There’s no one and nothing the great detective Nero Wolfe wouldn’t take on if the price was right. That’s something wealthy society widow Rachel Bruner is counting on when she writes him a check for a whopping hundred grand. But even Wolfe has a moment’s doubt when he finds out why the prize is so generous. For the oversize genius and his able assistant Archie Goodwin are about to lock horns with the FBI—and those highly trained G-men have a way with threats, tails, and bugs that could give even sedentary sleuth Nero Wolfe a run for his money.   Introduction by Stuart Kaminsky   “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's Nero Wolfe books are all great fun, full of wonderful food and the arcane details of hobbies as diverse as orchid growing and Balkan history. But in this outing, things suddenly become much more serious when Wolfe and his sidekick Archie Goodwin face the malevolent forces of J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI minions. Luckily, Stout's heart and his writing style are more than equal to the challenge. “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   Since it was the deciding factor, I might as well begin by describing it. It was a pink slip of paper three inches wide and seven inches long, and it told the First National City Bank to pay to the order of Nero Wolfe one hundred thousand and 00/100 dollars. Signed, Rachel Bruner. It was there on Wolfe’s desk, where Mrs. Bruner had put it. After doing so, she had returned to the red leather chair.   She had been there half an hour, having arrived a few minutes after six o’clock. Since her secretary had phoned for an appointment only three hours earlier there hadn’t been much time to check on her, but more than enough for the widow who had inherited the residual estate of Lloyd Bruner. At least eight of the several dozen buildings Bruner had left to her were more than twelve stories high, and one of them could be seen from anywhere within eye range—north, east, south, or west. All that had been necessary, really, was to ring Lon Cohen at the Gazette to ask if there was any news not fit to print about anyone named Bruner, but I made a couple of other calls, to a vice-president of our bank and to Nathaniel Parker, the lawyer. I got nothing, except at one point the vice-president said, “Oh … a funny thing …” and stopped.   I asked what.   Pause. “Nothing, really. Mr. Abernathy, our president, got a book from her.…”   “What kind of a book?”   “It—I forget. If you will excuse me, Mr. Goodwin, I’m rather busy.”   So all I had on her, as I answered the doorbell in the old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street and let her in, and ushered her to the office, was that she had sent a man a book. After she was in the red leather chair I put her coat, which was at least a match for a sable number for which a friend of mine had paid eighteen grand, on the couch, sat at my desk, and took her in. She was a little too short and too much filled out to be rated elegant, even if her tan woolen dress was a Dior, and her face was too round, but there was nothing wrong with the brown-black eyes she aimed at Wolfe as she asked him if she needed to tell him who she was.   He was regarding her without enthusiasm. The trouble was, a new year had just started, and it seemed likely that he was going to have to go to work. In a November or December, when he was already in a tax bracket that would take three-quarters—more, formerly—of any additional income, turning down jobs was practically automatic, but January was different, and this was the fifth of January, and this woman was stacked. He didn’t like it. “Mr. Goodwin named you,” he said coldly, “and I read newspapers.”   She nodded. “I know you do. I know a great deal about you, that’s why I’m here. I want you to do something that perhaps no other man alive could do. You read books too. Have you read one entitled The FBI Nobody Knows?”   “Yes.”   “Then I don’t need to tell you about it. Did it impress you?”   “Yes.”   “Favorably?”   “Yes.”   “My goodness, you’re curt.”   “I answered your questions, madam.”   “I kn