The moon turned blue, swine flew, and hell sprouted icicles.

Mind you, I can’t swear to these things. Brooklynites never look at the sky, and having spent time in stir, I’d rather not find out for sure if things are worse down below; but when Captain Stoddard of the NYPD calls up Claudius Lyon to ask for his services as a detective, you can be sure that all of the above is gospel.

Lyon himself never answers the phone when either Gus, the keeper of the keys, or I’m around. Nero Wolfe doesn’t, and his worshipper across the river wouldn’t tie his shoes without confirming which loop Wolfe makes longer. (Not that the little lump would bend over regardless.) So when the bell rang during his morning two hours in the office, I picked up the receiver. “Claudius Lyon’s office. Arnie Woodbine speaking.”

The boss, watching me over the Nancy Drew coloring book, registered alarm at my reaction to the voice scraping in my ear. “Arnie, are you having an aneurysm?”

I might as well have been; they say it’s impossible to answer yes to that question, and I could no sooner have identified who was on the other end of the line than I could have removed my foot from the third rail in the subway. I inclined my no-doubt pallid face toward the extension on the desk.

Wherever it was my blood had gone, Lyon’s joined it when Stoddard yelped at him. It would make the captain’s year if he nailed one or both of us for conducting private investigations without a license. No matter that there were worse crimes to address; they weren’t personal. He likes us the way suede likes rain, the way mongooses like cobras, the way Krazy Kat likes bricks. He don’t like us, is what I’m saying. I kept my receiver to my ear. I was afraid he’d hear the click if I hung up, and rubber-hose me for rudeness.

“Mr. Stoddard,” Lyon squeaked. “To what do I owe this—”

“Take that sentence where it’s going and I’ll reach down this wire with both hands and rip your lungs out through your nose. Did you read today’s Tattler?”

Which showed he kept up on his homework. Lyon’s addicted to that local scandal sheet, with its aliens in the White House, pig-faced boys, and a legitimate news item when it runs out of freaks. At a look from my employer I got the morning edition out of the drawer of my desk where I store slugs for the parking meter, snapped it open, and scanned through the Elvis sightings until I found something that seemed to serve. I folded to the short piece and passed it across the big desk. It ran:

JOHN DOE THINKS HE’S SAINT

Brooklyn, December 5: Yesterday, local police

took into custody a man found wandering down the

middle of Ocean Parkway who police say has identified

himself only as Saint Peter, traditionally known as

the custodian of the pearly gates to heaven.

So far, according to Captain Stoddard of the

Eleventh Precinct, attempts to learn the man’s true

identity have proven . . .

Now, nothing short of a chocolate éclair the size of his head can restore Lyon’s composure faster than a fresh mystery to solve. That’s what Wolfe does all the time, and what I said about tying his shoelaces applies quadruply to detecting. He even rediscovered his sense of humor. “I assume, sir,” he said, “you’re referring to the counterfeit apostle you have locked up in a cell and not this other item about the captain of the SS Titanic located alive and well on a desert island; although it does pique my interest that the commander of a vessel that went down in the North Atlantic in 1912 should resurface on an atoll in the Pacific.”

Precedents were falling everywhere that morning. Not only did Stoddard not follow through on his promise to separate Lyon from his lungs; he responded in a tone I suppose a snarling Doberman would consider polite. “I wish I had that one. The department shrink and every colleague he can dredge up to consult can’t shake this character’s story. He’s Saint Peter, that’s that, and my thirty-year record’s shot to sh—”

“How can I assist you?” It was just as much of a novelty for the boss to interrupt the captain in mid-gripe as for the captain to let him; but Lyon dislikes profanity. “Phooey” is as close as he ever comes, far as it is from Wolfe’s “Pfui.” My fat little meal ticket also disapproves of spraying saliva.

“It came to me we’ve been going about this all wrong. They say it takes a thief to catch a thief. I’ve proved that’s malarkey, but one nut sure enough knows how to talk fruitcake. As one loony to another, you might be able to shake this guy’s story and get him to cough up his real moniker.”

At this point I’d recovered myself enough to put in my shekel’s worth. “Excuse me, Captain, but there’s only one mental deficient in this conversation. I’m not the sharpest blade in the shop, but I’m sane, and Mrs. Woodbine didn’t raise her children to fall for a sure case of entrapment. Mr. Lyon solves your little conundrum, you’re so grateful for the commendation you get from the chief you hand him one of your four-for-a-quarter stogies, and the second he claps his squat fingers around it you bust him for accepting a fee for practicing without a license.”

“You, too, as an accomplice. But this is on the level. If he manages to pull this off—and I’m grasping at straws here, fat as this one is; I think he’s a dumb cluck with dumb luck, and sure as hell when it runs out it’ll be when he’s working for me—I won’t even give him so much as a thank you.”

“That part I buy,” I said. “The ‘no thanks’ part. Nice try, Captain. Try again some other—”

I saved my breath too late. I was looking at the chub on the other side of that Olympic-regulation-sized desk, and from his expression you’d have thought he was Popeye and Captain Stoddard was a can of spinach.

