Help Wanted, Male


"Help Wanted, Male" is a Nero Wolfe mystery novella by Rex Stout, first published in the August 1945 issue of The American Magazine. It first appeared in book form in the short-story collection Trouble in Triplicate, published by the Viking Press in 1949.

Plot summary

Publisher Ben Jensen pays a visit to Wolfe's office, intent on buying protection for himself after receiving a death threat in the mail.
Wolfe declines the offer, giving Jensen some advice on how to look out for his own safety, and Archie provides him with the name of an agency that does bodyguard work. Jensen had been involved in one of Wolfe's earlier cases, in which an Army captain named Peter Root had offered to sell him classified information. Root was brought before a court martial and sentenced to three years in prison.
The following morning's newspaper carries a report that both Jensen and the bodyguard he hired have been shot and killed; Wolfe denies to Inspector Cramer that he is taking any interest in the case. That day's mail brings a death threat addressed to Wolfe, identical to the one Jensen received. Since the Root case is all that Wolfe and Jensen had in common, Wolfe and Archie track down current information on everyone connected to it, including Root's family and fiancée, Jane Geer. Archie hurries to fill his end of the order before he must leave for a meeting in Washington, D.C. with his superiors in Army Intelligence. He locates Jane and brings her to the brownstone, but they are both surprised to find Jensen's son Emil—an Army major—waiting at the door. Wolfe does not come down to meet them, but instead orders Archie over the in-house telephone to send them away.
While in Washington, Archie notices a help-wanted advertisement in a New York paper, calling for male applicants who are the same height and weight as Wolfe. Sneaking out of his meeting and hurrying back to Manhattan, Archie is surprised to see someone other than Wolfe in the detective's custom-built chair. Wolfe introduces the man as H.H. Hackett, who has responded to the ad and is being paid $100 per day to impersonate him at home and in public. He is using Hackett as a decoy to draw the fire of would-be killers so that he can determine who might want him dead.
Wolfe has determined, from information provided by Army Intelligence, that Root and his parents had no apparent involvement in the murders. He asks Archie to bring Jane in for an interview, with Hackett doubling for him while he observes from the peephole in the office wall. Archie now understands why Wolfe sent her away earlier; he did not want her to see him in person so that she would be fooled by Hackett as a stand-in. Jane and Emil arrive for the appointment together, having developed a close relationship since Archie last saw them. He puts them in the front room and goes to consult with Wolfe about Emil's unexpected presence, but the sound of a gunshot startles everyone.
Rushing into the office, Archie finds that a bullet has been fired through Wolfe's chair and into the wall behind it, apparently from the front room, and that Hackett's ear is nicked. Archie finds an old, recently fired revolver hidden in the front room, and Wolfe reveals himself to the visitors and takes charge. He calls Cramer to inform him about the weapon, which turns out to be the one that killed Jensen and the bodyguard, and pits Jane and Emil against each other in an effort to draw out the killer. However, the case turns in a new direction when he notices a cushion missing from the front room's couch. It is soon found in the bottom drawer of Wolfe's desk; this discovery, along with the fact that one of the guns in Archie's desk has been recently fired, allows him to solve the case and turn the culprit over to Cramer.
The murderer is Hackett, actually Root's father Thomas, bent on revenge against everyone he blames for his son's imprisonment. After killing Jensen and the bodyguard, and sending the death threat to Wolfe, he responded to Wolfe's ad and smuggled the murder weapon inside. During a time when he was alone in the office, he took a cushion from the couch, wrapped it around the gun to muffle the report, and fired a shot through the chair and into the wall. He hid the cushion in the desk and the gun in the front room, and made sure to sit in the chair so that his head would cover the bullet hole. While Jane and Emil were waiting in the front room, he took a gun from Archie's desk, fired into the cushion, and used a pocketknife to cut a gash in his ear before returning the gun. Given one more day, Hackett/Thomas would have been able to kill Wolfe and focus suspicion on Jane and Emil.

Cast of characters

"Help Wanted, Male"

''A Nero Wolfe Mystery'' (A&E Network)

"Help Wanted, Male" was adapted for the second season of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery. Directed by John L'Ecuyer from a teleplay by Sharon Elizabeth Doyle, "Help Wanted, Male" made its debut June 23, 2002, on A&E.
Timothy Hutton is Archie Goodwin; Maury Chaykin is Nero Wolfe. Other members of the cast include Colin Fox, Bill Smitrovich, R.D. Reid, James Tolkan, Richard Waugh, George Plimpton, Robert Bockstael, Steve Cumyn, Kari Matchett, Larry Drake and Randy Butcher.
In addition to original music by Nero Wolfe composer Michael Small, the soundtrack includes music by Alan Moorhouse, Tony Kinsey and Dick Walter.
In North America, A Nero Wolfe Mystery is available on Region 1 DVD from A&E Home Video. The A&E DVD release presents "Help Wanted, Male" in 4:3 pan and scan rather than its aspect ratio for widescreen viewing.
The episode is faithful to the story except for a major change at the end. Instead of Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins leading Thomas Root away and Wolfe asking Emil Jensen to make a donation to the National War Fund instead of paying him, Stebbins escorts Root out while Cramer stays behind in Wolfe's office. When Jensen is about to offer Wolfe payment for finding his father's killer, Cramer grumpily informs Jensen that Wolfe had refused to provide his father with protection after he came to him for help, prompting Jensen to close his checkbook and leave with Jane Geer.