When you looked in the dictionary under “tough cop,” you never got as far as the picture, because Captain Stoddard of the Brooklyn Bunco Squad would tear out the page and shove it down your throat.

So when I saw that craggy, bitter-almond face through the two-way glass in the front door of Claudius Lyon’s brownstone I knew the day could only get better from there.

Turned out I was wrong.

“I know you’re in there, Woodbine. That little gob of goo never leaves the place and you’re too busy bleeding him dry to go out for a pint of Old Overshoe.”

“One moment, please.” I skedaddled to report the glad tidings to my employer.

He was sitting in the overstuffed green chair that was too big for him behind the desk that was too big for even Nero Wolfe, his hero and role model in the office he’d copied from a photo spread on Wolfe’s place of business in Knickerbocker. I caught him reading Encyclopedia Brown before he could stash it behind a hefty copy of Crime and Punishment. The short fat faker never gave up the ruse.

He squeaked, turned a paler shade of boiled turnip, and said, “We don’t have to let him in, do we? He doesn’t have a warrant or anything, does he?”

“I couldn’t tell from just his face. I don’t think even a police dog like him goes around carrying them in his mouth.”

“Tell him to go away.” He reburied his nose in his book.

“Not me, boss. I’d sooner punch a grizzly on the snoot. He’ll just come back hungrier.”

He set aside the literature and hopped down from the chair. “I’m in the plant rooms and can’t be disturbed.”

“Not for another twenty minutes. He knows Wolfe’s routine as well as you.”

“A man’s home is his castle, confound it!”

“That’s the thing about castles. Somebody’s always storming them. Look, we’re not working on anything right now. He can’t bust us for conducting a private investigation without a license, which is his only beef with us. Let’s just swallow the hemlock and get it over with.”

He screwed up his round baby face, but he never got quite to the point of actually bawling. “Very well. Give me a moment to prepare.”

I left him while he was slipping Encyclopedia Brown page-ends foremost on a shelf of weighty classics he got as much use out of as a stationary bike. He never read anything but whodunits and the Vine, the monthly newsletter of the Empire State Tomato-Breeders’ Association.

“Season’s greetings, Captain.” I opened the front door.

It was that time of year, but no one at headquarters would dare tell him.

Stoddard shoved past me and into the office, sneered at the framed label from a can of Chef Boyardee, the big globe that still maintained there was a Soviet Union, and the day’s display on Lyon’s desk, a dwarf tomato plant with fruit the size of buckshot. The boss flattered himself he’d developed a new subspecies, the way Wolfe is doing all the time with orchids, but it was just an undernourished specimen of cherry tomato. His idol’s botanical interests are exacting and difficult, but tomatoes practically grow themselves, giving Lyon plenty of time to goof off and read The Hot-Cha-Cha Murder Case during his daily four hours total on the roof.

I’ll give him this much; the tyrannical cop made him as nervous as he did me, which given my arrest record is no mere qualm, but unless you were sharp enough to catch the slight tremor in his pudgy hands gripping the edge of his desk, you wouldn’t know it. He even managed to dial down his frightened treble to a decibel below a dog whistle.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Stoddard?”

The captain, of course, never missed a sign of weakness in others, but for once kept the sadistic note from his snarling baritone.

“Normally I’d say come clean and confess to violation of the New York State Code prohibiting snooping without a ticket on file in Albany, but I’ll leave them to another time. You’re coming with me to Manhattan.”

Sickly green crept into Lyon’s cheeks, turning them from McIntosh into Granny Smiths. But he kept his even high pitch. “Out of the question. As you know, I never leave my house on business.”

If anything, when our guest smiled he was even more unnerving. “Who said it was business? Never mind. It is.”

Without waiting for an invitation, which was customary to him, he plunked himself into the pinkish-orange leather chair facing the desk; it was supposed to be red, like its model across the river, but the upholsterer was colorblind.

“It’s my niece,” he said. “My brother’s daughter.”

