- [Feigning a nervous breakdown]
- Nero Wolfe: You're not going to cut me! They're coming in hordes! I see them on chariots with spiked wheels, waving insolent banners of inflation! Oh! Archie! They're pelting me with worthless coins!
- [Wolfe fakes a nervous breakdown for Dr. Vollmer]
- Nero Wolfe: Do you want to pay two dollars a pound for butter? Fifty cents for shoestrings? A dollar for a bottle of beer? Hmph. Well? Confound it, answer me!
- Archie: I don't know if it's the willies or what, but as you can see -
- Nero Wolfe: Just because I ask you to lend me five dollars until the beginning of the next war, does not mean that I'm a frugal person.
- Dr. Vollmer: Who wrote this script for him?
- Archie: It's been like this ever since I brought him home.
- Dr. Vollmer: He's been out of the house?
- Nero Wolfe: Archie tells me that you're masquerading as a doctor. Bah! They'll take your clothes off too! Oh, yes, they'll examine every inch of your skin, and they'll find the mark. The one that entitles you to a discount.
- [Wolfe pretends to have lost his mind]
- Nero Wolfe: Aren't you a physician? Don't you know a nervous breakdown when you see one?
- Dr. Vollmer: Yes. Yes, I do.
- Nero Wolfe: Well, then, what's the matter with it?
- Dr. Vollmer: It doesn't seem, um, typical.
- Nero Wolfe: That's a faulty observation! That's a defect in your training! Specifically, it's a persecution complex, you idiot!
- Dr. Vollmer: And who's been doing the persecuting?