Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout
THAT SUNNY September day was full of surprises.
The first one came when, after my swift realization
that the sedan was still right side up and the windshield
and windows intact, I switched off the ignition and turned to
look at the back seat. I didn’t suppose the shock of the collision
would have hurled him to the floor, knowing as I did
that when the car was in motion he always had his feet braced
and kept a firm grip on the strap; what I expected was the
ordeal of facing a glare of fury that would top all records;
what I saw was him sitting there calmly on the seat with his
massive round face wearing a look of relief—if I knew his
face, and I certainly knew Nero White’s face. I stared at him
in astonishment.
He murmured, “Thank God,” as if it came from his heart.
I demanded, “What?”
“I said thank God.” He let go of the strap and wiggled
a finger at me. “It has happened, and here we are, I presume
you know, since I’ve told you, that my distrust and
hatred of vehicles in motion is partly based on my plerophory
that their apparent submission to control is illusory and that
they may at their pleasure, and sooner or later will, act on
whim. Very well, this one has, and we are intact. Thank
God the whim was not a deadlier one.”
“Whim hell. Do you know what happened?”
“Certainly. I said, whim. Go ahead.”
“What do you mean, go ahead?”
“I mean go on. Start the confounded thing going again.”
I opened the door and got out and walked around to
the front to take a look. It was a mess. After a careful
examination I went back to the other side of the car and opened
the rear door and looked in at him and made my report.
“It was quite a whim. I’d like to get it on record what
happened, since I’ve been driving your cars nine years and
this is the first time I’ve ever stopped before I was ready to.
That was a good tire, so they must have run it over glass at
the garage where I left it last night, or maybe I did myself,
though I don’t think so. Anyway, I was going 55 when the
tire blew out. She left the road, but I didn’t lose the wheel,
and I was braking and had her headed up and would have
made it if it hadn’t been for that damn tree. Now the fender
is smashed into the rubber and a knuckle is busted and the
radiator’s ripped open.”
“How long will it take you to fix it?”
“I can’t fix it. If I had a nail I wouldn’t even bother to
bite it, I’d swallow it whole.”
“Who can fix it?”
“Men with tools in a garage.”
“It isn’t in a garage.”
“Right.”
He closed his eyes and sat. Pretty soon he opened them
again and sighed. “Where are we?”
“Two hundred and thirty-seven miles northeast of Times
Square. Eighteen miles southwest of Crowfield, where the
North Atlantic Exposition is held every year, beginning on
the second Monday in September and lasting—”
“Archie.” His eyes were narrowed at me. “Please save
the jocularity. What are we going to do?”
I admit I was touched. Nero Wolfe asking me what to
do! “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’m going to kill
myself. I was reading in the paper the other day how a
Jap always commits suicide when he fails his emperor, and
no Jap has anything on me. They call it seppuku. Maybe
you think they call it hara-kiri, but they don’t or at least
rarely. They call it seppuku.”
He merely repeated, “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to flag a car and get a lift. Preferably to
Crowfield, where we have reservations at a hotel.”
“Would you drive it?”
“Drive what?”
“The car we flag.”
“I don’t imagine he would let me after he sees what I’ve
done to this one.”
Wolfe compressed his lips. “I won’t ride with a strange
driver.”
“I’ll go to Crowfield alone and rent a car and come back
for you.”
“That would take two hours. No.”
I shrugged, “We passed a house about a mile back. I’ll
bum a ride there or walk, and phone to Crowfield for a
car.”
“While I sit here, waiting, helplessly, in this disabled
demon.”
“Right.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“You won’t do that?”
“No.”
I stepped back around the rear of the car to survey the
surroundings, near and far. It was a nice September day,
and the hills and dales of upstate New York looked sleepy
and satisfied in the sun. The road we were on was a secondary
highway, not a main drag, and nothing had passed by since
I had bumped the tree. A hundred yards ahead it curved
to the right, dipping down behind some trees. I couldn’t see
the house we had passed a mile or so back, on account of
another curve. Across the road was a gentle slope of meadow
which got steeper further up where the meadow turned
into woods. I turned. In that direction was a board fence
painted white, a smooth green pasture, and a lot of trees;
and beyond the trees were some bigger ones, and the top
of a house. There was no drive leading that way, so I figured
that there would be one further along the road, around
the curve.
Wolfe yelled to ask what the devil I was doing, and I
stepped back to the car door.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t see a garage anywhere. There’s
a house across there among those big trees. Going around by
the road it would probably be a mile or more, but cutting
across that pasture would be only maybe 400 yards. If you
don’t want to sit here helpless, I will, I’m armed, and you
go hunt a phone. That house over there is closest.”
Away off somewhere, a dog barked. Wolfe looked at me.
“That was a dog barking.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Probably attached to that house. I’m in no humor to
contend with a loose dog. We’ll go together. But I won’t
climb that fence.”
“You won’t need to. There’s a gate back a little way.”
He sighed, and bent over to take a look at the crates,
one on the floor and one on the seat beside him, which
held the potted orchid plants. In view of the whim we had
had, it was a good thing they had been secured so they
couldn’t slide around. Then he started to clamber out, and
I stepped back to make room for him outdoors, room being
a thing he required more than his share of. He took a good
stretch, his applewood walking stick pointing like a sword at
the sky as he did so, and turned all the way around, scowling
at the hills’ and dales, while I got the doors of the car locked,
and then followed me along the edge of the ditch to the
place where we could cross to the gate.
It was after we had passed through, just as I got the
gate closed behind us, that I heard the guy yelling. I looked
across the pasture in the direction of the house, and there he
was, sitting on top of the fence on the other side. He must
have just climbed up. He was yelling at us to go back where
we came from. At that distance I couldn’t tell for sure
whether it was a rifle or a shotgun he had with the butt
against his shoulder. He wasn’t exactly aiming it at us, but
intentions seemed to be along that line. Wolfe had gone on
ahead while I was shutting the gate, and I trotted up to him
and grabbed his arm.
“Hold on a minute. If that’s a bughouse and that’s one
of the inmates, he may take us for woodchucks or wild
turkeys-”
Wolfe snorted. “The man’s a fool. It’s only a cow pasture.”
Being a good detective, he produced his evidence by pointing
to a brown circular heap near our feet. Then he glared toward
the menace on the fence, bellowed “Shut up!” and went on. I
followed. The guy kept yelling and waving the gun, and we
kept to our course, but I admit I wasn’t liking it, because I
could see now it was a shotgun and he might easily be the
kind of a nut that would pepper us.
There was an enormous boulder, sloping up to maybe
3 feet above the ground, about exactly in the middle of
the pasture; and we were a little to the right of that when
the second surprise arrived in the series I spoke of. My
attention was pretty thoroughly concentrated on the nut