Rex Stout

Booby Trap

Chapter 1

On our way out of the house — his house, which was also his office, on West 35th Street over near the North River — Nero Wolfe, who was ahead of me, stopped so abruptly that I nearly bumped into him. He wheeled and confronted me, glancing at my briefcase.

“Have you got that thing?”

I looked innocent. “What thing?”

“You know very well. That confounded grenade. I want that infernal machine out of this house. Have you got it?”

I held my ground. “Colonel Ryder,” I said in a crisp military tone, “who is my superior officer, said I could keep it for a souvenir in view of my valor and devotion to duty in recovering—”

“You can’t keep it in my house. I tolerate pistols as a tool of the business, but not that contraption. If by accident the pin got removed it would blow off the top of the building, not to mention the noise it would make. I thought you understood this is out of discussion. Get it, please.”

Formerly I might have argued that my room on the third floor was my castle, tenanted by me as part of my pay for suffering his society as his assistant and guardian, but that was out now, since Congress was taking care of me by appropriating around ten billion bucks a month. So I merely shrugged to show I was humoring him, and, knowing how it annoyed him to be kept waiting standing up, moseyed over to the stair and took my time mounting the two flights to my room. It was there where I kept it on top of the chest of drawers — about seven inches long and three in diameter, painted a pale pink, looking nothing like as deadly as it was supposed to be. Reaching for it, I glanced at the safety pin to make sure it was snug, put it in the briefcase, went back downstairs at my leisure, ignored a remark he saw fit to make, and accompanied him out to the curb where the sedan was parked.

One thing Wolfe demanded from the Army, and got, was enough gas for his car. Not that he was trying to bypass the war. He really was making sacrifices for victory. As one, most of his accustomed income from the detective business. Two, his daily sessions with his orchids in the plant rooms on the roof, whenever Army work interfered. Three, his fixed rule to avoid the hazards of unessential movements, especially outdoors. Four, food. I kept an eye on that, looking for a chance to insert remarks, and drew a blank. He and Fritz accomplished wonders within the limitations of coupon fodder, and right there in the middle of New York, with black markets tipping the wink like floozies out for a breath of air on a summer evening, Wolfe’s kitchen was as pure as cottage cheese.

After burning up not more than half a gallon of the precious gas, even counting traffic stops and starts, I let him out in front of 17 Duncan Street, found a place to park, and walked back and joined him in the lobby. Leaving the elevator at the tenth floor, Wolfe had a chance to suppress some more irritation. In my uniform all I had to do was return the salute of the corporal on guard, but although Wolfe had been there at least a couple dozen times and it was no trick to recognize him, he was in cits, and the New York headquarters of Military Intelligence was finicky about civilian visitors. After he got the high sign we went through a door, down a long corridor with closed doors on both sides, one of which was to my office, turned a corner, and entered the anteroom of the Second in Command.

An Army sergeant was sitting at a desk giving the keyboard of a typewriter the one-two.

I said good morning.

“Good morning, Major,” the sergeant replied. “I’ll tell them you’re here.” She reached for a phone.

Wolfe was staring. “What in the name of heaven is this?” he demanded.

“WAC,” I told him. “We’ve got some new furniture since you were here last. Brightens the place up.”

He compressed his lips and continued to stare. Nothing personal; what was eating him was the sight of a female, in uniform, in that job.

“It’s all right,” I soothed him. “We don’t tell her any of the important secrets, such as Captain So-and-So wears a corset.”

She was through at the phone. “Colonel Ryder said to ask you to join them, sir.”

I said sternly, “You didn’t salute.”

If she’d had a sense of humor she’d have stood up and snapped one at me, but in the ten days she had been there I hadn’t been able to discover any sign of it. Which didn’t mean I had quit trying. I had decided she was putting it on. Her serious efficient eyes and straight functional nose led you to expect a jutting bony chin, but that’s where she fooled you. It didn’t jut. It would have fitted nicely in the palm of your hand if things ever got to that point.

She was speaking. “I beg your pardon, Major Goodwin. I am obeying the regulations—”

“Okay.” I waved it aside. “This is Mr. Nero Wolfe. Sergeant Dorothy Bruce of the United States Army.”

They acknowledged each other. Stepping to a door at the other end, I opened it, let Wolfe go through, then followed him and shut the door.

It was a roomy corner office with windows on two sides and the space of the other two walls filled with locked steel cabinets reaching two-thirds of the way to the ceiling, except for a spot occupied by another door which gave access to the hall without going through the anteroom.

There was no humor in there either. The four men on chairs were about as chipper as a bunch of Dodger fans after watching dem bums drop a double-header. Seeing that the atmosphere didn’t call for military etiquette, I let the arm hang. The two colonels and the lieutenant we knew, and though we had never met the civilian we knew who he was, having been told about him; and besides, almost any good citizen would have recognized John Bell Shattuck. He was shorter than I would have expected, and maybe a little bulkier, but there was no mistaking his manner as he got up to shake hands with us and look us in the eye. True, we were residents of New York, but an elected person can never be sure you aren’t going to move to his own state and be a constituent with a vote.

“Meeting Nero Wolfe is a real occasion,” he said, in a voice that sounded as if it was pitched lower than God intended it to be. I had run across that before. Half the statesmen in Washington have been trying to sound like Winston Churchill ever since he made that speech to Congress.

Wolfe was polite to him and then turned back to Ryder. “This is my first opportunity, Colonel, to offer my condolences. Your son. Your only son.”

Ryder’s jaw was set. It had been for nearly a week, since the news came. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Had he killed any Germans?”

“He had shot down four German planes. Presumably he killed Germans. I hope he did.”

“No doubt.” Wolfe grunted. “I can’t speak about him, I didn’t know him. I know you. I would hold up your heart if I could. Obviously you are capable of holding your chin up yourself.” He looked around at the chairs that were empty, saw they were of equal dimensions, and moved to one and got himself onto it, with the usual lapping over at the edges. “Where was it?”

“Sicily,” Ryder said.

“He was a fine boy,” John Bell Shattuck put in. “I was his godfather. No finer boy in America. I was proud of him. I still am proud of him.”

Ryder closed his eyes, opened them again, reached for the phone on his desk, and spoke in it. “General Fife.” After a moment he spoke again, “Mr. Wolfe has come, General. We’re all here. Shall we come up now? Oh. Very well, sir. I understand.”

He pushed the phone back and told the room, “He’s coming here.”

Wolfe grimaced, and I knew why. He knew there was a bigger chair up in the general’s office, in fact two of them. I moved to Ryder’s desk, put my briefcase on it, unbuckled the straps, and took out the grenade.

“Here, Colonel,” I said, “I might as well do this while we’re waiting. Where shall I put it?”

Ryder scowled at me. “I said you could keep it.”

“I know, but I have no place to keep it except my room at Mr. Wolfe’s house, and that won’t do. I caught him tinkering with it last night. I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself.”

Everybody looked at Wolfe. He said testily, “You know Major Goodwin, don’t you? I wouldn’t touch the thing. Nor will I have it on my premises.”

I nodded regretfully. “So the cat came back.”

Ryder picked it up and glanced at the safety, saw it was secure, and then suddenly he was out of his chair and on his feet, straight as a Rockette, as the door opened and Sergeant Dorothy Bruce’s voice came to us, clipped and military: “General Fife!”

When the general had entered she backed out again, taking the door along. Of course by that time the rest of us were Rocketteing too. He returned our salute, crossed to shake hands and exchange greetings with John Bell Shattuck, and, after another sharp glance around, stretched an arm and pointed a finger at Ryder’s left hand.

“What the devil are you doing with that thing?” he demanded. “Playing catch?”

Ryder’s hand came up holding the grenade. “Major Goodwin just returned it, sir.”

“Isn’t it one of those H14’s?”

“Yes, sir. As you know, he found them. I gave him permission to keep one.”

“You did? I didn’t. Did I?”

“No, sir.”

Ryder opened a drawer of his desk, put the grenade in it, and closed the drawer. General Fife went to a chair and twirled it around and sat on it assbackwards, crossing his arms along the top of the chair’s back. The understanding was that he had formed that habit after seeing a picture of Eisenhower sitting like that, which I record without prejudice. He was the only professional soldier in the bunch there present. Colonel Ryder had been a lawyer out in Cleveland. Colonel Tinkham, who looked like a collection of undersized features put together at random in order to have somewhere to stick a little brown mustache, had had some kind of a gumshoe job for a big New York bank. Lieutenant Lawson had just come up from Washington two weeks before and was still possibly mysterious personally, but not ancestrally. He was Kenneth Lawson, Junior; Senior being the Eastern Products Corporation tycoon who had served his country in its hour of need by lopping one hundred thousand dollars off his own salary. All I really knew about Junior was that I had heard him trying to date Sergeant Bruce his second day in the office and getting turned down.

The only chair left was over by the steel cabinets, occupied by a small pigskin suitcase. Trying to make just the right amount of noise and commotion for a major under the circumstances, I deposited the suitcase on the floor and sat down.

Meanwhile General Fife was speaking. “Where have you got to? Where’s the public? Where’s the press? No photographers?”

Lieutenant Lawson started to grin, caught Colonel Ryder’s eye, and composed his handsome features. Colonel Tinkham moved the tip of his forefinger along the grain of his mustache, right and left alternately, which was his number-one gesture for conveying the impression that he was quite unperturbed.

