The Silent Speaker

 The Silent Speaker (Oct 1946) by Rex Stout

Cheney Boone, the Director of the Bureau of Price Regulation (hereafter BPR) is found beaten to death in his dressing room just before he's set to give a speech at a gathering of the National Industrial Association (NIA). The NIA is made up of a group of big business concerns and there isn't much love lost between the two agencies. Boone was repeatedly struck with a monkey wrench that was among his props for the speech. [Bev's first question: why on earth did the man have not one, but several monkey wrenches for his speech. This isn't really pertinent to the mystery...but inquiring minds want to know.] Given the antagonism which exists between the BPR and the NIA, the NIA has already been found guilty at the bar of public opinion. Public opinion doesn't really seem to care which NIA member did it--they're all guilty by association. 

Nero Wolfe, who has been goaded into figuring out a way to get paid--so Archie, Fritz, Theodore, and all those orchids won't be homeless, puts Archie to work on a scheme that manipulates the NIA into practically begging him to investigate and snatch their chestnuts out of the fire. The key to the case winds up being a leather satchel containing speech recorder cylinders that Boone's confidential assistant Miss Phoebe Gunther seems to have misplaced. Phoebe is next on the killer's hit list. And when the satchel is found, there are only nine cylinders when there should be ten. Whatever was on that last cylinder must be hot stuff and Wolfe pulls out all the stops...including doing a turn as a mental case...to find it.

In the meantime, Cramer is pulled off the case because he's given Wolfe too much latitude (and gotten no results). And he's replaced with Inspector Ash who is a horse's rear-end. Wolfe contrives to pull his rabbits out of hats with Cramer present so he will get the glory and be reinstated. I love the ending where Cramer wants to say thank you (with the gift of an orchid) but doesn't want to be all mushy about it. 

For about half to two-thirds of the book, I felt like this was the same old, same old. Archie goads Wolfe into working. Wolfe defies the police. Wolfe is threatened with jail time. Wolfe, for apparently inexplicable reasons, chooses to keep Archie out of part of the investigation--hiring a detective agency to do a bunch of leg work; using Saul Panzer and not letting Archie listen in on Saul's reports. The story is saved by the ending. Wolfe's theatrics as a man suffering from a nervous breakdown and his interactions with Archie during that period as well as the ending proper where he reveals all (plus Cramer with orchid in hand) makes it all worthwhile. ★★★

First line: Seated in his giant's chair behind his desk in his office, leaning back with his eyes half closed, Nero Wolfe muttered at me.

The hurdles I had to make, you might have thought Hattie Harding was the goddess of a temple and this was it, instead of merely the Assistant Director of Public relations for the NIA, but I finally made the last jump and was taken in to her. (p. 8)

Last line: "If that was it, either primary or secondary, to hell with ethics."
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Deaths: two hit on head