For once I was more suspicious of him than he was of us. The thought that there should be two Stoddards in existence, and that one of them had procreated, was about as easy to swallow as a tomato-butter sandwich, one of my esteemed employer’s more notorious failures.

“Stella’s a smart cookie,” he went on. “She talked herself into a job in a successful bookstore when she was sixteen, and she’s worked there four years. Now her boss suspects her of stealing two hundred dollars from the desk in his office during a Christmas party at the store. I wouldn’t be any kind of cop if I thought anybody was above suspicion, but Stella’s got too much going on upstairs to risk her job and her freedom over a couple of hundred bucks.”

“You are, as you say, a police officer,” Lyon said.

“You know damn well I’m a captain.”

“As you say.” His tone wavered between a high tremolo and a vacuum cleaner. “Why not investigate the case yourself?”

“It’s a mystery bookshop. I don’t read the things myself; last thing I want to think about when I get home is work, and from what I hear most of them bollix up the facts, putting silencers on revolvers and such. You gobble the things up like candy, so I thought you could shed some light on the nature of the business. The money came from a customer who bought a rare book, in jacket. The owner says that’s important. Me, I throw ’em away as soon as I bring home a book.”

“Amazing.”

Stoddard’s normal congestion deepened a shade; but he couldn’t tell any more than I could if the chubby little sparrow was referring to the habit or the thought of the captain bringing a book into his house. I figured it was 1,000 Ways to Beat a Suspect to Death.

“It’s got a foreign title.” He dug out a fold of ruled paper and squinted at his ballpoint scrawl. “Fer-de-Lance, first edition.”

Lyon squeaked.

“Thought you’d be interested. Penzler says it was the first book about your god.”

“Otto Penzler?”

“You know him?”

“We’ve never met, but I’ve ordered some items from his shop, and we’ve spoken on the telephone.” Lyon, plainly hooked (he even forgot to be afraid of his company), shook his head. “Something’s amiss. Two hundred is far too little for a first edition of that book, which began the Nero Wolfe series, and Mr. Penzler is far too well-versed in his trade to let it go for pennies.”

The captain looked again at his notes, rubbed his nose. “Okay, I misread my own chicken scratches. It’s a first movie edition, with pictures of the actors on the cover and stills from the film inside. That help?”

Lyon nodded, folding his hands across his middle. The fingers just met.

“Meet Nero Wolfe, starring Edward Arnold and Lionel Stander. They changed the book’s title at the time of release, and almost everything else inside. I have a fair copy myself, but, dear me, I never paid anything approaching two hundred dollars for it. The first, of course, would be worth thousands.”

“So somebody got suckered.”

“Doubtful. Penzler’s reputation is spotless.”

“Anyway, he swears Stella was the only one who went into his office between the time he locked the money in the drawer and he discovered it was missing; she’d gone there on some errand or other. What’s got me buffaloed is how whoever did it managed to unlock the drawer, take the money, and relock it afterward. Penzler claims to have the only key, and it was on his person the entire time. Stella’s good at a lot of things, but second-story work isn’t one of them.”

I figured if Stella lived up to half the hype she was adopted.

Lyon actually clapped his hands. “A locked-room mystery!”

“It was a drawer, not a room.”

“One takes things as they come.”

I leaned across the desk and whispered in his face.

“It’s a trap. He’ll find some way to make you accept payment, and then he’ll have you on that practicing-without-a-license rap.”

“Fortunately, I’m independently wealthy, and never need to.” He raised his voice. “Arnie, we’re going to the big island.”

I screwed up my nose. “ ‘Book ’em, Danno.’ ”

Well, the mountain came to Muhammad, the continents drifted apart, and twenty minutes later Lyon finished prying himself into a bilious green overcoat and a Tyrolean hat with a green feather in the band. (Wolfe prefers yellow; the little blob of cholesterol was bound to have an independent streak somewhere.) I’d swear he’d kept the coat unused since before I came under his roof, if I didn’t know for a fact he kept contributing to his girth like Methuselah kept having birthdays, and the damn thing fit.