“We haven’t got anywhere, sir,” Ryder said. “We haven’t started. Wolfe just got here. Your other questions—”

“Not for you,” Fife said curtly. He was looking, conspicuously, at John Bell Shattuck. “Public servant, and no public? No microphones? No newsreel cameras? How are the people to be informed?”

Shattuck didn’t even blink, let alone try to return the punch. “Now look here,” he said reproachfully, “we’re not as bad as that. We try to do our duty, and so do you. Sometimes I think it might be a good plan for us to take over the armed forces for a period, say a month—”

“Good God.”

“—and let the generals and admirals take over the Capitol for the same period. No doubt we would all learn something. I assure you I understand perfectly that this matter is confidential. I have not even mentioned it to the members of my committee. I thought it my duty to consult you, and that’s what I’m doing.”

Fife’s gaze at him showed no sign of melting into fondness. “You got a letter.”

Shattuck nodded. “I did. An anonymous unsigned type-written letter. It may be from a crackpot, it probably is, but I didn’t think it wise to ignore it.”

“May I see it?”

“I have it,” Colonel Ryder put in. He took a sheet of paper from under a weight on his desk and stepped across to pass it to his superior. But Fife was using his hands to pat the pockets of his jacket.

“Left my glasses upstairs. Read it.”

Ryder did so.

“Dear sir: I address this to you because I understand that your investigating committee is authorized to inquire into matters of this sort. As you know, in the emergency of the war the Army is being entrusted with the secrets of various industrial processes. This practice is probably justified in the circumstances, but it is being criminally abused. Some of the secrets, without patent or copyright protection, are being betrayed to those who intend to engage in post-war competition of the industries involved. Values amounting to tens of millions of dollars are being stolen from their rightful owners.

“Proof will be hard to get because of the difficulty of showing intent to defraud until it is put into practice after the war. I give you no details, but an honest and rigorous investigation will certainly disclose them. And I suggest a starting point: the death of Captain Albert Cross of Military Intelligence. He is supposed to have jumped, or fallen by accident, from the twelfth floor of the Bascombe Hotel in New York day before yesterday. Did he? What sort of inquiry had he been assigned to by his superior officers? What had he found out? You might start there.

“A Citizen”

Silence. Dead silence.

Colonel Tinkham cleared his throat. “Well-written letter,” he observed, in the tone of a teacher commending a pupil for a good composition.

“May I look at it?” Nero Wolfe inquired.

Ryder handed it to him, and I got up and crossed the room to take a squint over Wolfe’s shoulder. Tinkham and Lawson got the same notion and did likewise. Wolfe considerately held it at an angle so we could all see. It was a plain sheet of ordinary bond paper, and the text was single-spaced neatly in the center of the sheet with no errors or exings. From habit and experience I noted two mechanical peculiarities: the c hit below the line; and the a was off to the left — in war, for instance, it touched the top corner of the w. I was going on from there when Tinkham and Lawson finished and moved away, and Wolfe handed the sheet to me to return to Ryder.

“Hot stuff,” Lawson said, sitting down. “He could a tale unfold, but he doesn’t. Nothing but insinuations.”

Fife asked him sarcastically, “Does that close the matter, Lieutenant?”

“Sir?”

“I ask, is your verdict final, or are we to be permitted to proceed?”

“Oh.” Lawson showed color. “I beg your pardon, sir. I was merely observing—”

“There’s another way to observe. Look and listen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I may be allowed—” Colonel Tinkham offered.

“Well?”

“Interesting points about that letter. It was written by a person who is incisive and highly literate and who also types expertly. Or it was dictated to a stenographer, which doesn’t seem likely. The margining at the right is remarkably even. And the double spaces after periods—”

Wolfe made a noise, and Fife glanced at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” Wolfe said. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind if this chair were properly constructed and of a proper size. I suggest, if the discussion is to be at kindergarten level, that we all sit on the floor.”

“Not a bad idea. We may come to that.” Fife turned to Shattuck. “When did you get the letter?”

“In the mail Saturday morning,” Shattuck told him. “Plain envelope of course, address typed, marked personal. Postmarked New York, Station R, 7:30 p.m. Friday. My first impulse was to turn it over to the F.B.I., but I decided that wouldn’t be fair to you fellows, so I telephoned Harold — Colonel Ryder. I was coming to New York today anyway — speaking at a dinner tonight of the National Industrial Association — and we agreed this was the way to handle it.”

“You haven’t — you didn’t take it up with General Carpenter?”

“No.” Shattuck smiled. “After that performance when he appeared to testify before my committee a couple of months ago — I didn’t feel like crossing his path.”

“This is his path.”

“I know, but he’s not patrolling this sector of it at this moment—” Shattuck’s eyes widened— “or is he?”

Fife shook his head. “He’s stewing in Washington. Or sizzling. Or both. So you’re turning the letter over to us for investigation. Is that it?”

“I don’t know.” Shattuck hesitated. He was meeting the general’s eyes. “It came to me as chairman of a Congressional committee. I came here — to discuss the matter.”

“You know—” Fife also hesitated. He went on, choosing words: “You know, of course, I could merely say military security is involved and the question cannot be discussed.”

“I know,” Shattuck agreed. “You could say that.” He bore down a little on the “could.”

Fife regarded him without affection.

“This is unofficial and off the record. There is nothing in that letter to show that the writer has any useful information. Anyone with any sense would know that in our war production, with thousands of men in positions of trust, and enormous interests and billions of dollars involved, things happen. Lots of them, probably including the sort of thing that letter hints at. One of the jobs of Military Intelligence is to help to prevent such things from happening, as far as we can.”

“Of course,” Shattuck put in, “I had no idea this would be a bolt from the blue for you.”

“Thank you.” Fife didn’t sound grateful. “It isn’t. Did you see that pink thing Ryder put in his desk drawer? You did. That’s a new kind of grenade — not only new in construction, but in its contents. Somebody wanted some samples, and got them. Not the enemy — at least we don’t think so. Captain Cross, who died last week, was working on it. Nobody on earth except the men in this room knew what Cross was doing. Cross found the trail, we don’t know how, because he hadn’t reported in since Monday, and now we may never know. Major Goodwin did a neat piece of work with an entry in Cross’s memo book which apparently didn’t mean anything, and found the grenades in a shipping carton in the checkroom at a bus terminal where Cross had left them. I tell you about this because Cross is mentioned in that letter, and also as an instance to show that if the writer of the letter wants to tell us anything we don’t know he’ll have to come again.”

Shattuck remonstrated. “Good heavens, General, I know very well you weren’t born yesterday. And ordinarily any anonymous letter I receive gets tossed in the wastebasket. But I thought you ought to know about it — and then the one specific thing in it — about Cross. Of course that was investigated?”

“It was. By the police.”

“And,” Shattuck insisted, “by you?” Then he added hastily, “I think that’s a proper question. Unofficially. Since a police investigation would be somewhat ineffectual unless they were told exactly what Cross was doing and were given the names of those who were — well — aware of it. I don’t suppose you felt free to disclose that to the police?”

Fife said slowly, choosing his words again, “We co-operate with the police to the limit of discretion. As for your first question, proper or not, it is no military secret that Nero Wolfe has worked with us on various matters as a civilian consultant — since it has been published in newspapers. Do you regard Wolfe as a competent investigator?”

Shattuck smiled. “I’m a politician. You’re not apt to find me in a minority of one.”

“Well, he’s investigating Cross’s death. For us. If you find out who wrote you that letter, tell him that. That ought to satisfy him.”

“It satisfies me,” Shattuck declared. “I wonder if you’d mind — could I ask Mr. Wolfe a couple of questions?”

“Certainly. If he wants to answer them. I can’t order him to. He’s not in the Army.”

Wolfe grunted. He was displaying all the signs, long familiar to me, of impatience, annoyance, discomfort, and an intense desire to get back home where chairs had been built to specifications to fit the case, and the beer was cold. He snapped:

“Mr. Shattuck. Perhaps I can make your questions unnecessary. Whether they come from idle curiosity, or are in fact sparks from the flame of your burning patriotism, Captain Cross was murdered. Does that answer them?”

Silence. Nobody made a sound. The look that General Fife flashed at Colonel Ryder met one coming back at him, and they both held. Colonel Tinkham’s finger tip made contact with his mustache. Lieutenant Lawson stared at Wolfe, frowning. Shattuck’s eyes, narrowed with a gleam in them, went from face to face.

Lieutenant Lawson said, “Oh, lord.”

Chapter 2

Wolfe was pretending that nothing startling was happening. Not that any of the others could tell there was any pretense about it; nobody else knew him as I did. They probably were not even aware that his half-closed eyes were not missing the slightest twitch of a muscle among the group.

“I’m afraid,” he said dryly, “that there’s nothing in it for you, Mr. Shattuck. No votes, no acclaim, no applause from the multitude. I made the announcement in your presence because there’s no way of proving it and probably never will be. Not a scrap of evidence. Anyone could have taken the hotel elevator and gone to Captain Cross’s room on the twelfth floor, but no one was seen doing so. The mountain of the police machinery has labored — and no mouse. The window was wide open, and he was below on the pavement, squashed, dead. That’s all.”

“Then why the devil,” Lawson demanded, “do you say he was murdered?”

“Because he was. He was as likely to fall from that window by accident as I would be to run for Congress — by accident. He did not deliberately jump out or crawl out. He phoned Colonel Ryder at eight o’clock that evening that he would come to the office in the morning to make a report; that he had had no sleep for two nights and had to rest. He sent a telegram to his fiancée in Boston that he would see her on Saturday. And then committed suicide? Pfui.”

