by Rex Stout
“But you had bad luck. You encountered me. I have two things. First, I have ingenuity. I used it today, with the result that you are here with me now. Second, I have pertinacity. I have decided that the simplest way out of this business is for you to die. I am counting on you to agree with me. If you don’t, if you try to fight it out, try to go back to life, you’re lost. There is not now sufficient evidence to convict you of the murder of Colonel Ryder. Perhaps there never will be; but there will be enough to indict you and put you on trial. I’ll see to that. If you are acquitted, I shall only have begun. I shall never stop. There is the murder of Captain Cross. There are all the hidden transactions and convolutions of your traffic in the industrial secrets entrusted to our Army to help fight the war.
“Now that I know who you are and know where to look, how long will it take me to get enough to impeach you, drag you into court, condemn you? A week? A month? A year? What about your associates, when they see the lightning about to strike and smash you? Colonel Ryder will never testify against you, you saw to that, but there are others. How about them, Mr. Shattuck? Can you trust them further than you could trust your old friend Ryder when we get to them and they are ready to break? You can’t kill all of them, you know.”
Shattuck was no longer looking at Wolfe. His body was still twisted around on the seat, but from the corner of my eye I could see that his gaze was aimed straight past my chin, on through the open window.
“Stop the car, Archie,” Wolfe said.
I swerved to the grassy shoulder and stopped. We were on one of the secondary roads in the higher section of the park, and, on a weekday, there wasn’t a soul in sight. To the left was woods, sloping down; to the right was a stretch of meadow with scattered trees, gently rising. All it needed was a herd of cows to make it a remote spot in Vermont.
“Is this a dead-end road?” Wolfe asked.
“No,” I told him, “it goes on over the hill and meets the north drive going east.”
“Then get out, please.” I did so. Wolfe handed me the grenade. “Take this thing.” He pointed up the rise, at right angles to the road, to a big tree in the meadow. “Put it on the ground there at the base of that tree. Next to the trunk.”
“Just lay it on the ground?”
“Yes.”
I obeyed. On my way across the meadow, a good hundred yards, and back again, I spent the time making book. I finally settled on even money. That may sound like shading it in Wolfe’s favor, but I was right there listening to it and seeing them. Wolfe’s voice alone was half of it. It was hard, dry, assured. It made it hard to believe that anything it said would happen, wouldn’t happen. The other half was the way Shattuck looked. Now that I wasn’t driving and could take him in, I realized that the jolt he had got in the office, utterly unexpected, had given him a shock that he hadn’t even begun to recover from. He was flat, taking the count, and Wolfe was doing the counting. When I reached the car Wolfe was saying:
“If so, you’re mistaken. I would prefer to fight it out with you, and so would General Carpenter. You don’t stand a chance. If you’re not put to death by the people of the state of New York, you’re done for anyhow. At a minimum, irremediable disgrace, the ruin of your career. But I don’t pretend that I brought you here, to this, as a favor to you. We would prefer to fight it out with you, but we’re working for our country, and our country is at war. To break a scandal like this, at this time, would do enormous damage. If it can possibly be avoided, it should be. I say that not to affect your decision, for I know it wouldn’t, but to explain why I took the trouble to bring you here.”
I opened the front door on Shattuck’s side, leaned against it to keep it from swinging shut, and told Wolfe, “There’s a flat rock there right near the tree. I put it on that.”
Shattuck looked at me as if he was going to say something, but nothing came out. He wet his lips with his tongue, kept on looking at me, and then wet his lips again.
Wolfe said harshly, “Get out of the car, Mr. Shattuck. It isn’t a long walk—not much more than down that corridor to Colonel Ryder’s office and back again. Thirty or forty seconds, that’s all. We’ll wait here. It will be an accident. I promise you that. The obituaries will be superb. All that any outstanding public figure could ask.”
Shattuck slowly turned to him. “You can’t expect me—” He didn’t have much voice, and in a moment he tried again. “You can’t expect me to—” He tried to swallow, and it wouldn’t work.
“Help him out, Archie.”
I took his elbow, and he came. His foot slipped off the running board, and I held him up, and led him away a couple of paces on the grass.
“He’s all right,” Wolfe said. “Come and get in.”
I climbed in the car and slammed the door and slid across behind the wheel. Wolfe spoke through his open window.