Sitting next to the captain in the front seat of his unmarked Winston Leviathan, Lyon kicking his feet in back, I watched the man behind the wheel scowling at all the decorated windows and bundled-up pedestrians lugging bright packages past decorated windows: He was by Scrooge out of the Grinch by way of the ACLU.

The store was in Tribeca. A hand-lettered sign in red and green announced that the shop was closed for a Christmas party. A burly young employee with a beard buzzed us into a big hollowed-out, well-lit cube walled with books starting at the floor and reaching fifteen feet to the ceiling, with rolling ladders attached to metal rails. Green, red, gold, and silver streamers festooned the place and there was a punch bowl the size of a witch’s cauldron and the usual scattering of bottles, partially filled glasses, and abandoned soda-pop cans, along with trays of cookies shaped like Santas and snowmen and Christmas trees that looked like air fresheners, the requisite bowls of untouched nuts, and a basket half-filled with poppy seed buns. A trimmed tree lorded over all in glorious bad taste, in tune with the season.

“Mr. Lyon?” greeted a compact man in an argyle sweater and slacks, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, white hair neatly brushed back, and a snowy, well-trimmed beard. I don’t know what I’d expected—a character in a ragged sweatshirt who smelled like old magazines, maybe. All I know about books is the odds at Pimlico. This guy resembled the German scientist who’s always explaining Godzilla. “By golly, you look like Archie Goodwin washed Wolfe in hot water and threw him in the dryer with the setting on Normal.”

“Mr. Penzler, I presume.” Lyon’s response was cool, and he ignored the proprietor’s outstretched hand; I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t offended by the comparison, only to the way it was put. “What is this I am told about someone paying two hundred dollars for a movie edition of Fer-de-Lance?”

“It’s ridiculous, I agree; but as a collector you must know that when a true first edition prices itself out of most people’s market, they turn to the next one down, and yet the next, increasing the value of each in its own order. When I opened this shop, I couldn’t give away movie tie-ins; ten years ago, I’d have been lucky to get twenty dollars for one in fine condition. As it was, I made this buyer a bargain, seeing as how he’s a loyal, long-time customer; I should add that it was inscribed by Lionel Stander, when he was appearing on Hart to Hart.”

Lyon asked the customer’s name.

“I’m sorry, but that’s confidential.”

“At least he’s intelligent enough not to show himself a gull to the world. Have you another copy? I’d like to refresh my memory.”

Penzler scaled a ladder without hesitating and came back with his prize. He’d committed his stock to memory.

“This is a fair copy, with a closed tear in the jacket and a library stamp on the first page. Would you believe I expect to get sixty for it?”

I looked at it over the boss’s suety shoulder. A black-and-white photo of a fat, distinguished-looking party and a taller, younger man with a face like a shaved gorilla’s, decorated the cover.

Lyon tried to say, “Pfui!” Fortunately for the jacket, it was sealed in plastic; the amount of spraying involved, and the attempt to avoid it, distorted the exclamation so much even Nero Wolfe couldn’t have sued him successfully for copyright infringement. He wiped the book on his sleeve. “It’s no wonder Rex Stout, acting on Wolfe’s behalf, refused to allow any films to be made after the first two-picture contract ended. Edward Arnold was an acceptable Wolfe, but Lionel Stander bore as much resemblance to Archie Goodwin as—”

“Woodbine,” Stoddard finished. “Give him the rest, Penzler, just as you gave it to me.”

The bookstore owner explained that Stella, the captain’s niece, had placed herself in voluntary police custody after the theft was discovered. Penzler had closed the shop early for the party, and as he was too busy to deposit the $200 cash he’d just gotten for the book and reluctant to deprive any of his hard-working employees of party time by making them run the errand, he’d simply locked it in the top drawer of his desk. An hour or so later, he sent Stella into the office to bring back more refreshments. As the celebration was winding down, he returned to put the money in his wallet so it wouldn’t be left unattended overnight, and that was when he discovered it was missing.