“Oh,” Fife said, crossing his arms on the back of the chair again. “I thought — perhaps you had something.”

“I have that.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “The man was murdered. But no guiding thread can be fastened to the smashed body on the pavement or in the room it fell from. The police have done a thorough job, and there is nothing. Some other point of departure is needed. If the motive was personal, out of his past as a man, the police may find it. They’re trying to. If it was professional, out of his work as a soldier, we may find it in the course of our present activities. That is, if we are to continue? Along the line as it is being developed? With the same personnel?”

Fife studied the corner of Ryder’s desk.

Wolfe said brusquely, “I put a question, General.”

Fife’s head jerked to him. “By all means. Continue? Certainly.”

Shattuck said in a tone of satisfaction, “I don’t think I need to ask you any questions, Mr. Wolfe.”

“May I” Tinkham inquired, “offer a comment?”

“Go ahead,” Fife told him.

“About the — personnel, as Mr. Wolfe put it. This is a complicated and difficult business; we all know that, even if it’s all we know. And judging from what happened to Cross, if Mr. Wolfe is correct, somewhat dangerous. It’s not the sort of enterprise to be entrusted to a kindergarten, and if that’s Mr. Wolfe’s opinion of us — specifically of me—”

“Skin tender?” Fife demanded. “The orders come from me.”

“I was trying,” Wolfe declared, “to educate you, Colonel, not obliterate you.”

“I’m not worrying about my skin.” Tinkham’s voice had emotion in it, which for him was remarkable. “I would like to stay on this job. I merely want to be sure I understand the purpose of Mr. Wolfe’s question about personnel.”

“To get an answer.” Wolfe was eyeing him. “I got it.”

“All the same,” Lawson broke in, addressing General Fife, “Colonel Tinkham has a point. For example, sir, you said just now the orders come from you. But they don’t. At least they haven’t in the two weeks I’ve been in on this. They come either from Colonel Ryder or from Nero Wolfe, and that’s apt to be confusing, and besides, from the tone Wolfe takes he ought to have four stars on his shoulder, and he hasn’t.”

“My God,” Fife said in disgust. “You too. Feelings hurt by the tone Wolfe takes! He’s right. This damn Army is turning into a kindergarten. And if I ship you overseas or back to Washington I’ll only get somebody worse.” He turned to Wolfe. “What about you and Ryder? Has there been any conflict in orders?”

“None that I know of,” Wolfe said patiently.

Fife switched to Ryder. “Any that you know of?”

“No, sir.” Ryder’s answer was a brush-off, as if the matter were of no interest or significance. “Mr. Wolfe has been entirely co-operative and helpful. No one but a fool would resent his mannerisms. But I ought to say— The circumstances— You should know that there will be a change in the setup. I would like to make a request. I respectfully request permission to go to Washington to see General Carpenter. Today.”

For the third time a sudden dead silence fell. Since the rest of us were not professional soldiers, we didn’t grasp immediately all the implications of that request made in that manner; what got us was what happened to General Fife’s face. It froze. I had never seen the old bozo look stupid before, but he sure did then, staring across Ryder’s desk at him.

“Perhaps, sir,” Ryder said, meeting the stare, “I should add that it is not a personal matter. I wish to see General Carpenter on Army business. I have a reservation on the five o’clock plane.”

Silence again. The muscles of Fife’s neck moved, then he spoke. “This is a strange performance, Colonel.” His voice was cold and controlled. “I suppose it can be charged to your unfamiliarity with Army custom. This sort of thing is usually done, if at all, in a less public manner. I offer a suggestion, not official. If you care to, you may discuss it with me privately. Now. Or after lunch, when you’ve thought it over.”

“I’m sorry.” Ryder didn’t sound happy, but he sounded firm. “It wouldn’t help any. I know what I’m doing, sir.”

“By God, I hope you do.”

“Yes, sir. I do. Have I permission to go?”

“You have.” The expression on Fife’s face plainly added, and keep right on going and never come back, but he was being an officer and gentleman in the presence of witnesses. To be fair to him, he didn’t do a bad job at all. He stood up and told Tinkham and Lawson they could go, which they did. Then he invited John Bell Shattuck to have lunch with him, and Shattuck accepted. Fife turned to Wolfe and said it would be a pleasure to have him join them, but Wolfe declined with thanks, saying he had another engagement, which was a lie. He disliked all restaurants, and claimed that the one where General Fife lunched put sulphur in curried lamb. Fife and Shattuck went out together, without another word to Ryder.

Wolfe stood by Ryder’s desk, frowning down at him, waiting for him to look up. Finally Ryder did.

“I think,” Wolfe said, “that you’re a nincompoop. Not a conclusion, merely an opinion.”

“File it for reference,” Ryder said.

“I shall do so. Your brain is not functioning. Your son died. Captain Cross, one of your men, was killed. You are in no condition to make hard decisions. If you have an intelligent friend with a head that works, consult him. Or even a lawyer. Or me.”

“You?” Ryder said. “Now that would be good. That would be just fine.”

Wolfe lifted his shoulders a quarter of an inch, let them drop back into place, said, “Come, Archie,” and started for the door. I returned the suitcase to the chair where I had found it, and followed him. Sergeant Bruce glanced up as we passed through the anteroom. Wolfe ignored her. I halted at her desk and said, “I’ve got something in my eye.”

“That’s too bad,” she said and stood up. “Which eye? Let me see.” I thought, Good lord, where’s she been all these years, falling for that old gag? I bent over to stare into her eyes, not ten inches away, and she stared back into mine.

“I see it,” she said.

“Yeah? What is it?”

“It’s me. In both eyes. No way of getting it out.”

She sat down again and went on typing, absolutely deadpan. I had utterly misjudged her. “Okay,” I conceded, “you’re one up,” and dashed after Wolfe, and found him at the elevator.

There were about a dozen assorted questions I had in mind to ask him, with a chance of finding him inclined to supply at least some of the answers, but the opportunity never arrived. Of course en route was no good, with him in the back seat resenting. The minute we got home he beat it to the kitchen to give Fritz a hand with lunch. They were trying out some kind of a theory involving chicken fat and eggplant. At the table business was always taboo, so I had to listen to him explain why sustained chess-playing would ruin any good field general. Then, because he had missed his morning session up in the plant rooms with the orchids, he had to go up there, and I knew that was no place to start a conversation. I asked him if I should report back downtown, and he said no, he might need me, and since my orders were to nurse Nero Wolfe as required, I went into the office, on the ground floor, did some chores at my desk, and listened to news broadcasts.

At 3:25 the phone rang. It was General Fife. He instructed me, speaking to a subordinate, to deliver Nero Wolfe at his office at four o’clock. I informed him it wouldn’t work. He stated that I should make it work and rang off.

I called him back and said, “Listen. Sir. Do you want him or don’t you? I respectfully remind you that there is no way on God’s earth of getting him except for you, or at least a colonel, to speak to him and tell him what you want.”

“Damn him. Let me talk to him.”

I buzzed the plant room extension, got Wolfe, was told by him to listen in, and did so. It was nothing new. All Fife would say on the phone was that he must have a talk with Wolfe, together with Tinkham and Lawson and me, without delay. Wolfe finally said he’d go. When he came downstairs ten minutes later, I told him, on the way out to the car, “One item you may want, in case you’ve got it entered that it was something that was said this morning that made Ryder decide to go to Washington to see Carpenter. He already had his suitcase there packed.”

“I saw it. Confound the blasted Germans. Don’t let it give that jerk when you start. I’m in no humor for pleasantries.”

We were in the lobby at 17 Duncan Street at 8:55, a few minutes ahead of time. Absent-mindedly, from force of habit, I said “ten” to the elevator man, and it wasn’t until after we had got out at the tenth that I woke up. Fife’s office was on the eleventh. Wolfe was starting the usual rigmarole with the corporal. I said, “Hey, our mistake. We’re on the—”

I never finished, because it came at that instant. The noise wasn’t loud, certainly it wasn’t deafening, but there was something about it that hit you in the spine. Or maybe it wasn’t the noise, but the shaking of the building. Everybody agreed later that the building shook. I doubt it. Maybe it was something that happened to the air. Anyhow, for a second everything inside of me stopped working, and, judging from the look on the corporal’s face, him ditto. Then we both stared in all directions. But Wolfe had already started for the door leading to the inner corridor, barking at me, “It’s that thing. Didn’t I tell you?”

I beat him to the door with a skip and a jump, and closed it when we were through. In the corridor people, mostly in uniform, were looking out of doors, and popping out. Some were headed for the far end of the corridor, a couple of them running. Voices came from up ahead, and a curtain of smoke or dust, or both, came drifting toward us, pushing a sour sharp smell in front of it. We went on into it, to the end, and turned right.

It was one swell mess. It looked exactly like a blurred radiophoto with the caption, Our Troops Taking an Enemy Machine-Gun Nest in a Sicilian Village. Debris, crumbled plaster, a door hanging by one hinge, most of a wall gone, men in uniform looking grim. Standing in what had been the doorway, facing out, was Colonel Tinkham. When two men tried to push past him into what had been Ryder’s room, he barred the way and bellowed, “Stand back! Back to that corner!” They backed up, but only about five paces, where they bumped into Wolfe and me. Others were behind us and around us.

From the commotion in the rear one voice was suddenly heard above the others: “General Fife!”