“Lunch is served in one hour,” he said. “You and Saint Peter are invited to share Gus’s superb matzo ball soup.”

I waited until the receiver banged—even when he wasn’t ticked off at us, which was mostly always, Stoddard never broke off a conversation without making an angry racket—then got up from my chair. Lyon glanced at the clock. “Where are you going? I have germination records to dictate.”

“The tomatoes can germinate themselves, which is what they do anyway. You’re not fooling anybody with those four hours a day you waste up there. I’ve got some vacation days coming and I’m taking them now. When I get back from Vegas, I’ll visit you in the hoosegow. I may even have Gus whip up a herring with a saw in it.”

“Don’t be absurd. The last time you visited Las Vegas you had to hitchhike back. You pawned your return ticket and lost everything on a hand of stud.”

“It was Texas Hold’em; and I’d sooner work my way back washing dishes in every greasy spoon between here and Reno than press shirts in a prison laundry. I’ve done both, so I’m not just talking through my hat.”

“Nonsense. We have Mr. Stoddard’s word it isn’t coggery.”

I had to lean over my keyboard to look up that one: The man wouldn’t step out of character long enough even to use something simple like deception. “If you were half the detective you think you are, and Wolfe was half the detective you think he is—which makes you a quarter of a detective, and even that only in your own mind—you’d know that the law against lying to a cop don’t work both ways. He’d lie on a gallon of truth serum if he thought he could cogger you into the joint.”

“You know I detest it when you turn a noun into a verb. Sit down, confound it! If it comes to that, I’ll confess and exonerate you into the bargain.”

It just so happens that Lyon is as good as his word, nutty as he is; so I took my seat and blew off the rest of the morning taking down blather from Gardening for Dummies until Gus’s gong and then the doorbell rang, announcing lunch and our guests.

I was disappointed. I’d anticipated a beard you could lose a shoe in, sandals, and a white robe, which was what I would have expected if there was some clerical error and I ever actually stood before the gates to Paradise. Stoddard’s companion could use a shave—could have used it last week, in fact—but it was more stubble than flow, and his rusty sports coat, yellowing collar, grubby jeans, and scuffed brogans slashed at the toes to let the corns breathe would have turned him away from any restaurant in Brooklyn, if not the eye of the needle. He smelled of the can, as well as of the alley behind Skipper Dan’s House of Fish on Day-Old Saturday. Carbon-dating being out of the question, I pegged him as somewhere between fifty and nine hundred and sixty-nine; or was that Methuselah? I’m rusty on the Old Testament. If there was any hope for me at all, it was grounded in the Gospels.

“Okay if I call you Saint?” I asked our distinguished visitor.

He said nothing. He looked as patient as one, I’d say that for him. Stoddard said, “He don’t exactly talk your ear off. All we can get out of him is his name, and it ain’t even that.”

“Saint Peter,” said our guest. Flat vowels: Chicago?

“See?”

Entering the dining room we found Claudius Lyon exactly where anyone who read Archie Goodwin’s accounts of Nero Wolfe’s investigations would expect him at that hour, rooted at the head of the long table with utensils at the ready. Upon our appearance, he did something almost without precedent; although if it were entirely so in Wolfe’s case, he’d never have considered it. He hopped to his feet and inclined his chins in a gesture of respect. “Sir, you are welcome in my home. Please be seated at my right hand.”

In response to the tilt of a puffy palm, Stoddard’s charge took possession of the honored place; gaining his host no points with the captain, who like Wolfe’s Inspector Cramer considered himself the guest of honor at any gathering, even one ostensibly social. Knowing how well the chief of Brooklyn Bunco took disappointment, I hoped the boss wouldn’t slip his trolley the rest of the way and forget his promise to give me a clean slate when the axe came down.

Stoddard seized one of the chairs reserved for the unanointed and stuck a Lucky between his teeth, without lighting it. He chewed a pack a day.

“Since the New York Police Department won’t, allow me to apologize to you for your detainment. Apart from worrying some of our fellow citizens in regard to your safety, you’ve committed no offense.”

“Loitering,” Stoddard growled. “Disturbing the peace.”

“The U.S. Supreme Court has found the charge of loitering unconstitutional under the First Amendment. As to the other, I don’t concede that causing concern regarding one’s welfare belongs to the same category as shouting obscenities in public or playing a radio too loud.”

“Vagrancy, then. He hasn’t a penny on him.”

“Nor do I; nor does the queen of England, or for that matter anyone who depends on credit, which is most of us. Come now, Mr. Stoddard. I suggest you release this man.”

“Even your precious Constitution says I can hold him for forty-eight hours without charging him.”

“Muleheaded.”

“What?” A cigarette got bit through.

