Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 10

by Not Quite Dead Enough

  Wolfe frowned and sighed again. “Archie. Don’t badger me. Confound it, I’m going to have to sit here and work, and I don’t like to work after dinner. You’re an Army officer, with the allegiances that involves, and this affair is too hot for you. I tell you, for instance, that Colonel Ryder was murdered, and I’m going to get the murderer. See where that puts you? What if one of your superior officers asks you a leading question? What if he orders you to make a report? As for Miss Bruce, I’m going to use her. I’m going to use Lawson. I’m going to use you. But right now, let me alone. Read a book. Look at pictures. Go to a movie.”

  His saying he was going to work meant he was going to sit with his eyes shut and heave a sigh three times an hour, and since if he got any bright ideas he was going to keep them to himself anyhow, I decided to make myself scarce. Also I had an outdoor errand, putting the car in the garage. I departed, performed the errand, and went for a walk. In the dim-out a late evening walk wasn’t what it used to be, but since I was in no mood for pleasure, that was unimportant. Somewhere in the Fifties I resolved to make another stab at getting an overseas assignment. At home here, working in a uniform for Army G2 would have been okay, and working in my own clothes for Nero Wolfe would have been tolerable, but it seemed likely that trying to combine the two would sooner or later deprive me of the right to vote and then I could never run for President.

  When I got back to the house on 35th Street, some time after eleven, because I was preoccupied with the future instead of the immediate present I wasn’t aware of the presence of a taxicab discharging a passenger until the passenger crossed the sidewalk and mounted the stoop that was my own destination. By the time I had mounted the eight steps to his level he had his finger on the bell button. He heard me, and his head pivoted, and I recognized John Bell Shattuck.

  “Allow me,” I said, getting between him and the door. I inserted the key and turned it.

  “Oh.” He was peering at me in the dim light. “Major Goodwin. I’m seeing Mr. Wolfe.”

  “Does he know it?”

  “Yes—I phoned him—”

  “Okay.” I let him in and closed the door. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  Wolfe’s bellow came rolling through the open door to the office. “Archie! Bring him in!”

  “Follow the sound waves,” I told Shattuck. Which he did. I entered after him and crossed to my desk.

  “You made a quick trip, sir,” Wolfe rumbled. “Sit down. That chair’s the best.”

  Shattuck, in dinner clothes with his tie off center and a spot of something on his shirt front, looked a little blowsy. He opened his mouth, then glanced at me and shut it, looked at Wolfe and opened it again.

  “General Fife phoned me about Colonel Ryder. I was at that dinner and had to make a speech. I got away as soon as I could and phoned you.” He glanced at me again. “If you’ll excuse me, Major Goodwin, I think it would be better—”

  I had crossed to my desk promptly and sat down because I was fully expecting Wolfe to shoo me out, and I wanted to register my opinion of his attitude in advance. But Shattuck put another face on it. He didn’t merely suggest chasing me out, which Wolfe would have resented on principle, he tried to chase me himself without consulting Wolfe at all, which was intolerable.

  “Major Goodwin,” Wolfe told him, “is assigned here officially, serving me in a confidential capacity. Why, are you going to tell me something you don’t want the Army to know?”

  “Certainly not.” Shattuck bristled. “I don’t know anything I wouldn’t want the Army to know.”

  “You don’t?” Wolfe’s brows went up. “Good heavens, I do. There are hundreds of things I wouldn’t want anyone to know. You can’t have as clean a slate as that, Mr. Shattuck, surely. But you want to tell me something about Colonel Ryder?”

  “Not tell you. Ask you. Fife told me you were investigating and would report to him tomorrow. Have you got anywhere?”

  “Well—some facts appear to be established. You remember that grenade, that pink thing, Colonel Ryder put in his desk drawer this morning—delivered to him by Major Goodwin. It exploded and killed Colonel Ryder. He must have removed it from the drawer, because there is evidence that it was on the desk top, or above it when it exploded. Also there are fragments of it all over the room.”

