by Rex Stout
At five o’clock I called up all my reserves and told a colonel, “Looky. Don’t you think, sir, I’ve done all I can here? Would it not be advisable for me to return to my post in New York?”
“Well.” He lifted his chin to consider. “I’ll ask Major Zabreskie. He will of course have to consult Colonel Shawn. It will have to go through-when did you get here?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“Whom did you see first on arrival?”
“General Carpenter.”
“Oh. The devil.” He looked worried. “Then it will have to go to him, and he’s tied up. I’ll tell you what we’d better do.”
He told me what we’d better do. I listened attentively, but it didn’t register.
Doomed was no word for it. I was sunk for the duration, possibly for life. I told him there was no great rush, it could wait till morning. I would ask Major Zabreskie myself, and managed to break away from him. I got into a corridor, made it to the ground floor, used all my faculties, and succeeded in breaking through to the open air. My trained mind and years of experience as a detective got me onto the right bus. Five minutes at the hotel were enough to get my bag and pay my bill, and I shared a taxi to the airport and bought a ticket to New York. Eating could wait. But it didn’t. I did. There was no room on either the six-thirty or the seven-thirty, so, with both appetite and time, I tried four kinds of sandwiches and found them all edible. Finally I got a seat on the eight-thirty plane, and when it landed at La Guardia Field an hour and a half later I began to feel safe. Surely I could elude them in the throngs of the great metropolis. Actually I was offering ten to one that by morning everybody at the Pentagon would have forgotten that I had been there.
Arriving at Wolfe’s house on Thirty-fifth Street a little before eleven, I didn’t get out my key because I knew the door would be bolted and I would need help. I gave the button three short pushes as usual, and in a moment there were footsteps, and the curtain was pulled aside, and Fritz was peering at me through the glass panel. Satisfied, he let me in and greeted me with a tone and expression indicating that he was pleased to see me. I saw Wolfe was in the office, since the door to it was open and the light shining through, so I breezed down the hall and on in.
“I am a fug-” I began, and stopped. Wolfe’s chair behind his desk, his own chair and no one else’s under any circumstances, was occupied by the appropriate mass of matter in comparatively human shape, in other words by a big fat man, but it wasn’t Nero Wolfe. I had never seen him before.
V
Fritz, who had stayed to bolt the door, came at me from behind, talking. The occupant of the chair neither moved nor spoke, but merely leered at me. I would have called it a leer. I became aware that Fritz was telling me that Mr. Wolfe was up in his room.
The specimen in the chair said in a husky croak, “I suppose you’re Goodwin. Archie. Have a good trip?”
I stared at him. In a way I wished I was back at the Pentagon, and in another way I wished I had come sooner.
He said, “Fritz, bring me another highball.”
Fritz said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “Have a good trip, Archie?”
That was enough of that. I marched out to the hall and up a flight, went to Wolfe’s door and tapped on it, and called, “Archie!” Wolfe’s voice told me to come in, and I entered.
He was seated in his number-two chair, under the light, reading a book. He was fully dressed, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he had lost his mind.
I did not intend to give him the satisfaction of sitting there smirking and enjoying fireworks. “Well,” I said casually, “I got back. If you’re sleepy we can wait till morning for conversation.”
“I’m not sleepy.” He closed the book with a finger inserted at his page. “Are you going to Europe?”
“You know damn well I’m not.” I sat down. “We can discuss that at some future date when I’m out of the Army. It’s a relief to find you all alive and well around here. It’s very interesting down in Washington. Everybody on their toes.”
“No doubt. Did you stop in the office downstairs?”
“I did. So you put that ad in the Star yourself. How do you pay him, cash every day? Did you figure out the deductions for income tax and social security? I sat down at my desk and began to report to him. I thought it was you. Until he ordered Fritz to bring him a highball, and I know you hate highballs. Deduction. It reminds me of the time your daughter from Yugoslavia showed up and got us in a mess. Now your twin. At a century per diem it will amount to thirty-six thousand, five hundred-”
“Archie. Shut up.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I go down and chat with him?”
