The mountain couldn’t come to Wolfe, so the great detective came to the mountain—to Lame Horse, Montana, to be exact. Here a city slicker got a country girl pregnant and then took a bullet in the back. Wolfe’s job was to get an innocent man exonerated of the crime and catch a killer in the process. But when he packed his silk pajamas and headed west, he found himself embroiled in a case rife with local cynicism, slipshod police work, and unpleasant political ramifications. In fact, Nero Wolfe was buffaloed until the real killer struck again, underestimating the dandified dude with an unerring instinct for detection. Introduction by Don Coldsmith   “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. “It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.” — The New York Times Book Review 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   I began it “NW” and signed it “AG” not to be different, but from habit. Nearly all of my written communications to Nero Wolfe over the years had been on a sheet of a memo pad, for Fritz to take up to his room on his breakfast tray, or put by me on his desk when he was upstairs in bed and I had returned from an evening errand. They had all begun “NW” and ended “AG” so this did too, though it wasn’t scribbled. It was typed on an Underwood on a table in a corner of the big room in Lily Rowan’s cabin in a corner of her ranch, and it was in the airmail envelope I poked through the slot in the post office in Timberburg, the county seat, that Saturday morning—on a letterhead that had Bar JR Ranch, Lame Horse, Montana in big type across the top. Not as elegant as the one with her New York penthouse address. Below, it said:   Friday 8:13 pm August 2, 1968   NW: It’s a real mess here and I’m stuck. I didn’t go into details on the phone Monday because someone at the exchange might be cooperating with the sheriff or the county attorney (in New York he would be district attorney), or there might even be a tap on Miss Rowan’s line. Modern science certainly gets around.   Since you never forget anything or anybody you remember Harvey Greve, who once told you there in the office that he had bought a lot of livestock, horses and cattle and calves, for Roger Dunning, which helped do for Dunning. I believe I have mentioned that he has been running Miss Rowan’s ranch for the last four years, and he still is—or was until six days ago, last Saturday, when he was charged with murder and parked in the cooler—namely the county jail. A dude named Philip Brodell had been shot in the back and then in the front while he was picking huckleberries. As I have told you, these mountain huckleberries are different. This time I’ll try to bring you some.   Miss Rowan and I have decided that Harvey didn’t do it, and I’m stuck. If it had been plain and simple that he did it I would have been back there to keep your desk dusted when I was supposed to, day before yesterday. Miss Rowan has hired a lawyer from Helena with a reputation that stretches from the Continental Divide to the Little Missouri, and it would be his problem. But I suspect he doesn’t see it as we do. His head’s on it, but I don’t think his heart’s in it. Mine is, and one will get you fifty that Harvey’s clean. So you see how it is, I’ve got a job. Even if I had no obligation to Miss Rowan as her guest and an old friend, I’ve known Harvey Greve too long and too well to bow out and leave him in a squeeze.   Of course from July 31, day before yesterday, I’m on leave of absence without pay. I hope to be back soon, but as it stands now I have no suggestions for a replacement for Harvey in the jug, and it looks like—excuse it, as if—there’ll have to be one with good credentials. If you want to have Saul or Orrie at my desk, my strictly personal things are up in my room, so all my secrets are safe. Television here is often a bust, and I have got to be back in time for the World Series. Give Theodore my regards and tell Fritz my first thought every morning is him—the breakfast in his kitchen I’m missing. In these parts the two favorite nicknames for pancakes are torture disks and gut plasters.   AG   When he got it, probably Monday, he would lean back and glare at m