Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 10 (16 page)

“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.”