Rex Stout

Death Of A Dude

Chapter 1

I began it "NW" and signed it "AG" not to be different, but from habit. Nearly all of my written communications to Nero Wolfe over the years had been on a sheet of a memo pad, for Fritz to take up to his room on his breakfast tray, or put by me on his desk when he was upstairs in bed and I had returned from an evening errand. They had all begun "NW" and ended "AG" so this did too, though it wasn't scribbled. It was typed on an Underwood on a table in a corner of the big room in Lily Rowan's cabin in a corner of her ranch, and it was in the airmail envelope I poked through the slot in the post office in Timberburg, the county seat, that Saturday morning-on a letterhead that had Bar JR Ranch, Lame Horse, Montana in big type across the top. Not as elegant as the one with her New York penthouse address. Below, it said:

Friday 8:13pm

August 2, 1968

NW:

It's a real mess here and I'm stuck. I didn't go into details on the phone Monday because someone at the exchange might be cooperating with the sheriff or the county attorney (in New York he would be district attorney), or there might even be a tap on Miss Rowan's line. Modern science certainly gets around.

Since you never forget anything or anybody you remember Harvey Greve, who once told you there in the office that he had bought a lot of livestock, horses and cattle and calves, for Roger Dunning, which helped do for Dunning. I believe I have mentioned that he has been running Miss Rowan's ranch for the last four years, and he still is-or was until six days ago, last Saturday, when he was charged with murder and parked in the cooler-namely the county jail. A dude named Philip Brodell had been shot in the back and then in the front while he was picking huckleberries. As I have told you, these mountain huckleberries are different. This time I'll try to bring you some.