Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 10

by Not Quite Dead Enough

  Five minutes before the time scheduled for the next visitor to arrive, Fritz was to go for the incumbent in the office, tell him Wolfe wanted him to come up to the plant rooms, and escort him there, thus vacating the office for the next one. If one of the victims arrived ahead of time, Fritz was to put him in the front room until the office was ready for him.

  There was nothing wrong with that, and it worked as smooth as silk. Lawson came at 11:13. Tinkham came at 11:32. Fife came at 11:50. Shattuck came at 12:08. Sergeant Bruce came at 12:23. Fritz’s shuttle service worked perfectly, up to a certain point, which I’m coming to.

  As I say, I never felt sillier than I did glued to that panel, watching them come and go. Granted that one of them was a murderer, what the hell did Wolfe expect him to do? Grab the envelope and run? Kill himself with the grenade? Give an encore of his performance the day before with the grenade and the suitcase? For my money, the murderer wouldn’t do any of these things, or anything resembling them, if he had the brains God gave geese.

  He didn’t do any of them, if he was among those present.

  Lawson, first to arrive, left alone in the office by Fritz, stood and looked the place over, approached the desk, cocked his head at the envelope and grenade, sat down, and didn’t move again until Fritz came for him.

  Tinkham showed more interest. He spotted the props immediately. When Fritz left and shut the door, Tinkham turned to look at the door, started to cross to it, changed his mind and returned to the desk, picked up first the grenade, then the envelope, and inspected them. He kept glancing at the door. If he was trying to make up his mind what to do, he never got that far, for he had the envelope in his hand giving it a third inspection, when the door opened and Fritz entered. Tinkham dropped the envelope on the desk, without, as far as I could see, skipping a heartbeat. When Fritz had left with him I went in and arranged things as before and returned to my post.

  Fife was a washout. It didn’t seem possible, but I swear that as far as I could tell he never saw them at all.

  Shattuck was the only one that seemed to notice the suitcase, but he noticed everything. He didn’t touch; he just looked. He went to the desk and looked there; stared at the envelope and grenade. Then he went to my desk and looked there. After that he sort of took in all the surroundings, then did the two desks again. But he didn’t touch a thing.

  I was looking forward to the last and as far as I was concerned least, Sergeant Bruce. I doubt if anything she might have done would have surprised me, from pulling the pin of the grenade and tossing it out the window to opening the suitcase and copping one of my shirts. But actually, I admit she did surprise me. She wasn’t in the office more than twenty seconds all together, after Fritz left and closed the door. She went and got the grenade and the envelope, and, without bothering to give them a look, put them in a drawer of Wolfe’s desk and shut the drawer, and beat it. Out she popped. If I had wanted to stop her I would have had to jump. I heard her going down the hall and the front door closing. I stepped around the corner, and no sergeant. She had skedaddled.

  At that point I gave up entirely. I went to the office, to the phone on my desk, buzzed the plant rooms, and told Wolfe what had happened. Then, still following instructions, I retired to the kitchen. I wasn’t supposed to show up in the office until after they had come down from the plant rooms. Why? As far as I knew, because. Evidently they were in no hurry. I had finished two bananas and a glass of milk before I heard the elevator complaining. After hearing their voices in the hall I gave them time to get in the office and solve the seating problem. Then I joined them.

  It didn’t strike me as an atmosphere of jollity, as I circled around their chairs to reach mine at my desk. I would have been perfectly willing to salute my superior officers, but their attitudes didn’t seem to call for it. None of them was in handcuffs or even had his insignia ripped off, so as far as I could see the booby trap was a turkey. The closest chair to mine was Shattuck’s, and beyond him was Tinkham. Fife was in the big one at the other end of Wolfe’s desk. Lawson was to his right and back of him.

  Wolfe, having got himself comfortably adjusted, sighed clear to the bottom. “Now,” he said in a tone of satisfaction, “we can proceed. I thank you gentlemen again for your patience. I hope you’ll agree with me, when I’ve explained, that it was worth it. It was the only way that occurred to me of learning whether one of you murdered Colonel Ryder, or Miss Bruce did.”