  I report what Wolfe said because I heard it and it registered somewhere in my mind but certainly not in the front of it. The front was occupied by something being registered not by hearing but by sight. My eye had just caught it. Behind Wolfe and off to the right—my right as I sat—was a picture on the wall, a painting on glass of the Washington Monument. (The picture, incidentally, was camouflage; it was actually a specially constructed cover for a panel through which you could view the office, practically all of it, from an alcove at the end of the hall next to the kitchen.) Just beyond the picture was a tier of shallow shelves holding various odds and ends, including mementos of cases we had worked on.

  What had caught my eye was an object on the fourth shelf from the top that hadn’t been there before, and to call it odd would have been putting it mildly, since it was a memento of the case then in progress and still unresolved. It was the grenade that had exploded and killed Ryder, standing there on its base, just as it had formerly stood on my chest of drawers upstairs.

  Of course that was merely the first startling idea that popped into my mind when my eye hit it. But the idea that instantly took its place was startling enough—the realization that it was another grenade exactly like the one Wolfe had ordered me to remove from the premises. I was positive it hadn’t been there when I left two hours previously.

  I may have been shocked into staring at it for two seconds, but no longer, knowing as I did that staring at other people’s property wasn’t polite. Apparently neither Wolfe nor Shattuck was aware that I was experiencing a major sensation, for they went right on talking. As I say, I heard them.

  Shattuck was saying, “How and why did it explode? Have you reached any conclusions?”

  “No,” Wolfe said shortly. “It will be reported in the press as an accident, with no conjecture as to how it happened. General Fife says the safety pin on that grenade is jolt-proof, but expert opinions are by no means infallible. As for suicide, no mechanical difficulties certainly; he could simply have held the thing in his hand and pulled out the pin; but he would have had to want to. Did he? You might know about that; you were his son’s godfather; you called him Harold; did he want to die?”

  Shattuck’s face twitched. After a moment he gulped. But his voice was clear and firm: “If he did I certainly didn’t know it. The only thing is, his son had been killed. But a well man with a healthy mind can take a thing like that without committing suicide, and Harold Ryder was well and his mind was healthy. I hadn’t seen a great deal of him lately, but I can say that.”

  Wolfe nodded. “Then the other alternative—that someone killed him. Since the grenade was used, it had to be procured from the desk drawer, presumably by one of us who saw Colonel Ryder put it there this morning. Six of us. That makes it a bit touchy.”

  “It sure does,” Shattuck said grimly. “That’s one reason I’m here. Got it from the drawer and then what?”

  “I don’t know. At that point the minutiae enter—entrances and exits, presences and absences. Opened the door, possibly, either door, pulled the pin, and tossed it in.” Wolfe regarded him a moment inquiringly. “I take it, Mr. Shattuck, that this conversation is in confidence?”

  “Of course it is. Entirely.”

  “Then I may say, tentatively, that a seventh person seems to be involved. Miss Bruce. Colonel Ryder’s secretary.”

  “You mean that WAC in his anteroom?”

  “Yes. I’m not prepared to give details, but it appears that Colonel Ryder had acquired certain information and had either drawn up a report or was getting ready to, and the result would have been disastrous for her.”

  Shattuck was frowning. “I don’t like that.”

 
“Indeed. You don’t like it?”

  “I mean I don’t—” Shattuck stopped. The frown deepened. “I mean this,” he said, in a harsh determined tone. “Since this is in confidence. I suspected, rightly or wrongly, that details regarding Captain Cross’s death were being deliberately concealed and no real investigation was being made. I was satisfied on that score when I learned that you were handling it. You may ask then why am I not satisfied if you are in charge of the inquiry into Ryder’s death? I am. But you may yourself be—misled. With all your talents, you may be off on a false scent. That’s why I say I don’t like that girl being dragged into it. I don’t know her, know nothing about her, but it looks like a trick.”

  “Possibly,” Wolfe conceded. “Have you any evidence that it is?”

  “No.”

