seymoure | "The Golden Calf Obligation"

As A. G. Bell Said, “Many are Called!”.

“The things a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence. He's got to have some inner standards worth fighting for or there won't be any way to bring him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it. That's all there is to it.”

-Clark Gable

When I finally came to again, Chester was sitting in a chair next to my bed. He was reading the newspaper.

Max was leaning against the window, looking outside, peering at potential threats.

Len Barry and Harry Vernon were discussing something quietly in the doorway. They had to part as a nurse entered the room.

“Some of you are going to have to leave,” she whispered, “We do not allow this many visitors at one time.”

At this moment Dr. Meyer Whitt-McNitt peaked in the doorway, waving the nurse on, without adding anything else to the conversation. It seemed I was something of a celebrity. I looked at my wristband and, yes, indeed, I was not Dan Grant, but Matt Savage.

So much for my secret identity.

Chester leaned over to me and whispered, “Hugo is on his way with Rayleen, as soon as she can take care of their kids and put their tasks in order.”

Nobody was more perfect to “put things to right” than my old chum. She had run my first detective office back when I had an office and a desk. We had come so far, and she was still beside me.

Next addition to the agency was Hugo. He had been a leg breaker for the Finley family out of Chicago. They were a powerful crime family who had adopted the giant when he was an orphaned boy, even though his personality was not completely fitting for the pain-inducing position. When the entire group was wiped out, he had been protecting me, and seemed happy to continue the job. We soon became allies and friends. As time passed, he and Rayleen became even more. This was a present to me, since, while I thought of her as a sister, the problem was that I thought of her as a sister, which was not what she had thought she felt of me.

At the end of that particular episode, I had received a $20 million reward, and that was how the money thing had started. Rayleen was a wizard at investment and she moved the money around like a gambling guru dancing chips around the craps table. Soon we had nearly doubled the money. Then came the next big case. At the end of that case, our fortunes inflated again. Each big case lead to a larger agency and more million dollar cases.

Max soon entered the agency and proved himself to be nearly the physical powerhouse that Hugo had been. (He also had a penchant for playing the autoharp very well!)

Len Barry and Harry Vernon joined us next.

Len was capable of doing an Archie Goodwin to the point of being frightening. Archie, from the Nero Wolfe books, was a human tape recorder and could repeat conversations exactly, so well that his testimony was accepted as so in court. He also had an eidetic memory; anything he had seen he would remember. I had searched the country to find my Archie, and though I had enjoyed him as an associate and friend, his literary link was less used. Oh, well; expectation is greater than the reality.

I actually interviewed “Harry Vincent” because he had the same name as one of the Shadow’s agents. The Shadow, the pulp hero himself, was one of my favorite role models in my youth, though he was a bit more gleefully prone to terminal violence than the others I idolized: Doc Savage, The Lone Ranger & Superman, but he was still, without a doubt, a good guy.

But that was when I found that my interviewee’s true name had been mis-copied by a secretary as Vincent rather than as Vernon; it made his chances just a bit smaller. But he quickly won me over by being the smartest man I had ever met. He could do trigonometry in his head, remember voluminous calendars of dates rapidly from history (I love history, but the dates always elude me) and could figure out the mechanics of just about anything. It would be hard to not hire him if you could afford him. His memory was very near as good as Len’s.

Those who have been with me so far are aware of the many positive attributes of Chester, so I feel no need to sum up his part in the team.

I had a crew that could do anything, and since it looked like I wasn’t going to be up or around for a few days it looked like I was going to be doing a Nero Wolfe myself and running this investigation by remote control here from my hospital room.

It was at that time my doctor launched his first attempt on my life.

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Continue on to Chapter 21

"The Golden Calf Obligation" - Chapter 20