Nero Wolfe and The Orphan Train

Описание: Nero Wolfe and The Orphan Train | A Nero Wolfe Classic

When orphaned children sent west on "charity trains" begin disappearing into the American heartland, a fired nurse with $800 and a terrible suspicion turns to the only detective brilliant enough—and stubborn enough—to prove that America's most respected charitable institution is selling children for profit.
Ruth Holloway was a nurse at the Manhattan Children's Aid Society, helping coordinate the "orphan trains" that took abandoned children from crowded city institutions to promising new lives with farm families in the West. It was supposed to be charitable work. It was supposed to save lives.
But Ruth noticed something wrong.
Children sent to specific families never arrived. Placement addresses didn't exist. Follow-up letters went unanswered. And when a twelve-year-old boy named Timothy Marsh—who was supposed to be adopted by a loving Kansas family—turned up dead on a farm two hundred miles away, worked like an adult and killed by faulty equipment, Ruth's suspicions crystallized into certainty: children were being trafficked under the cover of charitable placement.
When she raised her concerns, she was told she was overreacting. When she persisted, she was fired. When she kept investigating, someone tried to run her down with a car. And when she received a typewritten threat—"Stop asking questions or you'll end up like the children—lost and forgotten"—she realized she was confronting something far more dangerous than bureaucratic incompetence.
With nowhere else to turn, Ruth brings her evidence to Nero Wolfe: the eccentric, brilliant detective who works from his fortified brownstone on West 35th Street, protected by bulletproof windows, reinforced doors, and six highly trained guard dogs. Wolfe doesn't like cases involving children. He doesn't like confronting respected institutions. And he especially doesn't like working for $800 when the investigation will cost five times that.
But when Archie Goodwin—Wolfe's sharp-tongued assistant—lays out the evidence, even Wolfe can't deny the pattern: children selected for their youth and health, shipped west with falsified paperwork, and disappearing into a network of farms, factories, and households that pay cash for child labor and ask no questions about where the children came from.
As Wolfe and Archie dig deeper, they uncover a conspiracy that reaches from Manhattan to Kansas City, from charitable organizations to private placement agents, from well-meaning escorts to ruthless traffickers. At the center: Lawrence Kittredge, a placement coordinator who receives children from New York and sells them to the highest bidder, and Jasper Lowell, the Aid Society's logistics chief who selects which children to traffic and ensures uncomfortable questions never get asked.

Disclaimer:

This is a fan-made storytelling video inspired by the world of Nero Wolfe, the legendary detective created by The Legend itself, Mr.Rex Stout. I don’t own the characters, settings, or any rights related to the Nero Wolfe universe—all credit goes to the original author and rights holders. This video was created purely out of appreciation for the classic detective fiction and to share that love with fellow fans.

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