“If you change your mind, Mr. Shattuck, come back to the road, and we’ll take you back to town, and the fight will be on. I advise against it, but I doubt if my advice is needed. You’re a coward, Mr. Shattuck. I’ve had wide experience, and I’ve never known of a more cowardly murder than the murder of Colonel Ryder. Hang on to that as your bulwark. Say to yourself as you cross the meadow, ‘I’m a coward. I’m a coward and a murderer.’ That will carry you through, right to the end. You need something to take you that hundred yards, and since it can’t be courage, let it be your integrity, your deep inner necessity, as a coward. And this too, this knowledge, if you come back, you’re coming back to us—to me. I’ll be waiting.”
Wolfe stopped, because Shattuck was moving. He moved slowly, down the little incline into the drainage ditch, and then up the other side. In a few paces he began to go faster, and he kept on a straight line, straight for the tree. About halfway there his foot caught on something and he nearly fell, but then he was upright again and going faster.
Wolfe muttered at me, “Start the car. Go ahead. Slowly.”
I thought that was a mistake. Shattuck was sure to hear the sound of the engine, and there was no telling what that would do to him. But I did as I was told, as quietly as possible. I eased the car back onto the road and let it crawl uphill. It covered 100 yards, 200.
Wolfe’s voice came. “Stop.”
I shifted to neutral, set the hand brake, let the engine run, and turned in my seat to look back across the meadow. I caught one last brief glimpse of John Bell Shattuck, kneeling there by the tree, his torso bent over, and then—
Nothing got to us but the sound, and that wasn’t anything like as loud as I expected. I could see nothing in the air but the cloud of dust. But a moment later, four seconds maybe, there was a soft rustling noise as particles fell into the grass over a wide area; a noise like the big scattered raindrops that start a summer shower.
“Go ahead,” Wolfe said curtly. “Get to a telephone. Confound it, I’ve got to speak to Inspector Cramer.”
Chapter 8
For dinner we had clams, frog legs, roast duck Mr. Richards, roasted corn on the cob, green salad, blackberry pie, cheese, and coffee. I sat across from Wolfe. On my right was General Carpenter. On my left was Sergeant Bruce. Obviously Wolfe had known Carpenter was going to bring her along, since the table was set for four before they arrived, but he hadn’t mentioned it to me. She ate like a sergeant, if not in manner, anyhow in quantity. We all did.
In the office, after the meal, I lighted cigarettes for her and me. Carpenter, in the red leather chair that John Bell Shattuck had occupied the evening before, filled a pipe and lighted it, crossed his legs, and puffed. Wolfe, disposed for comfort on his throne behind his desk, took it like a man. He hated pipes, but the expression on his face said plainly, at least to me, this is war and one must not shrink from the hardships.
“I still don’t understand,” Carpenter said, “why Shattuck exposed his flanks like that.”
Wolfe sighed with contentment. “Well,” he murmured, “he didn’t think he was. First, he underrated me. Second, he grossly overrated himself. That’s an oc
cupational disease of those in the seats of the mighty. Third, that anonymous letter got him flustered. That was close to a stroke of genius, sending those letters out promiscuously.”
Carpenter nodded. “Dorothy’s idea. Miss Bruce.”
I thought to myself, Huh. “Dorothy.” “Ken darling.” She sure does get on a sociable basis.
“She appears to have some intelligence,” Wolfe conceded. “Nevertheless, she is a jenny ass. She hasn’t told you, of course, that she undertook to test my integrity and Major Goodwin’s. She offered to buy me for a million dollars. Since she has streaks of brilliance, use her by all means, but I think you should know that she also has a streak of imbecility. It was the most transparent springe ever devised by a female brain.”
“To you, perhaps.” Carpenter was smiling. “But I had suggested it to her. I told her to try you out if an opportunity came. With the interests and the sums involved, I was even keeping an eye on myself. And while I was aware of your talents—”
Wolfe grimaced. “Bah.” He waved it away, from the wrist. “You might at least have shown a little ingenuity in concealing the noose. As for Shattuck, he couldn’t help himself. Probably he had already had a hint that Ryder was about to crumple up.”
“I still don’t understand Ryder. I would have sworn he was as sound as they come, but he had a rotten spot.”
“Not necessarily,” Wolfe disagreed. “Possibly only a vulnerable one. No telling what. They were old friends, and who is so apt to know the secret word, the hidden threat, that will paralyze a man into helplessness, as an old friend? But Ryder got two shocks, simultaneously, that caused the threat, whatever it was, to lose its power. His beloved only son got killed in battle, and one of his men, Captain Cross, was murdered. The first altered all his values; and connivance at murder was not in his contract. He decided to go to you and let it out, and he informed Shattuck of his decision, not privately—he didn’t want to discuss it or argue about it—but publicly, irrevocably, before witnesses. That’s what it amounted to.”