  “About those six people? Eliminate those here present, by courtesy. Those three people? Can you tell me anything about them?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m afraid we won’t make any progress tonight.” Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall. He put his hands on the edge of the desk and pushed his chair back. “It’s midnight. I assure you, sir, if tricks are being played on me I’m apt to find it out and return the compliment.” He got to his feet. “I may have something more concrete for you by tomorrow. Say by tomorrow noon. Would it be convenient for you to drop in here at twelve noon? If I do have anything, I wouldn’t care to announce it on the telephone.”

  “I think I can make it,” Shattuck said, also standing. “I will make it. I have a reservation on the three o’clock plane for Washington.”

  “Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I escorted the visitor to the front and let him out, closed the door and shot the night bolt, and returned to the office. I had supposed Wolfe was prepared to call it a day and go up to bed, but to my surprise he was back in his chair, and apparently, from the arrangement of his face, his mind was working.

  I remarked rudely, “So you’re going to use Shattuck too. For what? Is he it?”

  “Archie. Be quiet.”

  “Yes, sir. Or is he Miss Bruce’s principal and you’re going to close the deal?”

  No reply.

  I went to the shelf and got the grenade, tossed it in the air, and caught it. I saw him shudder. That was something. “This,” I said, “is Army property. So am I, as you remind me every hour on the hour. I don’t ask where you got it, since you told me to be quiet. But I’ll keep it in my room and return it to the Army in the morning.”

  “Confound you! Give me that thing.”

  “No, sir. I mean it. If I’ve got allegiances, as you say I have, I take this grenade to General Fife first thing in the morning, and I tell him—”

  “Shut up!”

  I stood and glared at him.

  He glared back, as if something was almost more than he could bear, and he would leave it to me what.

  Finally he said, “Archie. I submit to circumstances. So should you. And I’ll make a concession to you. For instance, about that suitcase. Its metal frame is bent outward, in all directions. How could an explosion from anywhere on the outside of the suitcase, at whatever distance, near or far, bend its frame outward? It couldn’t. Therefore the grenade was inside the suitcase when it exploded. The innumerable holes and tears in the leather made by the fragments confirm that. They are from the inside out.”

  I put the grenade on his desk.

  “Therefore,” he went on, “Colonel Ryder was murdered. The grenade couldn’t possibly have exploded inside the suitcase by accident. Suicide, no. The man was not an idiot. He did not take the grenade from the desk drawer to kill himself with it, put it in the suitcase, and hold the lid open just enough to permit him to insert his hand to pull out the safety pin. That’s the only way he could have done it, because the frame of the lid was bent outward too. Not suicide. Only one conclusion is tenable. It was a booby trap.”

  He picked up the grenade and indicated the thick end of the pin. “You see that notch. I put the grenade in the suitcase, attach one end of a piece of string—even a narrow strip torn from a handkerchief would do—under that notch on the pin, pull the lid nearly shut, giving myself just room enough to work, attach the other end of the string to the lining of the lid at a front corner—probably with an office pin right there on the desk, a handy place to work—and close the lid. Two minutes would do it—not more than three. Whenever and wherever Colonel Ryder opened the suitcase, he would die. Since the lid was closed when the grenade exploded, probably he jerked the lid open to put something in and immediately snapped it shut again, without noticing the string. Of course, even if he had noticed it, that wouldn’t have helped matters any.”

  I was considering the matter. When he stopped I nodded. “Okay,” I agreed. “I’m right behind you. Next. Did Sergeant Bruce take it because she—”

  “No,” he said positively. He put the grenade in a drawer of his desk. “That’s all.”

  “It’s not even a start,” I snorted.

  “It’s all for tonight.” He stood up. “Come to my room at eight in the morning, when Fritz brings my breakfast. With your notebook. I’ll have some instructions for you. It will be a busy day. We’re going to set a booby trap—somewhat more complicated than that one.”

  Chapter 6

  At 10:55 Tuesday morning I sat on a corner of my desk in Nero Wolfe’s office, surveying the scene and the props. I had done the arranging myself, following instructions, but I had about as much idea what was going on as if I had been blindfolded at the bottom of a well.

