Kerr Naylor who signed that report? This is a damn nuisance and it’s taking my time that ought to be spent working! His father, old George Naylor, is still living and is Chairman of the Board, though he turned over his stock to his children long ago. This is the oldest and largest company in its field, the largest in the world, and it has built up a reputation and a tradition. It has also built up-oh, complexities. The directors and executives now managing its affairs-of whom I am one- want this thing looked into, and I want to hire Nero Wolfe to do the looking.” “You mean the corporation? Wants to hire him?” “Certainly!” “To do what? Wait a minute, can I put it this way? We’re either to make that word on that report good, or we’re to make this Mr. Kerr Naylor eat it. Is that the job?” “Roughly, yes.” “Do we get credentials for around here?” “You get all reasonable co-operation. The details will have to be arranged with me. More time gone. It will have to be handled with discretion-and delicately. I had an idea that a way to do it would be for Nero Wolfe to get a job in the stock department, under another name of course, and he could – what’s the matter?” “Nothing. Excuse me.” I stood up. The notion of Wolfe fighting his way down to William Street every morning, or even with me driving him, and punching a time clock, and working all day in the stock department, had been too much for my facial control.

“Okay,” I said, “I guess I know enough to put it up to Mr. Wolfe. Except about money. I ought to warn you that his charges have not joined in the postwar inflation because they were already so high that a boost would have been vulgar.” “This company never expects good work for low pay.” I told him that was fine and got my hat and coat.

CHAPTER Four

A coolness had sprung up between Wolfe and me. These coolnesses averaged about four a week, say, a couple of hundred a year. This particular one had two separate aspects: first, my natural desire for him to buy a new car opposed to his pigheaded determination to wait another year; and second, his notion of buying a noiseless typewriter opposed to my liking for the one we had.