Lyon asked if she was searched.

“NYPD searched the entire staff,” Stoddard said. “The money wasn’t on any of them; but anyone could have stashed it anywhere. I’ve asked the locals to toss the place, but with all these books to look through it’ll take days.”

“May I see the scene of the crime?”

Penzler smiled. “In all the years I’ve collected, sold, and written about mystery fiction, that’s the first time I’ve ever actually heard anyone use that phrase.”

In the office, our host produced a key and unlocked the top drawer of a graceful-looking antique desk. Inside was the usual desk stuff. “It was on top of that pad: four fifties folded and loose. Don’t bother searching the drawer. I’ve had everything out of it several times.”

Lyon pointed at a scattering of tiny brownish-black fragments. “Were those here when you put in the cash?”

Penzler frowned. “I can’t say I noticed them.”

I had a brainstorm. When you’ve been a crook all your life, it’s not hard to think like a detective. I licked a finger, touched it to one of the fragments, and put it on my tongue. “Poppy seeds,” I said. “Not very tasty ones. I saw a bowl of them in the shop. Whoever broke into the drawer must have been eating one at the time.”

“Ha!” I know in print it looks like ordinary laughter, but what came out of Captain Stoddard’s mouth bore no resemblance to human mirth. “That proves she’s innocent. Stella’s allergic to gluten. She’d no sooner eat a poppy seed bun than gobble down poison.”

Penzler cleared his throat embarrassedly. “I knew that, Captain. It’s why I bought them from the gluten-free section of the bakery.”

What came out of the cop’s mouth next wouldn’t read like laughter even in print.

Penzler said, “I don’t intend to press charges, or even dismiss Stella; this is the season for forgiving, after all. However, I do think I’m entitled to reimbursement.”

“Meanwhile my niece’s reputation is destroyed.”

Lyon stuck a finger in his ear and commenced to rotate. When it was his right ear, he was just after wax, but when it was his left, as now, he was stroking an idea to the surface of his brain, like a needle coaxing a splinter out of his thumb. So far it had never failed to amount to something just as satisfying. He asked Penzler if he had a magnifying glass.

“I thought all you amateur dicks carried one,” Stoddard barked.

Penzler opened another drawer and drew out a square lens in a black plastic frame with a handle. For some time, Lyon studied the inside of the drawer, then dropped to the floor.

I knew it, I thought. The short fat nothing had blown an artery at last; all those greasy gefilte fish his chef, Gus, shoveled into him had taken their ichthyological revenge. But as I was stooping to test his tonnage and calculate the ability of my back to support it, he began crawling across the carpet on his knees and elbows, holding the glass in one hand. It was more physical activity than I’d seen him engaged in ever; the sawed-off porker went begging for a coronary just pushing the button to his private elevator.

He applied the glass again when he reached the paneled wall behind the desk. While the rest of us goggled—Penzler with bemusement, Stoddard with rawboned contempt, and me wondering if I should give notice or just walk out in search of someone to work for who had a couple less bats in his belfry (provided he didn’t keep too weather an eye on the business accounts), he crept along like an obese inchworm, training the lens along the baseboard. At length he indicated triumph (I’d worked for him long enough to interpret all his chirps, squeals, and yelps the way a zoologist learns the language of monkeys), flattened himself on the floor, made a rooting motion I couldn’t identify because of the fat obstacle he made, and with a noise like a rusty hinge pushed himself back onto his knees and rested his buttocks on his heels, holding up some colored strands between thumb and forefinger. If he could grow a tomato as red as his face at that moment, he’d be Mr. December in the Vine.

“Mr. Stoddard, I think the experts in your laboratory will find little difficulty tracing these samples back to the United States Treasury.”

“Treasury!” We all said it at once.