  Wolfe had been correct in one respect. At least so far it had been a busy day—for me. After an early breakfast I had gone to his room and been told what to do—not why or what for, just what. Then I had gone to Duncan Street and followed the program, without much time to spare, for General Fife didn’t show up at his office until nearly ten o’clock. Returning home after I got through with him, I had arranged the props.

  Not that they were elaborate or required much arranging; only three items, one on my desk and two on Wolfe’s. One of the latter was a large envelope that had arrived in the morning mail. The address, to Nero Wolfe, was typed, and also typed was a line at the lower left-hand corner: To be opened at six p.m. Tuesday, August 10th, if no word has been received from me.

  In the upper left-hand corner was the return:

  Colonel Harold Ryder

  633 Candlewood Street

  New York City

  The envelope, which, from the feel of it, contained several sheets of paper, was firmly sealed; hadn’t been opened. It was on top of Wolfe’s desk, a little to the right of the center, under a paperweight. The paperweight was the second item. It was the grenade, the twin of the one that killed Ryder.

  And in the typing on the envelope the c was below the line, and the a was off to the left. It had been typed on the same machine as the poem Sergeant Bruce liked and the anonymous letter to Shattuck.

  The item on my desk was a suitcase which belonged to me, my smallest one, a tan cowhide number that I used for short trips. The instructions had been to pack something in it—shirts, a few books, anything—and park it on my desk, and there it was.

  Apparently that was the booby trap: the envelope, the grenade, and the suitcase. Whom it was supposed to catch, or how or when or why, I hadn’t the faintest idea. In view of the further instructions I had received, it struck me as about the feeblest and foolishest effort to bait a murderer that the mind of man had ever conceived. I relieved my emotions by making a few audible remarks that I could have picked up in barracks if I had ever been in barracks, left the scene and went up three flights to the roof, found Wolfe in the potting-room arranging sphagnum, and told him, “All set.”

  He inquired without interrupting his labors, “The articles in the office?”

  “Yep.”

  “You asked them to be punctual?”

  “I did. Lawson at 11:15, Tinkham at 11:30, Fife at 11:45. You invited Shattuck and Bruce yourself.” />
  “Fritz? The panel?”

  “I said,” I told him icily, “all set. For what, God knows.”

  “Now Archie,” he murmured, pulling moss apart. “It’s barely possible that I’m nervous. This thing is ticklish. If it doesn’t work we may never get him. By the way—get Mr. Cramer on the phone.”

  When I did so, using the phone there on the bench, Wolfe put on a show. After telling me he was nervous because it was so ticklish, he bulled it like this with Cramer:

  “Good morning, sir. About that affair downtown. I promised to phone you my opinion today. It was premeditated murder. That’s all I can tell you now, but developments may be expected shortly. No, sir, you will do nothing of the sort. You’ll only be making a fool of yourself. How can you, until I’ve explained it to you? If you come here now, you will not be admitted. I expect to phone you later in the day to tell you who the murderer is and where to go for him. Certainly not! No, sir.”

  He replaced the receiver. “Pfui,” he muttered, and went back to the sphagnum.

  “Cramer will be a little petulant if it doesn’t work,” I observed.

  His shoulders lifted, just perceptibly, and dropped again. “Now it will have to work. What time is it?”

  “Eight after eleven.”

  “Get down to the alcove. Lieutenant Lawson might be early.”

  I departed.

  I can’t remember that I ever felt sillier than I did during the hour that followed. The operation was simple. I was to station myself in the alcove at the end of the hall, by the panel which permitted a view of the office. As each visitor arrived, Fritz was to tell him that Wolfe would be down in ten minutes, and escort him to the office and close the office door. I was to observe his actions while he waited in the office. I was to do nothing about it unless he monkeyed with one or more of the props. If he merely looked at them, picked them up and put them down again, okay; if he did something more drastic, I was to report to Wolfe on the phone in the kitchen. Otherwise I stayed put.