Rex Stout

A Family Affair

When someone pushes the button at the front door of the old brownstone, bells ring in four places: in the kitchen, in the office, down in Fritz's room, and up in my room. Who answers it depends on the circumstances. If it's ten minutes to one at night and I'm out, no one does unless it won't give up. If it keeps going, say for fifteen minutes, Fritz rolls out, comes up, opens the door the two inches the chain permits, and says nothing doing until morning. If I'm home I roll out, open a window and look down to see who it is, and deal with the problem.

It doesn't often ring at that hour, but it did that Monday night-Tuesday morning-late in October. I was home, but not up in bed. I was in the office, having just got in from taking Lily Rowan home after a show and a snack at the Flamingo. I always look in at the office to see if Wolfe has written anything on the pad on my desk. That night he hadn't and I was crossing to the safe to check that it was locked when the bell rang, and I went to the hall and through the one-way glass of the front door saw Pierre Ducos on the stoop.

Pierre had often fed me. He had fed many people, in one of the three rooms upstairs at Rusterman's restaurant. I had never seen him anywhere else-cer- tainly never on that stoop in the middle of the night. I slipped the bolt back, opened the door, and said, "I'm not hungry, but come in."

He crossed the sill and said, I've got to see Mr. Wolfe."

"At this hour?"

I shut the door. "Not unless ifs life and death."

"It is."

"Even so."

I looked at him. I had never seen him without his uniform. I knew his age, fifty-two, but he looked older in a loose-fitting tan topcoat down to his knees. No hat. He looked as if inside of the topcoat he had shrunk, and his face looked smaller and seamier. "Whose life and death?"