Wolfe put the book down and shifted in his chair with the routine grunts. When the new equilibrium was established he said, “You will find details about him on a slip of paper in the drawer of your desk. He is a retired architect named H. H. Hackett, out of funds, and an unsurpassed nincompoop with the manners of a wart hog. I chose him, from those answering the advertisement, because his appearance and build were the most suitable and he is sufficiently an ass to be willing to risk his life for a hundred dollars a day.”
“If he keeps on calling me Archie the risk will become-”
“If you please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. “Do you think the idea of him sitting there in my chair is agreeable to me? He may be dead tomorrow or the next day. I told him that. This afternoon he went to Mr. Ditson’s place in a taxicab to look at orchids, and came back ostentatiously carrying two plants. Tomorrow afternoon you will drive him somewhere and bring him back, and again in the evening. Dressed for the street, wearing my hat and lightweight coat, carrying my stick, he would deceive anyone except you.”
I offered a contribution, deadpan. “I know a young lady, an actress, who would do a swell job of make-up on him if-”
“Archie.” His tone was sharp. “Do you think I enjoy this idiotic horseplay?”
“No, sir. But why couldn’t you just stay in the house? You do anyway. I’ve known you to not stick your nose out for a month. And be careful who gets in. Until…”
“Until what?”
“Until the bird that killed Jensen is caught.”
“Bah.” He glared at me. “By whom? By Mr. Cramer? What do you suppose he is doing now? Pfui. Major Jensen, Mr. Jensen’s son, arriving home on leave from Europe five days ago, learned that during his absence his father had sued his mother for divorce. The father and son quarreled, which was not unique. But Mr. Cramer has a hundred men trying to collect evidence that will convict Major Jensen of killing his father! Utterly intolerable asininity. For what motive could Major Jensen have for killing me, or threatening to?”
“Well, now.” My eyebrows were up. “I wouldn’t just toss it in the wastebasket. What if the major figured that sending you the same kind of message he sent his father would make everybody react the way you are?”
Wolfe shook his head. “He didn’t. Unless he’s a born fool. He would have known that merely sending me that thing would be inadequate, that he would have to follow it up by making good on the threat; and he hasn’t killed me and I doubt if he intends to. General Fife has looked up his record for me. Mr. Cramer is wasting his time, his men’s energy, and the money of the people of New York. I am handicapped. The men I have used and can trust have gone to war. You bounce around thinking only of yourself, deserting me. I am confined to this room, left to my own devices, with a vindictive bloodthirsty maniac waiting for an opportunity to murder me. I have no hint of his identity and no sniff of his scent.”
He sure was piling it on. But I knew better than to contribute a note of skepticism when he was in one of his romantic moods, having been fired for that once, and besides, I wouldn’t have signed an affidavit that he was exaggerating the situation. So I only asked him, “What about Captain Peter Root? Did they bring him?”
“Yes. He was here today and I talked with him. He has been in that prison for over a month and asse
rts that this cannot possibly be connected with him or his. He says Miss Geer has not communicated with him for six weeks or more. His mother is teaching school at Danforth, Ohio; that has been verified by Mr. Cramer; she is there. His father, who formerly ran a filling station at Danforth, abandoned wife and son ten years ago, and is said to be working in a war plant in Oklahoma. Wife and son prefer not to discuss him. No brother or sister. According to Captain Root, no one on earth who would conceivably undertake a ride on the subway, let alone multiple murder, to avenge him.”
“He might just possibly be right.”
“Nonsense. There was no other slightest connection between Mr. Jensen and me. I’ve asked General Fife to keep Captain Root in New York and to request the prison authorities to look over his effects there if he has any.”
“When you get an idea in your head-”
“I never do. As you mean it. I react to stimuli. In this instance I am reacting in the only way open to me. The person who shot Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle is bold to the point of rashness. He can probably be tempted to proceed with his program. I am aware that if you drive Mr. Hackett around, and accompany him into the car and out of it, crossing sidewalks at all hours of the day and night, you may get killed. That sort of thing was understood when I employed you and paid you. Now the government pays you. Perhaps Mr. Cramer has a man who resembles you and could be assigned to this. He would have to be a good man, alert and resourceful, for there’s no point to this if an attempt on Mr. Hackett’s life leaves us as empty-handed as we are now. You can give me your decision in the morning.”
