Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 10 (17 page)

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.”

A
t 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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But now you say—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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