Corpus Corpus Read Free Page A

all the legwork and return to report back with all the pertinent details, which Wolfe then pieced together like parts of a jigsaw puzzle to produce the solution to a typically New York sort of crime.
    This was not to say that other cities were devoid of stimulating murder and mayhem. Los Angeles had supplied readers of mysteries the cases of hard-boiled private dick Philip Marlowe and a handful of other latter-day fictional sleuths. And there had been occasionally notable actual crimes, such as the Menendez brothers, the O.J. Simpson case, the murder of Bill Cosby's son, and the sensational murder trial that had kept Theodore R. Janus on the West Coast for a year-long media circus. Yet it wasn't the crime that transfixed the nation via television. Its attraction had been Janus's dazzlingly effective swordsmanship in his legal duel with Maggie Dane.
    Soon, thanks to his middle-of-the-night brainstorm, Wiggins thought with immense pride and satisfaction as the Rolls took him northward, there would be a grand reunion of the most exciting pairing of male and female lawyers since Spencer Tracy had battled Katharine Hepburn in the film Adam's Rib .
    Alive with anticipation, he found himself suddenly emerging from woods at the crest of a hill affording spectacular views on all sides of the glories of the Hudson Valley. Executing another turn, the Rolls moved slowly along a dirt road that seemed little more than a cow path. Then he saw a large gray fieldstone house that seemed to crouch like a mountain lion about to spring.
    Coatless but wearing a black vest, Janus leaned in the front doorway.
    "I'm so grateful that you came up, Wiggins," he said, taking him by the arm and leading him indoors. "Frankly, you're the only one I could ever entrust with this matter."
    Following Janus down a long corridor whose walls were hung with framed pencil and pastel sketches of him done by courtroom artists for television news programs, he came to a large office that appeared to be a museum to Janus's namesake. Displayed on every table, shelf, and wall were images and artifacts of Theodore Roosevelt as Dakota Territory cowboy, police commissioner of New York City, vice president and then president of the United States, father and family man at his Sagamore Hill home at Oyster Bay, South American jungle explorer, with his foot resting on a head of a lion on a big-game safari in Africa, and Bull Moose Party candidate for president in 1912.
    "You have quite an impressive collection," Wiggins said as Janus directed him into a large Victorian era armchair that faced a life-size oil painting of Janus by the renowned portraitist Kevin Gordon. A small shelf beneath it held leather-bound copies of all the books Janus authored.
    "When I'm dead and gone," Janus said, seating himself behind a massive desk that looked old enough to have been Roosevelt's, "all this goes to the Smithsonian."
    "That's very generous and patriotic of you."
    "Have you given any thought to what will become of your very impressive collection of Sherlockiana and your Nero Wolfe first editions?"
    "Not a whit."
    "You should do something about it. Life is short. My office will be happy to make all the arrangements for you."
    "Maybe I'll take a leaf from the pharoahs of Egypt and have it all buried with me."
    "I know several Sherlockians and a few Wolfe Pack members who would have you dug up and your grave looted in less than the proverbial New York minute "Janus said, reaching for a handsome cigar humidor. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
    "Of course not. It's your house."
    Janus opened the lid. "These are Cubans," he said, carefully looking for flaws. "They were smuggled in from London. Have one."
    "Thanks, but being a Sherlockian, I'm a pipe man."
    "The ever present briar. But Sherlock smoked cigars, too."
    "With a cigar stuck in my mouth I'd look like the character Clemenza in The Godfather ."
    With the cigar lighted, Janus looked at it admiringly and said, "I'm at a loss for words to express