The Nero Wolfe fan community

Oh yes, I'm totally onboard with the idea of him overcompensating for his own relief, and how it relates to his own attempts at control. Seems to me that's also what Archie does in those scenes throughout the corpus I so adore where Wolfe gets attacked--those events trigger Archie to show vulnerable emotion in some way, so of course he needs to button that relief right up afterward with a needling remark. Of course, he's usually more obviously teasing in those cases, whereas in this book Wolfe goes overboard into actively aggressive--but then, I'd say Wolfe has more (or at least, more obvious) control issues.