I’m surprised that I was able to speak at all. He had of course insulted me a million times, as I had him, but this was worse than an insult, there was no word for it. Coming on top of the turndown I had got in Washington, which had reduced my buoyancy to a record low, it made me so mad that I knew I’d better get out of there. But I did not intend to let him go to bed feeling noble, so I grinned at him and controlled my voice.
“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll think it over. Sure, Cramer has a lot of good men. Let you know in the morning. I’ll remember to turn the gong on.”
I went up to my room.
The gong was a dingus under my bed. The custom was that when I retired at night I turned a switch, and if anyone put his foot down in the hall within ten feet of Wolfe’s door the gong gonged. It had been installed on account of a certain occurrence some years previously, when Wolfe had got a knife stuck in him. The thing had never gone off except when we tested it, and in my opinion never would, but I never failed to switch it on because if Wolfe had stepped into the hall some night and the gong hadn’t sounded it would have caused discussion.
This night, with a stranger in the house, I was glad it was there. I learned from Fritz that H. H. Hackett was sleeping in the south room, on the same floor as me, and on the basis of my brief acquaintance and my one look at him it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had undertaken to sneak into Wolfe’s room during the night and kill him, dispose of the body down in the furnace, and expect Fritz and me to take him for Wolfe and never catch on. Women and girls of appropriate age and configuration may call me Archie and welcome. With the rest of my fellow beings I am particular. The Hackett person would have had to know me seven years to get the privilege, and I neither desired nor intended that he should know me seven weeks.
In the morning, breakfast was all over the place, with Wolfe in his room, Hackett in the dining-room, and me in the kitchen with Fritz. Afterwards I spent an hour up in the plant rooms with Wolfe, on the matters we usually attended to in the office, together with consideration of the current problem. Wolfe asked if I had decided whether we should get a chauffeur for Hackett from the Homicide Squad.
I looked judicious. “I have,” I told him, “thought it over from all angles. Unquestionably Cramer could give us a man who would be my superior in courage, wit, integrity, reflex time, and purity of morals. But here’s the trouble-not one anything like as handsome as me. Not a chance. So I’ll do it myself.”
Wolfe cocked an eye at me. “I meant no offense. My intentions-”
“Forget it. You’re under a strain. Mr. Hackett’s life is in jeopardy and it makes you nervous.”
We got to details. Jane Geer was making a nuisance of herself. I understood now, of course, why Wolfe had refused to see her Wednesday evening. After sending me to get her he had conceived the strategy of hiring a double, and he didn’t want her to get a look at the real Nero Wolfe because if she did she would be less likely to be deceived by the counterfeit and go to work on him. That meant she was seriously on his list, but I didn’t take the trouble to inform him that in my opinion he could cross her off, since he would only have grunted. She had phoned several times, insisting on seeing him, and had come to the house Friday morning and argued for five minutes with Fritz through the three-inch crack which the chain bolt permitted the door to open to. Now Wolfe had an idea for one of his elaborate charades. I was to phone her to come to see Wolfe at six o’clock that afternoon. When she came I was to take her in to Hackett. Wolfe would coach Hackett for the interview. I looked skeptical.
Wolfe said, “It will give her a chance to kill Mr. Hackett.”
I snorted-“With me right there to tell her when to cease firing?”
“I admit it is unlikely. Also, it will convince her that Mr. Hackett is me.”
“Which will not shorten his life or lengthen yours.”
“Possibly not. Also, it will give me an opportunity to see her and hear her. I shall be at the hole.” So that was really the idea. He would be in the passage, a sort of an alcove, at the kitchen end of the downstairs hall, looking through into the office by means of the square hole in the wall. The hole was camouflaged on the office side by a picture that was transparent one way. He loved to have an excuse to use it, and it actually had been a help now and then.