  “Murder?” Fife was scowling at him. “Goodwin told me you didn’t know—”

  “If you please, General.” Wolfe was curt. “This will take all day if you start heckling. What Major Goodwin told you, and Colonel Tinkham and Lieutenant Lawson, was that I wanted to see you at my office, privately, that I was still undecided as to the manner of Colonel Ryder’s death, that I had learned that Miss Bruce was involved on account of a report being prepared by Colonel Ryder which would have meant her ruin, and that I had received a sealed communication from Colonel Ryder, mailed yesterday, which I wished to open in your presence.”

  “But now you say—”

  “General. Please.” Wolfe’s eyes swept the circle. “I can now tell you that I devised an experiment. I arranged for you to arrive here at fifteen-minute intervals, and to be left alone in this office. On the desk where you couldn’t fail to see it was an envelope addressed to me, with Colonel Ryder’s return address, his home address, and the inscription, To be opened at six p.m. Tuesday, August 10th, if no word has been received from me. Incidentally, that envelope was a fake. I had it prepared and mailed last evening.”

  “I wondered about that,” Colonel Tinkham said dryly. “It was postmarked eleven p.m. Ryder had been dead seven hours.”

  “Irrelevant,” Wolfe snapped. “That could have been accounted for in a dozen ways. On the envelope I placed a grenade like the one that killed Colonel Ryder. I asked General Carpenter for it on the phone last evening, and he sent it by messenger on a plane. The experiment was to leave each of you in here alone for ten minutes, with those objects on the desk, and see what would happen. After each of you left, Fritz came in to inspect—especially to learn if the envelope had been tampered with. That may seem a little crude. But consider: consider the state of mind of the murderer. Could he stay in here alone for ten minutes, with that envelope staring him in the face, and do nothing about it? Make no effort whatever to learn what was in it? Impossible. Absolutely impossible!”

  Fife snorted. “I never saw the damn thing. I don’t see it now.” He was regarding Wolfe as anything but a valued associate. “And you had the gall, by God, to put me on your list!”

  “It impresses me,” Tinkham said coldly, “as kindergarten stuff.”

  “Ah, Colonel,” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him, “but it worked!” He wiggled the finger at the desk. “As General Fife remarked, he doesn’t see it now. It’s gone.”

  They all goggled at him. Then, as the implication soaked in, they looked at one another. Currents of startled inquiry, uneasiness, distrust, darted from one pair of eyes to another, here and there, in all directions, crossing, meeting.

  Fife barked at Wolfe, “What the hell are you talking about? What are you insinuating?”

  “Nothing,” Wolfe said quietly. “I’m merely reporting. I know you gentlemen are on edge, but even so you might let me finish. As I said, Fritz entered to look things over after each of you had been in here ten minutes. And all of you passed the test admirably. Lawson, Tinkham, Fife, Shattuck. But there was another. The last to come was Miss Bruce. She too had her allotted ten minutes. But, gentlemen, she remained for only seven of them! The keyhole of the kitchen door commands a view of the hall. After seven minutes Fritz saw Miss Bruce emerge from the office and depart by the front door. He came in here—and both the envelope and the grenade were gone! Why she took the grenade I don’t know, unless for the purpose of hurling it through the window at me.”

  They all glanced at the window, and I did too, to make it unanimous.

  Fife was on his
feet. “I want to use that phone.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “It requires a little discussion, General. For one thing, we can’t afford to make enemies of the police. For another, they are already attending to Miss Bruce. I arranged with Inspector Cramer to post men outside, to follow any of you, including Miss Bruce, who left the house before one o’clock. For still another, General Carpenter phoned me from Washington last evening and gave me some special instructions. As I said, he sent me that grenade. And with it, the instructions in writing. So if you’ll bear with me a little longer—”

  Fife sat down.

