He hurls yellow-feathered darts at a poker-dart board that Fritz hangs in the office from 3:45 to 4 p.m. Archie had joined in at first, but quit when he found he had lost nearly $100 to Wolfe in the first two months.

Nero Wolfe is approached by Anthony Perry, president of the Seaboard Products Corporation, who is concerned that one of his employees is being unjustly accused of theft.

Perry's meeting with Archie Goodwin is interrupted by Harlan Scovil, who has recently arrived in New York City from Wyoming and is one of a group that has a later appointment with Wolfe.

Before Archie can attend to Scovil, he is summoned to Perry's offices, where Muir—motivated by jealousy and spite after Clara rejected his advances—is threatening to call the police.

Archie's preliminary investigations turn up little, and he arrives back to the brownstone to learn that Scovil has left, summoned away by a telephone call.

Clara wishes to hire Wolfe to recover a sum of money owed to the group by the Marquis of Clivers, a British nobleman in America on confidential government business.

Years ago, the group (or in the case of Clara, her father) were a Wild West posse called "The Rubber Band", and they saved the future Marquis from a lynching.

Inspector Cramer, Police Commissioner Hombert and District Attorney Skinner arrive at the brownstone and demand that Wolfe share what he has learned about the case.

Coleman staged the phone call that purported to record Walsh's death with the use of a rubber band to simulate a gunshot, thus giving himself an alibi.

The Rubber Band was adapted for a series of Nero Wolfe films produced by the Italian television network RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana).

The series of black-and-white telemovies stars Tino Buazzelli (Nero Wolfe), Paolo Ferrari (Archie Goodwin), Pupo De Luca (Fritz Brenner), Renzo Palmer (Inspector Cramer), Roberto Pistone (Saul Panzer), Mario Righetti (Orrie Cather) and Gianfranco Varetto (Fred Durkin).

Other members of the cast of Il patto dei sei include Vittorio Sanipoli (Anthony Perry), Augusto Mastrantoni (Harlan Scoville), Carmen Scarpitta (Clara Fox), Cristina Mascitelli (Hilda Lindquist), Loris Gafforio (Mike Walsh), Sergio Reggi (Sergente Stebbins), Enrico Lazzareschi (Francis Horrocks) and Gastone Bartolucci (Lord Clivers).

Set in 1959 in Rome, where Wolfe and Archie reside after leaving the United States, the series was produced by Casanova Multimedia and Rai Fiction and directed by Riccardo Donna.