A lane opened up, and in a moment Fife came striding through. At sight of him Tinkham moved forward from the doorway, and behind Tinkham, from within, came Lieutenant Lawson. They both saluted, which may sound silly, but somehow didn’t look silly. Fife returned it and asked, “What’s in there?”

Lawson spoke. “Colonel Ryder, sir.”

“Dead?”

“Good God, yes. All blown apart.”

“Anyone else hurt?”

“No, sir. No sign of anybody.”

“I’ll take a look. Tinkham, clear this hall. Everybody back where they belong. No one is to leave the premises.”

Nero Wolfe rumbled in my ear, “This confounded dust. And smell. Come, Archie.”

That was the only occasion I remember when he willingly climbed a flight of stairs. Not knowing what orders had already been given to the corporal by the elevators, he probably wanted to avoid delay. Nobody interfered with us, since going to the eleventh floor was not leaving the premises. He marched straight through the anteroom to General Fife’s office, with me at his heels, straight to the big leather chair with its back to a window, sat down, got himself properly adjusted, and told me:

“Telephone that place, wherever it is, and tell them to send some beer.”

Chapter 3

Our old friend and foe, Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Squad, tilted his cigar up from the corner of his mouth and again ran his eye over the sheet of paper in his hand. I had typed the thing myself from General Fife’s dictation. It read:

Colonel Harold Ryder of the United States Army was accidentally killed at four o’clock this afternoon when a grenade exploded in his office at 17 Duncan Street. It is not known exactly how the accident occurred. The grenade was of a new type, with great explosive power, not yet issued to our forces, and was in Colonel Ryder’s possession officially, in the line of duty. Colonel Ryder was attached to the New York unit of Military Intelligence headed by Brigadier General Mortimer Fife.

“Even so,” Cramer growled, “it’s pretty skimpy.”

Wolfe was still in the big leather chair, with three empty beer bottles on the window sill behind him. Fife was seated behind his desk. I had stepped across to hand Cramer the paper and then propped myself against the wall at ease.

“You may elaborate it as you see fit,” Fife suggested without enthusiasm. He looked a little bedraggled.

“Sure.” Cramer removed his cigar. “Elaborate it with what?” He waved it away with the cigar. “You’re an Army man. I’m a policeman. I’m paid by the City of New York to investigate sudden or suspicious death. So I need facts. Such as, where did the grenade come from and how did it get into his desk drawer? How much carelessness would it take to make it go off accidentally? Such as, can I see one like it? Military security says nothing doing. What I don’t know won’t hurt me. But it does hurt me.”

Fife said, “I let you bring your men in and go over it.”

“Damn sweet of you.” Cramer was really upset. “This building is not United States property and it’s in my borough, and you talk about letting me!” He waggled the sheet of paper. “Look here, General. You know how it is as well as I do. Ordinarily, if there was no background to this, I’d rub it out without a murmur. But Captain Cross was working under Ryder, that’s one fact I’ve got, and Cross was murdered. And right here in the building, here when it happened, and sitting here now in your office when I enter, is Nero Wolfe. I’ve known Wolfe for something like twenty years, and I’ll tell you this. Show me a corpse, any corpse, under the most ideal and innocent circumstances, with a certificate signed by every doctor in New York, including the Medical Examiner. Then show me Nero Wolfe anywhere within reach, exhibiting the faintest sign of interest, and I order the squad to go to work immediately.”

“Bosh.” Wolfe nearly opened his eyes. “Have I ever imposed on you, Mr. Cramer?”

“What!” Cramer goggled at him. “You’ve never done anything else!”

“Nonsense. At any rate, I’m not imposing on you now. All this is a waste of time. You know very well you can’t bulldoze the Army, especially not this branch of it.” Wolfe sighed. “I’ll do you a favor. I believe the mess down there hasn’t been disturbed. I’ll go down and take a look at it. I’ll consider the situation, what I know of it, which is more than you’re likely ever to find out. Tomorrow I’ll phone you and give you my opinion. How will that do?”

“And meanwhile?” Cramer demanded.

“Meanwhile you take your men out of here and stay out. I remind you of the opinion I gave you regarding Captain Cross.”

Cramer stuck his cigar back in his mouth and clamped his teeth on it, folded the paper and put it in his pocket, leaned back, and hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, with an air implying that he was there for the duration. He was glaring at Wolfe. Then he jerked forward in his chair and growled, “Phone me tonight.”

“No.” Wolfe was positive. “Tomorrow.”

Cramer regarded him three seconds more, then stood up and addressed General Fife. “I’ve got nothing against the Army. As an Army. We can’t fight a war without an Army. But it would suit me fine if the whole goddamn outfit would clear out of my borough and get on ships bound for Germany.” He turned and went.

Wolfe sighed again.

Fife pursed his lips and shook his head. “You can’t blame him.”

“No,” Wolfe agreed. “Mr. Cramer is constantly leaping at the throat of evil and finding himself holding on for dear life to the tip of its tail.”

“What?” Fife squinted at him. “Oh. I suppose so.” He got out his handkerchief and used it on his brow and face and neck, removing an old smear but producing new ones. He shot me a glance, and went back to Wolfe. “About Ryder. I’d rather discuss it with you privately.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not without Major Goodwin. I use his memory. Also for years I’ve found his presence an irritant which stimulates my cells. What about Ryder? Wasn’t it an accident?”

“I suppose it was. What do you think?”

“I haven’t thought. Nowhere to start. Could it have been an accident? If he took it from the drawer and it dropped on the floor?”

“No,” Fife declared. “Out of the question. Anyway, it was somewhere above the desk when it exploded. The desk top was smashed downward. And that pin is joltproof. It requires a sharp firm lateral pull.”

“Then it wasn’t an accident,” Wolfe said placidly. “Suicide remains, and so does— By the way, what about that woman in his anteroom? That female in uniform. Where was she?”

“Not there. Out to lunch.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s brows went up. “At four o’clock?”

“So she told Tinkham. He spoke with her when she returned. She’s waiting outside now. I sent for her.”

“Get her in here. And may I—?”

“Certainly.” Fife lifted his phone and spoke in it.

In a moment the door opened and Sergeant Bruce entered. She came in three steps, getting the three of us at a glance, stopped with her heels together, and snapped a salute. She appeared to be quite herself, only extremely solemn. She advanced when she was told to.

“This is Nero Wolfe,” Fife said. “He’ll ask you some questions, and you’ll answer as from me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sit down,” Wolfe told her. “Archie, if you’ll move that chair around? Excuse me, General, if I violate regulations, a major waiting on a sergeant, but I find it impossible to regard a woman as a soldier and don’t intend to try.” He looked at her. “Miss Bruce. That’s your name?”

“Yes, sir. Dorothy Bruce.”

“You were at lunch when that thing exploded?”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was as clear and composed as it had been when she told me she was in my eye.

“Is that your usual lunch hour? Four o’clock?”

“No, sir. Shall I explain?”

“Please. With a minimum of sirs. I am not a field marshal in disguise. Go ahead.”

“Yes, sir. I beg your pardon, that was automatic. I have no usual lunch hour. At Colonel Ryder’s request, I mean his order, I have been going to lunch whenever he did, so I would be on duty when he was in his office. Today he didn’t go to lunch — that is, I don’t think he did — at least he didn’t come out through the anteroom and let me know he was going, as he always had done. When he called me in at a quarter to four to give me some instructions, he asked if I had had lunch and said he had forgotten about it, and told me to go then. I went down to the corner drugstore and had a sandwich and coffee. I got back at twenty past four.”

Wolfe’s half-closed eyes never left her face. “The corner drugstore?” he inquired mildly. “Didn’t you hear the explosion or see any excitement?”

“No, sir. The drugstore is a block and a half away, around on Mitchell Street.”

“You say Colonel Ryder didn’t go to lunch? Was he constantly in his office right through to a quarter to four?”

“I think I qualified that. I said he didn’t come out through the anteroom. Of course he could have left by the other door at any time, the one direct from his room to the outer hall, and re-entered the same way. He often used that door.”

“Was that door kept locked?”

“Usually it was, yes, sir.” She hesitated. “Should I confine myself to the question?”

“We want information, Miss Bruce. If you have it we want it.”

“Only about that door. Colonel Ryder had a key to it, of course. But on two occasions I saw him, going out that way, intending to return soon, push the button that released the lock so that he could get back in without using the key. If you want details like that—”

“We do. Have you got some more?”

She shook her head. “No, sir. I only mentioned that because you asked if that door was kept locked.”

“Have you any idea how this thing happened?”

“Why—” Her eyes flickered. “I thought — I understand it was a grenade Colonel Ryder had in his desk.”

Fife shot at her, “How do you know it was a grenade?”

Her head pivoted to him. “Because, sir, everyone is saying that it was. If it was a secret — it isn’t now.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Wolfe said peevishly. “If you please, General. Have you any idea, Miss Bruce, how the grenade got exploded?”

“Certainly not! I mean — no, sir.”

“It is permissible to mean certainly not,” Wolfe murmured at her. “You know nothing whatever about it?”

“No, sir.”

“What were the instructions Colonel Ryder gave you at a quarter to four when he called you in?”

“Only routine matters. He said he was leaving for the day, and told me to sign the letters, and that he wouldn’t be in tomorrow and I should cancel any appointments he had.”

“That was all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were his confidential secretary?”

“Well — I don’t know how confidential I was. I have been here less than two weeks and had never met Colonel Ryder before. I suppose, really, for that sort of job, I was still on trial. I only came up from Washington ten days ago.”