“What a fix for a man,” Carpenter muttered.
“Yes. Also a fix for Shattuck. He was done for too. After that he really had no choice, and circumstances made it, if not easy for him, at least not too difficult. Returning after lunching with General Fife, all he had to do was get three or four minutes alone in Ryder’s office, and doubtless he didn’t find that very hard to manage. Then, I suppose, he left for some appointment. Men of his prominence always have appointments. You asked me before dinner if he killed Captain Cross too. As a conjecture, yes. If you’re going to complete the file on it, find out if he was in New York last Wednesday evening, and follow the trial.” Wolfe shrugged. “He’s dead.”
Carpenter nodded. He was gazing at Wolfe with a certain expression, an expression I had often seen on the faces of people sitting in that chair looking at Wolfe. It reminded me of what so many out-of-town folks say about New York: that they love to visit the place, but you couldn’t pay them to live there. Me, I live there.
Carpenter said, “What put you onto him?”
“I’ve already told you. His reaction, here, when Major Goodwin opened drawers and started to open the suitcase. Until then, I didn’t know. It might have been Fife, or Tinkham, or even Lawson. By the way,” Wolfe glanced at the clock, “they’ll be here in twenty minutes. I’ll explain to them about Miss Bruce, tell them I was merely using her, since you don’t want her real status revealed. But the instructions about Shattuck are to be an order from you. I promised him it would be an accident, and I’m holding to that line with the police, though Inspector Cramer knows better. He knows—he has had contacts with me before, over a period of years. That scene here today—what I said to Shattuck—is for no open record or general conversation.”
“I’ll see to that,” Carpenter agreed. “With the understanding, of course, that it is not to impede future operations. We’ll never get anyone who was concerned in it, but at least we’ll stop it, and we’ll stop them. I’m wondering—We might have broken Shattuck’s back, we just might—if we still had him.”
“Pfui.” Wolfe was complacent. “If he had had real stuff in him, if he had stuck it out and fought it out, we would have got nowhere. Convict him of murder? Nonsense. As for the rest, the battalions of wealth, legal talent and political power that would have lined up behind him— He could have thumbed his nose at us.” Wolfe sighed. “But he had annoyed me. He had challenged me. He came here last evening to warn me not to allow anyone to play tricks on me! So, knowing myself, I knew I’d never be able to let go of him, and I couldn’t afford it. As you know, I take no pay for this government work, and it leaves me little time for my private detective business. I simply couldn’t afford to spend the next three years, or five or ten, attending to Mr. Shattuck, or trying to.”
Carpenter gazed at Wolfe, puffing on his pipe. After about six pulls he realized he was out, and reached in his pocket for a match.
I dived into the opening.
“Major Goodwin,” I said, “requests permission to speak to General Carpenter.”
Carpenter frowned at me. “You’d never make a soldier. You’re too damn fresh. What do you want?”
“A suggestion, sir. I understand that General Fife and Colonel Tinkham are to be kept in ignorance of what Sergeant Bruce is: the brains of G2, apparently. So I should think they would be startled by her presence here and maybe suspect she is not a simple little WAC. So I just whispered to her to ask if she likes to dance, and she whispered back that she does. I respectfully suggest—”
“Go on, go on, get out of here, both of you. It’s a good idea at that, isn’t it, Dorothy?”
She nodded. “That’s why I told him I like to dance.”
Momentarily, I let it go. But after we had left the house and walked to the corner and flagged a taxi and she had got in, I spoke to her through the open door.
“Let’s start from scratch. He can take you to Eleventh Street, or he can take us uptown. Do you like to dance or don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then your telling the boss that you told me you like to dance because it would be for the good of your country and help win the war for you to leave there, that was a lie?”
“Yes.”
“Swell. Now all the familiarity. ‘Ken darling.’ ‘Dorothy’ from the boss. Did you sit on their laps when you were a baby, or is it a recently formed habit?”
She chuckled and gurgled, or whatever that noise was. “That,” she said, “is nothing but congenital friendly exuberance. Also I feel rather protective about them. I feel that way, more or less, about lots of men—those I don’t dislike. They’re so darned dumb.”
I grinned at her. “Fifty years from now I’ll remind you of that, and you’ll claim you never said it.” I got in the cab. “For myself I don’t care, but my colleagues, one billion human males, are counting on me.”
I told the driver, “Flamingo Club.”