“I could be wrong. The new bills are so more colorful than the old that I may be mistaking Christmas confetti for currency. However, I doubt it. Your culprit is a female, hair brownish gray, weighing a few grams at most, measuring perhaps two and one-half inches from nose to tail, and she has accomplices. A mate, for one, and what is doubtless a squirming brood.” He thumped the baseboard, calling our attention to a hole the size of a half-dollar.

“A mouse!” Stoddard’s tone was disbelieving, but then he’d have demanded a paternity test in the manger in Bethlehem.

“You mean she’s shredded my money to build a nest for her young?” Penzler’s tone was wounded; even someone as esoteric (I’m pretty sure of the word; I Googled it) as a bookseller is still a merchant, and a dollar destroyed is a heart broken.

“I lost the jacket off a nice copy of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock to a rodent with a family, cutting the book to a fraction of its value. New York is an old city, and no matter how many times it rebuilds itself or how clean the neighborhood and its residents, the creatures’ bloodlines stretch back to Peter Stuyvesant.”

“I didn’t know the little bastards could pick locks,” I said.

“The Greene was in a chest of drawers, and although it wasn’t locked, all they need is a gap in the joints the size of a pencil to gain access. The chest wasn’t nearly as old as this fine desk, but time is patient. It will unfasten what is fast and loosen what is snug, no matter how long it takes.”

Penzler strode over, helped him grunting to his feet, and stared at the shredded remains of four half-century plants. He gave them to Stoddard, who produced a glassine bag from an overcoat pocket and sealed them inside. “I’ll send forensics to scoop out the rest. If you’re lucky, Penzler, you may wind up with enough for Treasury to replace the pieces with whole bills.”

A weight even heavier than Lyon’s seemed to lift itself from the shoulders of the bookseller, who apologized to the captain. “Stella has a raise and a bonus coming, and a public apology in front of the staff.”

“Just be sure of yourself next time. Locked rooms and locked drawers. Pfui!”

Lyon was still sputtering at Stoddard’s correct pronunciation of the word when Otto Penzler opened the glazed door of a bookcase that matched the desk and handed him something: A book, its jacket sealed in stiff plastic, with a frightened-looking adolescent girl painted on the cover and the title Secret of the Old Clock.

“Ha!” Stoddard bellowed again, nastier than before. “Claudius Lyon, I arrest you for practicing investigation without a license, for profit.” The ungrateful SOB took a pair of handcuffs from another pocket.

“Told you it was a trap!” I said.

I expected another high-pitched noise from Lyon, or at least pallor. Instead, he held the book out to the arresting officer. “You’ll need evidence.”

Stoddard snatched it from his hand as if he thought he was getting ready to throw the evidence out a window.

“Please examine the flyleaf.”

Grinding his teeth, the captain snapped open the cover. Instead of Lyon’s, it was his face that faded to a mild shade of mauve. Craning my neck to see past his shoulder, I recognized the leafy tomato plant printed on the bookplate:

Ex libris

Claudius Lyon

700 Avenue J

Flatbush, NY

“In addition to being a bookseller and a scholar, Mr. Penzler operates a number of small presses, one of which produces facsimile copies of great mystery first editions, which he offers at popular prices. When he called to say he’d heard I possessed a first of the inaugural Nancy Drew mystery and asking to borrow it so he could reproduce it, I sent it over by special messenger.”

“It came out beautifully,” Penzler said. “You’ll receive a copy of the first one off the press, inscribed by the publisher. It’s the least I can do, since you wouldn’t accept remuneration.”

“I’ll buy it. I wouldn’t want to risk Mr. Stoddard’s disapproval.”

The captain thrust the book back into Lyon’s hands and stamped out, leaving us without our ride. Penzler lifted the telephone receiver off his desk and called for a taxi.

I said, “Wait a minute. What about the poppy seeds?”

Claudius Lyon blinked at me. “Not seeds,” he said. “Mouse droppings.”

I had our cab stop at a drugstore on the way back and gargled with Listerine all the way home.