“What had you been doing in Washington?”

“I was secretary to one of General Carpenter’s assistants. Lieutenant Colonel Adams.”

Wolfe grunted, and closed his eyes. Sergeant Bruce sat and waited. Fife had his lips pressed into a straighter line than usual, apparently restraining himself. He wasn’t accustomed to playing audience while someone else asked questions, but probably hadn’t forgotten the time Wolfe had made him look silly in front of three lieutenants and a private who had been tailing a distinguished visitor from Mexico. Wolfe grunted again, this time what I called his number-three grunt, which meant he was displeased, and I had no idea what had riled him. I thought Sergeant Bruce had been courteous, co-operative, and cute. Then he opened his eyes, shifted his center of gravity, and got his hands braced on the chair arms, and of course that explained it. He was displeased because he had decided he was going to stand up.

He did so, rumbling, “That’s all for the present, Miss Bruce. You’ll be available, of course. As you know, General, I promised Mr. Cramer I’d take a look at the ruins. Come, Archie.” He took a step. But Fife stopped him:

“Just a minute, please. All right, Bruce, you may go.”

She arose, hesitated a moment, then faced the general. “May I ask you something, sir?”

“Yes. What?”

“They won’t let me take anything from my room, sir. I have some things — just personal belongings — I was away over the week-end and came direct to the office from the station this morning. Colonel Ryder gave me a passout — but I suppose it isn’t valid — now.”

“All right, go ahead.” Fife sounded fed up. “I’ll send instructions to Colonel Tinkham— By the way—” He squinted at her. “You have no office and no job. Temporarily. You sound intelligent and capable. Are you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The devil you are. We’ll see. Report in my anteroom tomorrow morning. If you have favorite tools, bring them with you. You’d better get them out of there now, that place will be cleaned up tonight. Tell Colonel Tinkham — no, I’ll tell him. You may go.”

She saluted, whirled, and went out like a soldier.

Fife waited until the door had closed behind her before he spoke to Wolfe. “You were saying something. Before we had Bruce come in.”

“Nothing of importance.” Wolfe was curt, as always when he talked standing up. “Accident, no. Suicide, possibly. Murder? It appears that anyone might have entered that room when Ryder wasn’t there, without being observed, since Ryder might have gone out by the hall door and left it unlocked.”

“Entered? And then what?”

“Oh, as his fancy struck him. Got the grenade from the desk. Took it away. Later, when Miss Bruce left, entered the anteroom, opened the door there into Ryder’s room, pulled the pin from the grenade, tossed it at Ryder, and pumped back into the hall. That, of course, raises the interesting point that presumably only six people knew the grenade was there: Tinkham, Lawson, Shattuck, you, Goodwin, me. I know of nothing that eliminates anyone but the last two. Take you, for instance. You’ve been here all afternoon?”

Fife’s lips tightened in a grim smile. “That’s a good plan; start at the top. Yes, I’ve been here, but I’m afraid I can’t prove I haven’t left this room. Shattuck came back with me after lunch, but he left around two-thirty. Then I dictated for half an hour, but after that I guess you have me.”

Wolfe grunted. “Bah! This is nothing but gibberish, as it stands now. I’ll run down and take a look.”

He stalked out and I followed. As I was pulling the front door to, softly since it was a general’s door, I heard Fife at his phone asking for Colonel Tinkham.

There was delay down on the tenth floor, at the scene. In what had been the doorway to Colonel Ryder’s room from the hall stood a corporal with accouterments. The fact that he would have weighed over 200 even without the accouterments made it seem all the more formidable when he said no one could enter, including us. When Wolfe told me to go and get Fife and haul him down there, I stalled; and, as I expected, in a minute Colonel Tinkham arrived to tell the corporal it was okay, orders from General Fife. Then Tinkham joined our party by preceding us into the shambles. Wolfe asked him if anything had been taken out, and Tinkham said no, the police had given it a good going over but hadn’t been permitted to remove anything, and neither had anyone else.

It was still broad daylight in that corner room, with a nice breeze from the windows, since there was no glass left in them. As we looked things over, stepping to avoid chunks of plaster and similar obstructions, various details were worthy of note. By a freak of the blast, the partition to the hall was a wreck, but the one to the anteroom only had a couple of cracks. The door to the anteroom was standing open, and looked intact but a little cockeyed. Two of the chairs were nothing but splinters, four were battered and scarred, and Ryder’s own chair, against the wall back of his desk, didn’t have a mark. The desk top was smashed and pockmarked, as if someone had first dropped a two-ton weight on it and then used it for a target with a shotgun loaded with slugs. On it and all around that area were bloodstains, from single drops up to a big blob the size of a dishpan on the floor back of the desk. The remains of the suitcase and its contents, also on the floor, were over near the door to the anteroom, the contents strewn around, the suitcase twisted and riddled so that for a second I didn’t recognize it. Everywhere, in all directions, were little pieces of metal, as small as the head of a pin or as big as a thumbnail, black on one side and pink on the other. Anyone anywhere in that room when the thing exploded would have stopped at least a dozen of them — and they would have stopped him. I dropped a couple in my pocket to add to my collection in a drawer at home.

I also acquired another souvenir. A piece of folded paper in the jumble of the contents of the suitcase looked familiar. Wolfe and Tinkham were at the other side of the room. I stooped and snared the paper, saw at a glance that it was the anonymous letter to Shattuck that had started the morning’s conference, and slipped it into my inside breast pocket.

We were still poking around, observing and commenting, and Tinkham was still acting as chaperon, when I became aware that company had arrived next door. I stepped through to the anteroom. Sergeant Bruce was standing there, frowning at a tennis racket she held in her hand.

“Damaged?” I inquired brightly.

“No, sir.”

Nuts, I thought, this sir stuff is worse than a suit of armor. She put the racket into a fiber shipping carton that stood on the floor with its end flaps open, and moved around behind her desk. The place was thick with dust, and things were displaced, but nothing seemed to be hurt much.

“Can I help?”

“No, sir, thanks.”

Some day, I said to myself grimly, or rather to her but not audibly, matters will be so arranged that, whether you’re worth it or not, sir will be as far from your mind as—

“Archie!” It was a bellow.

“At ease,” I told her gruffly, and faded.

Wolfe and Tinkham were at the other end of the room, over by the corporal.

“Take me home,” Wolfe said.

There was never any dillydallying when Wolfe had decided to go home. The look on Tinkham’s face gave me the impression that he either had some questions he would like to ask, or that he had got no answers to some he had already asked, but all he did get was a request from Wolfe to inform General Fife that he would communicate with him in the morning.

There was a crowd down on the sidewalk, and a bigger one across the street. Any broken glass that had descended from the tenth floor two hours ago had been cleaned up. As we made our way through to where the car was parked, I heard a man tell a girl, “A big bomb exploded and killed eighty people and two generals.” That was a little surprising, but driving home, going up Varick Street, Wolfe said something that was much more so. From the back seat he told me plainly, “Go a little faster, Archie.” That flammed me. As I said, he never talked while undergoing the hazards of motorized movement, and him asking for more speed was about the same as a private asking for more K.P. Anyhow, I obliged.

He muttered under his breath, probably a prayer of thanks, as we stopped in front of the house, and then, as I opened my door and started to wriggle from behind the wheel, he spoke. “Don’t get out. You’re going somewhere.”

“Oh. I am.”

“Yes. Back downtown. General Fife said that place will be cleaned up tonight. They may start at any moment, and I want that suitcase. Get it and bring it here. Just the case. I don’t want the contents. Exactly as it is; don’t bend it or do any tampering with it.”

I had twisted around to glare at him. He had opened his door and was climbing out. “You mean,” I demanded, “Ryder’s suitcase?”

“I do.” He was on the sidewalk. “It’s important. Also it is doubly important that no one should see you taking it. Especially Lieutenant Lawson, Colonel Tinkham, General Fife, or Miss Bruce, but preferably no one.”

I seldom sputter, but I sputtered. “That suitcase — from under their noses — listen. Will you settle for the moon? Glad to get the moon for you. Do you realize—”

“Certainly I realize. It’s a difficult errand. I doubt if there is another man anywhere, in the Army or out, who could safely be entrusted with it.”

He sure wanted that suitcase, to be ladling it out like that.

“Bushwah,” I said, and opened my door and crawled out, and headed for the stoop.

He snapped after me. “Where are you going?”

“To get a receptacle!” I called over my shoulder. “Do you think I’m going to hang it around my neck?”

Three minutes later I was on my way back to Duncan Street, the rear seat occupied not by Wolfe but by a man-size suitcase that I had got from the closet in his room. I had one of my own just as big, but I wasn’t going to risk my personal property in addition to my career as a warrior. I was sorry I hadn’t read up more fully on the regulations about courts-martial. Not that I wasted the minutes en route being sorry. I used them to consider ways and means. My watch said 6:30, and at that hour of the day I couldn’t tell what I would be up against until I had executed a patrol. You never knew around there; anyone might be out or in; anyone might leave for the day any time between four and midnight. I had my mind started on about three and a half different plans, but by the time I got to Duncan Street I had decided that I couldn’t lay out a campaign until I had looked the ground over and done a reconnaissance on the enemy.

On the tenth floor I returned the corporal’s salute, indicating by my posture that the receptable, in my left hand, was a little hefty, assumed an urgent expression, and asked him if he had seen Lieutenant Lawson go out.

