Nero Wolfe has left his comfortable brownstone for the promise of a remarkably rare black orchid at a flower show—but before Wolfe and his perennially hardy sidekick, Archie Goodwin, have a chance to stop and smell the roses, a diabolically daring murder takes place right under their noses and puts a blight on the proceedings. Now Wolfe's fancy turns to thoughts of weeding out a murderer—one who's definitely not a garden-variety killer. Only then will Wolfe be ready to throw his weight into a second   thorny case, involving a rich society widow bedeviled by poison-pen letters—and a poisonous plot as black as Wolfe's orchids . . . with roots that are even more twisted. Introduction by Lawrence Block “It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.”— The New York Times Book Review   A grand master of the form, Rex Stout is one of America’s greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. Together, Stout and Wolfe have entertained—and puzzled—millions of mystery fans around the world. Now, with his perambulatory man-about-town, Archie Goodwin, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth is back in the original seventy-three cases of crime and detection written by the inimitable master himself, Rex Stout. Rex Stout (1886–1975) wrote dozens of short stories, novellas, and full-length mystery novels, most featuring his two indelible characters, the peerless detective Nero Wolfe and his handy sidekick, Archie Goodwin. Chapter 1   Monday at the Flower Show, Tuesday at the Flower Show, Wednesday at the Flower Show. Me, Archie Goodwin. How’s that?   I do not deny that flowers are pretty, but a million flowers are not a million times prettier than one flower. Oysters are good to eat, but who wants to eat a carload?   I didn’t particularly resent it when Nero Wolfe sent me up there Monday afternoon and, anyway, I had been expecting it. After all the ballyhoo in the special Flower Show sections of the Sunday papers, it was a cinch that some member of our household would have to go take a look at those orchids, and as Fritz Brenner couldn’t be spared from the kitchen that long, and Theodore Horstmann was too busy in the plant rooms on the roof, and Wolfe himself could have got a job in a physics laboratory as an Immovable Object if the detective business ever played out, it looked as if I would be elected. I was.   When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six P.M. Monday and entered the office, I reported:   “I saw them. It was impossible to snitch a sample.”   He grunted, lowering himself into his chair. “I didn’t ask you to.”   “Who said you did, but you expected me to. There are three of them in a glass case and the guard has his feet glued.”   “What color are they?”   “They’re not black.”   “Black flowers are never black. What color are they?”   “Well.” I considered. “Say you take a piece of coal. Not anthracite. Cannel coal.”   “That’s black.”   “Wait a minute. Spread on it a thin coating of open kettle molasses. That’s it.”   “Pfui. You haven’t the faintest notion what it would look like. Neither have I.”   “I’ll go buy a piece of coal and we’ll try it.”   “No. Is the labellum uniform?”   I nodded. “Molasses on coal. The labellum is large, not as large as aurea, about like truffautiana. Cepals lanceolate. Throat tinged with orange—”   “Any sign of wilting?”   “No.”   “Go back tomorrow and look for wilting on the edges of the petals. You know it, the typical wilting after pollination. I want to know if they’ve been pollinated.”   So I went up there again Tuesday after lunch. That evening at six I added a few details to my description and reported no sign of wilting.   I sat at my desk, in front of his against the wall, and aimed a chilly stare at him.   “Will you kindly tell me,” I requested, “why the females you see at a flower show are the kind of females who go to a flower show? Ninety per cent of them? Especially their legs? Does it have to be like that? Is it because, never having any flowers sent to them, they have to go there in order to see any? Or is it because—”   “Shut up. I don’t know. Go back tomorrow and look for wilting.”   I might have known, with his mood getting blacker every hour, all on account of three measly orchid plants, that he was working up to a climax. But I went again Wednesday, and didn’t get home until nearly seven o’clock. When I entered the office he was there at his desk with two empty beer bottles on the tray and pouring a third one into the glass.   “Did you get lost?” he inquired politely.   I didn’t resent that because I knew he half meant it. He has got to the point where he can’t quite understand how a man can drive from 35th Street and Tenth Avenue to 44th and Lexington and back again with nobody to lead the way. I reported no wilting, and sat at my desk and ran through the stuff he had put there, and t