He almost needed a shave, his pants were baggy, and his hair wasn't combed. His pale blue eyes darted around and landed on me.

"Hell," he said, "you ain't Nero

Wolfe." ^ I admitted it. I exposed my identity. He didn't offer to shake hands. He said: ‹I know I'm early for the party. I'm Mike Ayers, I'm in the city room at the Tribune. I told Oggie Reid I had to have the evening off to get my life saved. I stopped off somewhere to get a pair of drinks, and after a while it occurred to me I was a damn fool, there was no reason why there shouldn't be a drink here. I am not referring to beer."

I said, "Gin or gin?"

He grinned. "Good for you. Scotch.

Don't bother to dilute it."

I went over to the table Fritz and I had fixed up in the alcove, and poured it. I was thinking, hurrah for Harvard and bright college days and so on. I was also thinking, if he gets too loud he'll be a I nuisance but if I refuse to pander to his vile habit he'll beat it. And having learned the bank reports practically by heart, I knew he had been on the Post four years and the Tribune three, and was pulling down ninety bucks a week. Newspapermen are one of my weak spots anyhow; Pve never been able to get rid of a feeling that they know things I don't know.