“Yes, sir. He left about twenty minutes ago.”

“Damn it. Colonel Tinkham too?”

“No, sir. I think he’s in his office.”

“Have you seen General Fife around?”

“Not for an hour or more, sir. He may be upstairs.”

I breezed through to the inner corridor. No one in sight. The door to my room was about twenty paces down normally, and it took me not more than fourteen. Inside I took a breath, and deposited the big suitcase on my desk. It began to seem more possible. Like this. I go to the scene and tell the corporal Nero Wolfe sent me back to do a close-up on something. I enter and examine the top of Ryder’s desk with my little glass. I make noises of dissatisfaction and tell the corporal to go ask Major Goodman if I may borrow his big magnifying glass, Goodman’s office being on the eleventh floor. The corporal goes, I grab the suitcase, dive down the hall to my room, and cache it in Wolfe’s case. That would be the only risk, the five seconds negotiating the hall. The rest would be pie. I turned it over and around, looking for a way to reduce the risk still more, but decided that was the minimum.

I got the little glass from a drawer of my desk and stuck it in my pocket, went out and down the corridor, turned the corner, saw that the same corporal was on guard and no one else around, said my little piece to him, was passed in without any question, crossed to Ryder’s desk, and began inspecting it with the glass. But my heart wasn’t in my work because I had had plenty of time, approaching the desk, to perceive that the suitcase wasn’t there.

Chapter 4

I continued to inspect the desk, remarking to myself meanwhile, “Of all the blank blink blonk blunk luck.”

Since nothing more helpful than that occurred to me, I finally straightened up for a comprehensive survey. As far as I could see, everything was as before with the single exception of the suitcase. I went over to the corporal.

“Anyone been in here since Colonel Tinkham and Wolfe and I left?”

“No, sir. Oh yes, Colonel Tinkham came back shortly afterward. General Fife was with him.”

“Oh,” I said casually, “then I guess they took that chair.”

“Chair?”

“Yeah, one of the chairs Wolfe wanted me to examine — it seems to be gone — I’ll go and see—”

“There can’t be a chair gone, sir. Nobody took any chair or anything else.”

“You’re sure of that? Not even General Fife or Colonel Tinkham?”

“No, sir. Nobody.”

I grinned at him. “If I was Nero Wolfe, corporal, which I’m not, I would advise you to confine your assurances to the boundaries of your knowledge. That’s his way of putting it. You say positively that nobody took anything. But I notice you stand here in the doorway facing the hall, your back to the room. There’s no glass left in the windows. How do you know a paratrooper didn’t come in that way and take anything he wanted?”

For half a second he looked slightly startled, and for the next half a second the look in his eyes plainly indicated what he would have said, and probably done, if we had been just people instead of a corporal and a major. All he did say was “Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” I told him as man to man. “Probably I counted wrong. Skip it. I always get mixed up when I go above six.”

I went down the corridor to my room, sat on the edge of my desk, and applied logic. Of course it was obvious, if the corporal wasn’t either blind or a liar. Mental operations like figuring the cube root of minus two I leave to Nero Wolfe, but I can do simple addition and subtraction. So I pulled the phone over and got Captain Foster, in charge of personnel, and asked him for the home address of Sergeant Dorothy Bruce.

He was inclined to be flippant, but I told him the request was official and he loosened up. The Bronx or Brooklyn would have been a blow, since I was taking the trip not on information or a hunch, but only on logic, and I was relieved when he gave me a number on West Eleventh Street. That was right on the way home. Toting the receptacle which apparently I had brought along just for the ride, I evacuated via the elevator, went to the car, and started back uptown.

The Eleventh Street number was the only modern structure in a block of old brownstones. Leaving the receptacle in the car, I entered and brushed past the hallman in a military stride, columned left on a guess, spied the elevator, and said brusquely to the girl loitering outside, “Bruce.” Manifestly I was not a man to be questioned. She followed me in and started us up, stopped and opened the door at the seventh, and said musically, “Seven C.” I found it, the second on the right down the hall, pushed the button, and after a little wait the door opened. But it swung only to a gap of a few inches, so as a precaution I unobtrusively planted a foot beyond the line of the sill.

“Oh!” she said in a tone of surprise. I didn’t say pleased surprise. “Major Goodwin!”

“Right,” I said cheerfully. “You sure have a memory for faces. My eye’s bothering me again.”

“That’s too bad, sir.” She seemed perfectly affable, but the door showed no inclination to exercise its hinges. “As I told you, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Not in this bum light you can’t. Nice little place you’ve got here. Are these your own things, or do you rent it furnished? Some of them must be yours. It just looks like you.”

“Oh, thank you, sir. It’s the woman’s touch, of course.”

“Yeah. I never saw a more attractive door. I’ll tell you what. I could say, Sergeant Bruce, I wish to come in and have a little talk with you. Or I could simply push and enter. Let’s compromise. You propel the door and I’ll propel me.”

She nearly laughed, but it didn’t get beyond a sort of a chuckle. Anyhow the door swung open and she invited me nicely, “Come in, Major.” Also she closed it. The foyer was about the size of a suitcase. At a gesture I preceded her into a room which wasn’t like her at all because it wasn’t like anybody. Pure month-to-month-or-reduction-on-a-lease. Two windows. A couch and three chairs. Door to kitchenette and door to bedroom. A glance gave me that, and when I turned she was there and smiling at me. It was absolutely a female smile, and at any previous moment I would have considered it a big step forward, but something had come between us if logic was worth its salt. Still I kept it on a friendly basis.

I asked her, “Remember that carton you were packing your things in at the office? I need one exactly that size, and if you’re through with it I’d like to make an offer.”

She was good. She was very good. The way the smile went and her lips parted a little and her eyes widened — it was just what you would expect if I had said something fairly silly and unquestionably cuckoo.

Then she smiled again and said, “I can get one for you wholesale.”

I shook my head. “Your mistake. You didn’t say sir. The idea is this. I won’t be happy until I see that carton, and I’m hell-bent for happiness. Either you trot it out or I tour the place. You can save me trouble and both of us time.”

“Is that an official command, sir? Are you here as my superior officer or as — yourself?”

“Any way you like it. Whichever you prefer. Take it going and coming and call it both, but get the carton.”

She moved. To get to the door to the bedroom she had to detour around me, which she did, and disappeared through the opening. But I had decided that probably not much was beyond her up to sailing off on a broomstick, so I stepped across on my toes to the doorway to keep her in sight. But either I made some noise or she was suspicious by nature, because halfway across the bedroom she turned and saw me. She came back and took hold of the knob of the door, obviously intending to close it when the obstruction, namely me, was removed.

“You can wait out there,” she said, and meant it. “I’ll bring the carton.”

I was not particularly enjoying things, and it was getting too prolonged for me. Evidently she had been headed for a closed closet door at the far corner of the room. I stepped past her, rounded the foot of the bed and got to the door, and pulled it open. I admit I was surprised enough to back up two steps when a uniform, erect in the closet, moved toward me, and there was Lieutenant Kenneth Lawson. He came out and stood and looked at me. He didn’t salute.

“Indeed,” I said. That was Nero Wolfe’s word, and I never used it except in moments of stress, and it severely annoyed me when I caught myself using it, because when I look in a mirror I prefer to see me as is, with no skin grafted from anybody else’s hide, even Nero Wolfe’s.

Lawson, as I have said, was big and strong and handsome. The situation, as it stood, seemed to indicate that anything was possible, and I had no desire to join Cross and Ryder on the other side of the river, so I backed into the closet with the door opened as wide as it would go. It wasn’t necessary to do any searching. The carton was right there, bound with cord. I yanked it out, jerked off the cord, lifted the flaps, and was looking at shredded pigskin. For logic, one hit, one run, no errors. I closed the flaps and got the cord back on. Among other things I didn’t know, at that point, was whether Lawson was there on purely personal business or whether he was a partner in the enterprise of salvaging damaged luggage, so the position was delicate in more ways than one.

Lawson said, with no special sign of agitation, “I heard Bruce ask you — and it might clear things up a little — is this an official visit, Major?”

After all, he had me. Wolfe had told me to get the suitcase without the knowledge of Fife, and Fife was my commanding officer. My ignorance was stupendous. Was Lawson straight and would he report to Fife? Was Lawson a crook or a murderer, or both — and would he report to Fife anyway to cover up? Were Lawson and Sergeant Bruce— But there was no sense standing there all night asking myself questions I couldn’t answer, with them staring at me.

I spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen. I have been assigned, as you know, to assist Nero Wolfe in work he is doing for the Army. I’m now going to report to him, and take this carton with me. Up to there, as far as you’re concerned, since you’re only a non-com and a shavetail, we can put it that the only difference between General Eisenhower and me is that he’s not here. But beyond that we’re just folks. If on my way out Lawson tries to trip me or hit me with a chair I won’t appeal to authority, now or later. I’ll merely knock his block off.”

A corner of Lawson’s mouth was turned up. “I wasn’t going to be so crude,” he said coldly, “but now I don’t know.”

“Make up your mind, brother,” I told him, and focused on Sergeant Bruce. “So I offer a suggestion. Not an order from Major Goodwin, just a person-to-person call. How about accompanying the carton and me to Wolfe’s place? I’ve got a car down in front. The trip might do you good.”

If she had flashed a glance at Lawson that would have answered at least one of my questions, but all she did was cock her head at me.

“I think,” she said, “that I ought to tell you you’ll probably be sorry for this, Major.”