“That’s different,” I told him. “If you see her and hear her you’ll know she has a heart of platinum.”
Major Jensen had phoned once and been told that Wolfe was engaged; apparently he wasn’t as persistent as Jane. He had told Cramer that he had come to see Wolfe on Wednesday because on Tuesday morning his father had shown him the threat he had received in the mail and had announced that he was going to consult Nero Wolfe about it; and the major, wishing his father’s murderer to be caught and punished, had wanted to talk with Wolfe. It was Wolfe’s veto of my suggestion that Major Jensen be invited to call, not on Hackett but on Wolfe himself, that showed me the state he was in. Ordinarily it would have needed no suggestion from me, since the major, in his present situation, was a natural for a fat fee.
When I got down to the office Hackett was there in Wolfe’s chair, eating cookies and getting crumbs on the desk. I had told him good morning previously, and having nothing else to tell him, ignored him. From the phone on my desk I got Jane Geer at her office. “Archie,” I told her.
She snapped, “Archie who?”
“Oh, come, come. We haven’t sicked the police onto you, have we? Let’s gossip a while.”
“I am ringing off.”
“Then I am too. In a moment. Nero Wolfe wants to see you.”
“He does? Ha, ha. He doesn’t act like it.”
“He has reformed. I showed him a lock of your hair. I showed him a picture of Elsa Maxwell and told him it was you. This time he won’t let me come after you.”
“Neither will I.”
“Okay. Be here at six o’clock and you will be received. Six o’clock today, P.M. Will you?”
She admitted that she would. I made a couple of other calls and did some miscellaneous chores. But I found that my jaw was getting clamped tighter and tighter on account of an irritating noise. Finally I spoke to the occupant of Wolfe’s chair. “What kind of cookies are those?”
“Ginger snaps.” Evidently the husky croak was his normal voice.
“I didn’t know we had any.”
“We didn’t. I asked Fritz. He doesn’t seem to know ab
out ginger snaps, so I walked over to Ninth Avenue and got some.”
“When? This morning?”
“Just a little while ago.”
I turned to my phone, buzzed the plant rooms, got Wolfe, and told him, “Mr. Hackett is sitting in your chair eating ginger snaps. Just a little while ago he walked to Ninth Avenue and bought them. If he pops in and out of the house whenever he sees fit, what are we getting for our hundred bucks?”
Wolfe spoke to the point. I hung up and turned to Hackett and spoke to the point. He was not to leave the house except as instructed by Wolfe or me. He seemed unimpressed and unconcerned, but nodded good-naturedly. “All right,” he said, “if that’s the bargain I’ll keep it. But there’s two sides to a bargain. I was to be paid daily in advance, and I haven’t been paid for today. A hundred dollars net.”
Wolfe had told me the same, so I took five twenties from the expense wallet and forked it over. “I must say,” he commented, folding the bills neatly and stuffing them in his waistband pocket, “this is a large return for a small effort. I am aware that I may earn it-ah, suddenly and unexpectedly.” He leaned toward me. “Though I may tell you confidentially, Archie, that I expect nothing to happen. I am sanguine by nature.”
“Yeah,” I told him, “me too.” I opened the drawer of my desk, the middle one on the right, where I kept armament, got out the shoulder holster and put it on, and selected the gun that was my property-the other two belonged to Wolfe. There were only three cartridges in it, so I pulled the drawer open farther to get to the ammunition compartment and filled the cylinder. As I shoved the gun into the holster I happened to glance at Hackett and saw that he had a new face. The line of his lips was tight, and his eyes looked startled, wary, and concentrated.
“It hadn’t occurred to me before,” he said, and his voice had changed too. “This Mr. Wolfe is quite an article, and you’re his man. I am doing this with the understanding that someone may mistake me for Mr. Wolfe and try to kill me, but I have only his word for it that that is actually the situation. If it’s more complicated than that, and the intention is for you to shoot me yourself, I want to say emphatically that that would not be fair.”