  “I do not state,” Wolfe said, “that Miss Bruce murdered Colonel Ryder. She has the appearance of a resourceful and determined woman, but we certainly haven’t enough evidence to charge her with murder. Why she stayed in here seven minutes, instead of seizing the envelope as soon as she saw it and leaving with it, I don’t know. She may have been coolheaded enough to open it and examine the contents, but that doesn’t seem likely, since all it contained was blank sheets of paper. At any rate, we can now start to work on her, and whether her wrongdoing went to the length of murder or not, she’ll pay for whatever she did.” Wolfe frowned. “I admit I don’t like her having that grenade. I didn’t foresee that. If she gets in a corner and kills someone with it—” He shrugged. “Archie, you’d better phone Mr. Cramer and tell him to warn his men—but first, where’s that letter from General Carpenter? Have you got it in your desk?”

  It was just as I opened my mouth to answer him that I realized what he was doing. This was the booby trap.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think you took it. I’ll look.” I pulled a drawer of my desk open. I would have given a month’s pay to be able to watch their faces, but I knew that was Wolfe’s part of it and went on with mine. I shut the drawer and opened another one. “Not here.” I opened a third drawer and closed it.

  Wolfe, leaning back with his arms folded, said testily, “Try mine.”

  I went around to the side of his desk and did so. The middle drawer; the three on the left; the four on the right. I was about to mutter something about trying the files when Wolfe spoke.

  “Confound it, I remember! I put it back in the suitcase. Get it.”

  I returned to my desk. Just as my fingers were reaching for the catches of the suitcase Wolfe’s voice snapped like a whip: “Mr. Shattuck! What’s the matter?”

  “Matter? Nothing,” Shattuck’s reply came, but it wasn’t much like his voice.

  I wheeled to look at him. His hands were grasping the arms of his chair, his jaw was clamped, and his eyes glittered with what seemed to be, from my distance, half fear and half fight.

  “It’s adrenaline,” Wolfe told him. “You can’t control it. Perhaps you would have done better if you were a brave man, but obviously you’re a coward.” He reached down and pulled a drawer open, and his hand came up holding the grenade. “See, here it is. Just to reassure you. Calm yourself. Miss Bruce didn’t set a trap with it in one of the drawers, or in that suitcase, as you did yesterday in Colonel Ryder’s suitcase.” He put the grenade on his desk.

  “Good God,” Fife said.

  Lawson got up and stood there in front of his chair, stiff and erect as at attention.

  Tinkham, who had been staring at Wolfe, transferred the stare to Shattuck, and stroked his mustache.

  Shattuck neither moved nor spoke. He hadn’t recovered control, and he was waiting till he did. He may not have been brave, but he had a good set of brakes.

  Wolfe rose to his feet. “General,” he said to Fife, “I’m afraid you’re out of this. Mr. Shattuck is not in the Army, so it’s for the civil authorities after all. I want him where he’ll feel free to talk, so he and I are going for a little ride in my car. Major Goodwin will drive us. If you gentlemen are thirsty, Fritz will serve you.” He turned. “Mr. Shattuck. You can tell me to go to the devil. You can run to your lawyers. You can, for the moment, do whatever you please. But I strongly advise you, if you know me at all, and from what you said yesterday you seem to have heard my name, to accept my invitation to talk it over with me.”

  Chapter 7

  To Van Cortlandt Park,” Wolfe directed me from the rear seat.

  If and when I write a book called Interesting Trips I Have Taken, that one will be the first on the list.

  I was behind the wheel. I was violating Regulations by having three buttons on my jacket unfastened, for quick and easy access to the gun in my shoulder holster. That was on my own initiative. John Bell Shattuck was in front beside me, and had not been frisked. In the back was Wolfe, alone, making a more comical picture than usual, for the hand that was not gripping the strap at the side was gripping something else: the grenade. Whether he had brought it along for protection, or just to get it out of the house, I didn’t know; but he sure was hanging on to it. And why Van Cortlandt Park? He had never been anywhere near the place.

  I headed for the 47th Street entrance to the West Side Highway.

  “It was sensible for you to come along without protest, Mr. Shattuck,” Wolfe rumbled.