“I already am. I don’t like any part of it. Are you coming?”

“Certainly. That carton and its contents belong to me.” She moved, crossing to Lawson and putting her hand on his arm. “Ken darling, this is nothing. Really. But I’m afraid — I don’t know how long it will take. I’ll phone you later. And perhaps you had better phone my sister in Washington — right away.”

“I could,” he growled, “wring him out and hang him up to dry.”

“I’m sure you could.” She patted his arm. “But you behave yourself. There’s more than one way to — cure a cold. Phone me later, Ken?”

“I will.”

“Be sure the door’s locked when you leave. Are we going, Major?”

Lawson didn’t move a muscle as I passed him, with the carton in the hand nearest him, so the other hand would be free in case he decided to show her how big and brave he was. But either she was the boss and he was obeying orders, or he wanted to be alone to think. I signified that she, being a lady, should go first, and she did so, stopping in the other room only to get her peck-measure cap from the table, and letting me close the door after us and push the button for the elevator as if she enjoyed having a male escort attend to such details.

On the street, I put the carton in the rear and her in the front, went around and slid in behind the wheel, beside her, and got going. No conversation. Apparently there wasn’t going to be any. But as I waited for a light at Twenty-Third Street, suddenly she spoke.

“I wonder if you’d like to do me a little favor.”

“I doubt it. What? Want me to phone your sister in Washington?”

She made a little noise, between a chuckle and a gurgle. Three hours earlier I would have thought it very attractive. “No,” she said, “nothing as complicated as that. Just to stop a minute, anywhere there’s a place at the curb, so I can ask you something.”

The light changed and we rolled. A block farther on a roomy space came in view, and I steered into it and shut off the engine.

“Okay. Ask me something.”

“I hope your eye feels better.”

Her tone made it plain that it was not a sergeant speaking to a major. It abolished all consideration of worldly rank and superficial barriers. Not that it conveyed the impression that she intended to seduce me right there on Sixth Avenue in the midst of traffic, but it did indicate that a closer understanding between the two of us would be a natural and wholesome development.

I said, “It feels fine. That all?”

“No. I wish it was.” She was turned to me full face, and I was reciprocating. “I wish there was nothing, I mean with you and me, except silly little pleasant things like that. Don’t think I’m being obvious. I’m just clever enough, just barely, to know how clever you are. If I were a fool, I might think I could start your head whirling in no time, parked here on our way to Nero Wolfe, but I know better than to try idiotic tricks with you.”

I grinned at her. “You do know how to handle your lips and eyes, though. And especially your voice. Which you were going to use to ask me something.”

She nodded. “Tell me, does Nero Wolfe want that carton just to see if I took something that doesn’t belong to me?”

“No.” I couldn’t see that hedging was called for. “He doesn’t want it at all. What he wants is Colonel Ryder’s suitcase. Evidently you do too. I guess you’ll have to draw straws for it. That all?”

“Oh, my lord.” She was frowning. “This is an awful fix. But he doesn’t know that you’re bringing it — that you’ve got it.”

“Sure he does.”

“He can’t. You’ve had no chance to tell him you found it.”

“But he knows he sent me for it, therefore he knows it’s on the way or soon will be.”

She shook her head. “You never let up, do you?” Her tone implied that she would love to come out and play after she got her work done. “Of course he can’t be sure. He couldn’t have known I took it, and what if I had put it somewhere else? Which I would have done if I had used my brains, knowing you were around.” She put her hand on my arm, not as for any purpose, just sort of involuntarily, as though it belonged there. She smiled at me as at a comrade. “I suppose you’d be surprised if I offered to give you ten thousand dollars for that carton — and what’s in it — with the understanding that you forget all about it. Wouldn’t you?”

I batted an eye. “I’d be simply dumbfounded.”

“But you’d soon recover. And then what would you say?”

“Well, gosh.” I patted her hand, which was still on my arm. “That would depend. If it was just conversation, I’d think of something appropriate to keep my end going, and start up the car and proceed. If you actually confronted me with the engravings, I’d have to see how I reacted.”

She smiled. “It isn’t likely I’d carry around a wad like that.”

“Certainly not. So forget it.” I started my hand for the dash.

But her hand held my arm. “Wait. You’re too impulsive. It’s a bona fide offer. Ten thousand.”

“Cash?”

“Yes.”

“When and where?”

“I think—” she hesitated. “I can have it in twenty-four hours. A little sooner. Tomorrow afternoon.”

“And meanwhile, the carton?”

“The Day and Night Bank. In safekeeping for joint withdrawal only. We shake hands to pledge good faith.”

I admired her visibly. It showed in my tone too. “Didn’t I see you once walking the high wire at the circus? Maybe it was your sister. Looky. I suppose I could be had, but it isn’t practical. Nero Wolfe would be sure to find out — he finds out everything in the long run — and he’d be sure to tell my poor old mother. If it wasn’t for my mother I’d snap at it. I promised her once I’d never sell out for less than a million. The mortgage on the old farm happens to be a million even.”

I started the engine and eased away from the curb into the traffic. She made no attempt to dangle the bait or put on another worm, and if she had I probably wouldn’t have heard her. Several things had me guessing, and the one at the top of the list was the suitcase. Wolfe had said it was important, and here was this lovely innocent creature offering ten thousand bucks for it, when as far as I could see a reasonable OPA ceiling on it would have been twenty cents at the outside. It irritated me to be $9,999.80 out in my calculations, and since when I’m irritated I have a tendency to feed more gas, the remainder of the trip to Wolfe’s place on 35th Street was a mere step.

It was only half an hour to dinner time, and I expected to find Wolfe in the kitchen supervising experiments, but he was hard at work at his desk in the office, rearranging field commanders probably, on his battle map of Russia. When we entered he kept right on.

Bruce said, “So this is Nero Wolfe’s office,” and looked around, at the leather chairs, the big globe, the shelves of books, the old-fashioned two-ton safe, the little bracket where he always had one orchid in bloom. I removed the cord from the carton, opened the flaps, got a grip on a section of the frame of the suitcase, pulled gently but firmly, got it out, and put it on a chair because the map was covering his desk. There were other items in the carton — papers and miscellany — but I stowed it over by the wall without disturbing them.

“Ah, you got it.” Wolfe said, finally looking up. “Satisfactory. But evidently not unobserved. Did Miss Bruce come along to help you carry it?”

“No. She came because she can’t bear to have it out of her sight. I went for it and it wasn’t there. Gone. The corporal said nobody had taken anything. So since nobody had taken it, but it was gone, I figured that nobody couldn’t be anybody but Sergeant Bruce. I had seen her in the anteroom packing things in a carton, and with the suitcase there on the floor only two steps from the door to the anteroom, and the corporal’s back turned, it would have been a cinch for her and impossible for anyone else. Getting the address of her apartment and going there — two rooms, kitchenette and bath — I found the suitcase in the carton in the bedroom closet. Also in the closet was Lieutenant Lawson. Alive and well.”

“The deuce he was.” Wolfe leaned back and let his eyelids down a little. “Won’t you be seated, Miss Bruce? No, that chair, if you don’t mind.”

The lovely innocent creature sat.

I resumed. “I didn’t know whether Lawson was there as a cavalier or a porter or what. The conversation didn’t light that up, except that she called him ‘Ken darling.’ So I left him and brought her and it. On the way here she made me a cash offer for the carton and contents — ten thousand dollars by tomorrow afternoon — and me erasing it from my mind. I think she’ll pay more if you press her, but I didn’t want to haggle because she had her hand on my arm. If you don’t close with her, I’ll give you a dime for it.”

Wolfe grunted. “Her offer was for the carton and contents? What else is in it?”

“I haven’t looked.”

“Do so.”

I picked it up and fished out the papers and miscellany, piling them on my desk. It was a thin crop — tennis racket, empty handbag, pair of stockings, a copy of Is Germany Incurable?, a jar of cream, other similar items. There was nothing among the papers to quicken my pulse — a copy of Army Regulations, four issues of Yank, a dozen or so G.I. postcards. I flipped the pages of the Regulations, and when a folded sheet of paper fluttered out I picked it up and unfolded it. It had typewriting on one side:

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

There was more of it. “This may be something,” I told Wolfe. “Where’s Innisfree?”

He was scowling at me. “What?”

“She writes poetry.” I placed the sheet on the desk before him, stepping around so I could finish reading it. “She’s going to Innisfree and build a cabin and start a victory garden and keep bees. Maybe there’s more clues in it.” I read on:

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

“Defeatist,” I declare. “Peace propaganda. Stop the war. And you notice—”

Wolfe cut me off. “Pfui. It was written fifty years ago, by Yeats.” He wiggled a finger at the stack of junk on my desk. “Nothing in that?”

But I had perceived something which apparently he had missed. “Nevertheless,” I insisted, “it reminds me of something.” With my back to Sergeant Bruce, to obstruct her view I took from my pocket the piece of paper I had retrieved from the debris in Ryder’s office, the anonymous letter Shattuck had got, unfolded it, and placed it on the desk beside the poem.

“And this wasn’t written by Yeats, at least I don’t think it was.” As I talked I pointed to similarities of detail on the two sheets — the c below the line, the a off to the left, and others. “Of course it may be only an interesting coincidence, but it certainly stares you in the face.”

“It is interesting,” Wolfe conceded grudgingly. He was jealous because I had spotted it first. He got a magnifying glass from a drawer and examined the two sheets alternately. I shrugged and circled around to my chair and sat down. If he thought Bruce was too dumb to grasp the significance of a comparison of typescripts, time would teach him. But in a moment it became evident that he was doing it deliberately. He put the glass away and nodded at me approvingly.

