Art for Art's Sake

In an ordinary New York rooming house, Bob Chidden confronts a week’s worth of accumulated trash. Ordered by his forceful sister Maria, he hauls overflowing wastebaskets from ten rented rooms down the cellar steps, feeding their contents directly into the furnace. Only after the refuse is destroyed does he return the empty baskets to the boarders, stopping at the third-floor front door of a tenant named Mr. Glover.

What begins with a gloomy caretaker and a simmering pot of stew establishes the physical environment for an American crime story. The systematic disposal of ten rooms' worth of personal debris provides a practical mechanism for a mystery confined within a standard domestic residence.

Published during the rise of Golden Age detective fiction, this short story by Rex Stout demonstrates the early mechanics of the twentieth-century mystery genre. It precedes the established routines of his Nero Wolfe series, anchoring its narrative in the concrete, daily labor of New York.