  “I’m a sensible man,” Shattuck said. Apparently he was in running order again. There was no adrenaline in his voice. He had twisted around on the seat to be able to face Wolfe. “Whatever you’re up to—I don’t know what you’re driving at. To accuse me of killing Harold Ryder was absolutely ridiculous, and you couldn’t possibly have been serious. But you said it before four witnesses. I came with you—away from them—because I’m willing to give you a chance to explain—if you can. But it will have to be damned good.”

  “I’ll make it as good as I can,” Wolfe told him. We crossed the 42nd Street car tracks. “Archie. Go slower.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll try to keep to the essentials,” Wolfe said. “If you want a point elaborated, say so. First, I confess that most of what I told you and the others was a pack of lies.”

  “Ah,” Shattuck said. “But you haul me off alone to admit it. I expect you to justify that. Let’s hear you.”

  “I’ll specify—” Wolfe grunted as we hit a little bump.“—a few of the lies. I was not undecided as to the manner of Colonel Ryder’s death. One look at the remains of his suitcase told the story—by the way, I have it in my office. I got no letter of instructions from General Carpenter, though I did talk with him on the phone. He’s coming to New York this afternoon and will dine with me this evening. But most of the lies concerned Miss Bruce. Practically everything I said about her was untrue. She was under no suspicion. Colonel Ryder was preparing no report that could have injured her. I had not arranged with the police to follow her when she left my house. The truth is, Miss Bruce is a confidential assistant of General Carpenter, reporting directly to him. He told me last evening that she’s worth any two men on his staff. I doubt that, but she did show some intelligence about the suitcase. Seeing it only from a distance of several feet, from the door of the anteroom, she saw the significance of its condition.”

  “What the devil was the significance of its condition?” Shattuck demanded.

  “Now, now,” Wolfe reproached him. “I beg you, none of those transparent implications of innocence. Miss Bruce was also clever enough to get the suitcase out of there, to show to General Carpenter. He had sent her to New York because of indications that someone in that unit was involved in the suspected transactions regarding industrial secrets. It was she who typed that anonymous letter to you—incidentally, you shouldn’t have let it scare you like that. No one had the slightest suspicion of you. The same letter was sent to some thirty people—key people in legislative and administrative positions. They were merely fishing. It was different with Colonel Ryder. There was no proof, but he was under observation, and that’s why Miss Bruce was assigned to his office from Washington. He may have suspected something of the sort, and that was a factor in his decision to go to General Carpenter and make a clean breast of it. Another—”

  “By God!” Shattuck cut in. “That’s dirty!
That’s lousy! If you want to make damn fool accusations about me, and stand the consequences, that’s all right, I’m here, and I can take care of myself, and I will. But Harold’s dead. To start a dirty lie like that about a dead man—”

  “Stop it,” Wolfe said curtly. “You’ll have me thinking you’re not only a coward but a fool. To try to impress me with that rubbish! You know quite well why you came and got in this car with me: to find out how much I know. Then let me talk. Speak only if you want to say something. Where was I? Oh, Miss Bruce. That will do for her. I may mention that Lieutenant Lawson is also on special assignment from General Carpenter, as a sort of errand boy for Miss Bruce. In that capacity he may possibly be satisfactory. I wouldn’t be telling you these things, Army secrets in a way, if there were any chance of your passing them on. But there’s no risk, since in an hour from now, less than that I should say, you won’t be alive.”

  Shattuck stared at him, speechless.

  We were rolling along the West Side Highway. I was myself sufficiently startled to look aside at Shattuck, and returned to my driving just in time to jerk away from kissing the curb.

  “Are you crazy?” Shattuck found his voice to ask.

  “No, sir,” Wolfe said. “I did state an overwhelming probability as a certainty. We all do that.”

  “I won’t be alive? An hour from now?” Shattuck laughed, and it wasn’t very hollow at that. “This is incredible. I suppose you’re going to threaten to blow me to pieces with that grenade unless I sign a confession to anything you tell me to. Absolutely unbelievable!”

  “Not like that. The grenade, yes. I brought it along for you to kill yourself with.”

  “By God—you are crazy!”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Don’t shout at me. Keep your wits. You’re going to need them. Archie, where are you going?”

  “Leaving the highway,” I told him, “for the park entrance. Then what?”