“Your eye is still good, Archie. Unquestionably the same.”

“Much obliged.” I took the hint and fired another round. “If you’re going to sic the dogs on it, a good place to start might be a portable Underwood I saw in her apartment.”

He nodded again. “An excellent idea. This raises the point, regarding the generous offer she made you, what was she after, primarily? The suitcase, or this piece of typing, or both?”

“Or neither?” Sergeant Bruce suggested.

We both looked at her. She appeared, and sounded, totally unruffled and slightly amused.

“Neither?” Wolfe demanded.

She smiled at him. “Primarily, neither, Mr. Wolfe. Primarily, I was after you. The offer to Major Goodwin was just a little experiment, to test his loyalty to you. He mentioned a million as a joke, but you know quite well a million dollars is only a fraction of the total sum involved — or that will be involved. And certainly the services you are in a position to render will be well worth a fraction of the whole. Or, possibly, two fractions.”

Chapter 5

About ten years ago a guy named Hallowell showed up at the office one evening with a canvas zipper bag containing a hundred and fifty thousand simoleons in fifties and centuries, with which he intended to short-circuit an electric current of two thousand volts which Wolfe was arranging for him to take sitting down, but that was only chicken feed compared to this. And, considering the secluded nature of the transaction, no income tax. A million dollars would buy four million bottles of the best beer.

Wolfe was leaning back in his chair, his eyes closed, his lips pushing out and in, out and in again. I was gazing straight at Bruce’s face, impersonally, pondering the soundness of her assumption that Wolfe was worth a hundred times as much as me.

“I shouldn’t think,” the lovely innocent creature said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you would want to waste time on trivialities. Major Goodwin’s guess happens to be correct — I typed that poem on my portable, from a book I had borrowed, because I liked it. And I suppose— Would you care to tell me what you were comparing it with?”

Wolfe muttered, without opening his eyes, “A letter Mr. Shattuck received.”

She nodded. “Yes, that was typed on the same machine. And over thirty letters just like it, to different people in key positions. As you have doubtless already discovered, this affair is extremely complicated. It goes high, and it spreads wide. It really isn’t worthy of you, Mr. Wolfe, to be wasting your talents on little details like that letter and Colonel Ryder’s suitcase. We have been intending for some time to have a talk with you, awaiting the proper moment — and now of course you’ve forced us, with this suitcase business. We realize it will be very difficult to arrange. There will have to be mutual guarantees. Commitments of a kind that will make reconsideration impossible on either side. We’re ready to discuss it whenever you are.”

Wolfe’s eyelids raised enough to show slits. “I like your dismissing the suitcase as a triviality, Miss Bruce. But if that’s your whim— I suppose it would be futile for me to question you about it, or about this letter?”

“Such a waste of time,” she protested.

“I presume it would be,” he agreed. “But the suitcase is in my possession, and you admit that’s what forced your hand. As for your offer to hire me, the difficulties seem almost insurmountable. For instance, you speak of ‘we.’ Much too vague, that is. I could discuss such a matter only with the principals, and how can they be disclosed to me, with the risk that as soon as I learn their identity I’ll betray them?”

She shook her head, frowning at him. “You don’t understand, Mr. Wolfe. The principals, as you call them, are above any risk of betrayal. As I said, this goes high. But even so, we have to use discretion, because we don’t want—”

The phone ringing interrupted her. I got it at my desk, and was informed that Washington was calling Nero Wolfe. I asked who was calling, and after a wait was told General Carpenter. I said to hold the wire, scribbled Gen. Carp, on my pad, and got up to hand it to Wolfe.

After a glance he turned it face down on his desk, and said politely to Bruce, “Mr. Goodwin will take you up and show you the orchids.”

“If it’s Lieutenant Lawson—” she began.

“Come on,” I told her, “maybe you can worm it out of me.”

It was hot in the plant rooms. I was sweating and she was a little flushed from the climb. Horstmann came trotting out, and I explained I was showing a guest around. I told her it was a little cooler in the potting-room, but she said no, she wanted to look at the plants, so I decided the best way to keep my mind off of the pleasing possibility of wringing her neck was to tell her the Latin names of the orchids. I did state that I would personally prefer to go to the potting-room, but couldn’t, because if I left her alone she would swipe some of the plants to bribe people with. She flashed an appreciative glance at me and made her little noise, half gurgle and half chuckle, as if she did so enjoy my amusing remarks.

We were in the third room, where the germinating flasks were, when I heard the phone ringing in the potting-room, and went there to get it. I told it, “Goodwin speaking.”

Wolfe’s voice said, “Send Miss Bruce down here.”

“You mean bring her down?”

“No. You are under the handicap of having sworn your oath as an officer in the Army. I am not. This may turn out to be a little delicate. I’d better talk with her privately.”

Something more for me not to know. I sure was on the inside. I went and passed the word to Bruce and opened the doors for her through to the stairs. She descended. Going down one flight to my room, I couldn’t see anything to interfere with rinsing the figure, so I stripped and stepped into the shower. Ordinarily I find that a good environment for sorting out my mind and fitting pieces together, but since in this case I was being stiff-armed clear off the field into the bleachers, I left the brain at ease and had a good time admiring my muscles and the hair on my chest. I was tying my good shoe laces when Fritz called up to say dinner was ready.

When I got downstairs, Wolfe was standing in the hall just outside the dining-room door. He waited till I approached, then turned and entered. We sat at the table.

“No company?” I inquired courteously. “Our new employer?”

“Miss Bruce went,” he said.

Fritz came in with an earthenware pot on a serving platter, deposited it on the table in front of Wolfe, and lifted the lid. Steam and smell emerged and floated with the currents of air. Wolfe sniffed, leaned forward and sniffed again.

“Creole tripe,” he said, “without the salt pork and pigs’ feet. I’m anxious to see what you think.” He inserted a serving spoon, releasing a fresh spurt of steam.

We had got started late, so it was along toward ten o’clock when we finished with coffee and went to the office. The stuff from the carton that I had piled on my desk was gone, and so was the carton. The map of Russia had been put away. The suitcase was still there on the chair. Instructed by Wolfe to put it in a safe place, I locked it in the closet, since it was too big for the safe. Wolfe was in his chair behind his desk, leaning back with his finger tips meeting at the spot where the ends of no one-yard tape measure would ever meet again. A book he was reading, Under Cover, by John Roy Carlson, was there on his desk, but he hadn’t picked it up. I took a seat at my own desk and spoke.

“I’d hate to spoil anybody’s fun,” I said, “and I don’t like to intrude a personal note, but it occurred to me some time ago that if Lawson is on the square and reports to his superiors that I called on Sergeant Bruce and kidnapped that carton, there’ll be hell to pay.”

Wolfe sighed. “You caught him hiding in a closet.”

“Even so,” I persisted.

“And surely he wouldn’t do anything that might get Miss Bruce into trouble.”

“No? What if he’s on the square, and onto her, and playing her? Under orders from Ryder, or from Fife himself? Or Tinkham? You know how that outfit works. No matter who’s behind you, always keep an eye over your shoulder.”

Wolfe shook his head. “You know better than that, Archie. You have met Miss Bruce. Lieutenant Lawson lead that woman by the nose? Nonsense.”

“I suppose,” I said pointedly, “she must have explained to you where Lawson fits in. Naturally you wouldn’t overlook a detail like that. Lawson Senior is one of the principals maybe?”

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.

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. 1 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 ran 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?”

“Secluded roads in the park.”

“Yes, sir.” We rolled on down the incline.

“The reason you shouted,” Wolfe went on to Shattuck, “was because the first glimmer of a fact darted into your brain — the fact that you are fighting for your life. That was a mean trick I played you in my office. You had seen the grenade on my desk. You were told that a person who thought I was endangering her safety had been in there alone for seven minutes, had departed, and the grenade had disappeared. The most vivid impression your mind held at that moment was the memory of what you yourself had done the day before with a grenade like that one. When Major Goodwin began pulling drawers open — the grenade trap, just like the one you had set, might have been in any of them — control of your involuntary processes was out of the question. When I told him to open the suitcase — it’s a pity you couldn’t have seen yourself. It was magnificent — better, really, than if you had leaped screaming to your feet and fled from the room.

“Archie, confound it, can’t you see a hole?

“What you want, of course, is to learn how much I know. How much General Carpenter knows. I’m not going to tell you. You got in this car with me to match your wits against mine. Abandon the attempt. If we met on equal terms, there’s no telling what the score would be, but we don’t. I am free and safe; you are a doomed man. You’re cornered, with no space to maneuver.”

“I’m letting you talk,” Shattuck said. “You’re talking drivel.”

We entered Van Cortlandt Park.

Wolfe ignored his remark. “A crook is not always a fool,” Wolfe said. “As you know, Mr. Shattuck, there are men in high places in public life, even as high as yours, who are venal, dishonest and betrayers of trust, and who yet will die peacefully in their beds, surrounded with tokens of respect, their chief regret being that they will be unable to read the glowing obituaries the following day. You might have been one of them. From the tremendous backlog of credit for services performed which you were piling up among wealthy and influential persons, by these crooked operations you were supervising and protecting from attack, you might even have succeeded in reaching the limit of your ambition.

“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 occupational 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.”

Content

Rex Stout
Booby Trap

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8