Lyon paled, but was spared worse by the arrival of Gus, who ladled out the soup. We dined in silence for a quarter-hour. Even Stoddard, who’d read up on the Wolfe canon in order to lay a snare for his imitator, put up with the master’s rule against discussing business during a meal. When the dishes were cleared away, we returned to the office, where Lyon compounded the insult to the captain by offering the man in his custody the comfort of the orange leather chair facing the desk. I gave the little glob of wax points for chutzpah. Maybe the captain’s new status of client as opposed to mortal enemy had put some lead in his pencil. Stoddard took it, in any case; although it cost him the price of a fresh cigarette to replace the one he’d gnawed to bits. He threw himself into one of the green chairs.

Lyon addressed his companion. “Returning to the subject of our precious Constitution: You’re entitled to an attorney, if you wish, at no cost to you.”

“Saint Peter” said nothing. He didn’t even shake his head.

“If he’d opened his mouth to ask, he’d’ve got one,” was all Stoddard said.

“No doubt you informed him. You must be bored,” he told our honored guest. “In lieu of the distraction of conversation, might I offer you something to read? The Bible, perhaps. I take the liberty of assuming it’s high on your list.”

Nothing again. We got more comment out of Lyon’s blasted tomatoes.

Lyon leaned forward in his seat; and damned if I didn’t see a gleam in those little pig’s eyes. “Forgive me. It never crossed my mind that perhaps you can’t read.”

A tectonic plate moved under the rock that supported greater New York; a snowball formed in hell, a politician told the truth, and “Saint Peter” opened his mouth.

“Sure I can read. Think I’m stupid?”

“By God!” Stoddard plucked out his Lucky and threw it into a corner. “Why didn’t you say something before this?”

I smirked. “ ‘Up till now everything’s been all right.’ ” Facing the captain’s black face, I felt my own grow white. “Sorry. Old joke.”

“I apologize.” Lyon was still addressing the man in the orange chair. “Sometimes you have to prick someone’s vanity to get him to open up. No Bible, then.”

“Anything but.”

At most times, the man seated in the preposterously huge chair behind the preposterously huge desk looked like a little boy sitting in his father’s place on Take Your Child to Work Day. When, however, he sat back and rotated an index finger in one ear, he filled both chair and desk. It meant, as surely as Wolfe’s lips pushing out and pulling back in, that he had something solid to work on at last. He was coaxing oxygen into the tight whorls in his brain to wake up the gray cells.

I’d seen him at that for hours or minutes, and was prepared to suffer any abuse from Stoddard, corseted as he was by his new role as customer, when Lyon removed his finger and wiped it delicately with a green silk handkerchief. To “Saint Peter”: “Forgive me if I ask something personal. Your parents weren’t very religious, were they?”

“That’s putting it mildly.” Now that he’d gone beyond three syllables, I definitely noticed the Chicago accent. “My mother called herself an agnostic, but my father was more direct. ‘Thank God I’m an atheist.’ It was his favorite joke.”

“Then why in God’s name—if you’ll excuse the expression—did they name you Saint Peter?”

“Peter’s the family name. I guess they thought by naming their boy Saint they were putting one over on the devout. I’d have told that to this nimrod, if he’d given me the chance. The minute I gave him my name he thought I was crazy.”

He chuckled then, and drew a dirty cuff across his lips when saliva trickled out. “I sure wasn’t about to give him any satisfaction beyond that. Meanwhile I got three hots and a cot, and all at the expense of the NYPD.”

“So you’re not the man who decides who lets whom in through the gates of Heaven.”

“If there’s anything to it, I guess the man who does will understand.” Saint Peter cut a look at Stoddard. “You might have some explaining to do.”

Lyon frowned at the fuming Stoddard. “You have no grounds for keeping this man in custody. Far from obstructing justice, he’s cooperated with it in every way, including providing it with his true identity.”

The captain’s face worked; then a grin broke loose, like the sun poking its way through storm clouds. He rose from his chair. “You’re right. Thanks again for the feed. Here’s a little something for your next.” He drew a can of oysters from his vest pocket and stuck it across the desk.

Lyon kept his hands under the top. “Thank you, but Gus’s religion prohibits eating or serving shellfish.”

Saint Peter declined the offer of cab fare, explaining as he stood that he was within walking distance of a shelter he enjoyed. By that time Stoddard was long gone, with the evidence against Lyon back in his pocket.

“You were right, Arnie,” Lyon said. “I was naive. Mr. Stoddard tried to rope us after all. I have his ignorance of the Hebrew faith to thank for my salvation. And your counsel, of course. I should have known you’d spot a man’s dishonesty where I could not.”

I wasn’t sure how to take that; being a crook gives you the same advantage over both an honest and a dishonest man, but how a fruitcake thinks is anyone’s guess.

“How’d you know he was on the level and that his name was really Saint Peter?”

“Mr. Stoddard said it best. An insane man knows insanity when he sees it, and when he does not. Clearly the fellow was telling the truth. At a guess, the blasphemy of his christening offered no compunctions to his parents, hence the assumption that they were not believers. Once I asked myself if his name was as reported, the rest was simplicity itself.” He sighed. “To the devious man, like our friend the captain, there is nothing so obscure as the obvious.”

Whereupon he laid aside the weighty tome on his desk and picked up Mary Higgins Clark with a happy little sigh.